Beit Iba

Beit Iba, Tuesday, 25.10.05, PMObservers: Horit H-P., Ada R. (reporting)At 13:40 we went out with N. At the exit from Nebi Elias there was a Border Guard roadblock. 2 Border Guards with a car – hard to know if this is an independent initiative or an order. It is a kind of half-roadblock. The roads are totally empty, almost scary. Only when we were on our way home did I realize that there were tens of thousands at the funeral of the Hamas man who had been killed. Perhaps this was part of the reason. I can’t remember such a day on the roads. For large parts of the trip we were completely alone on the major roads. No checkpoints and no traffic on the roads leading to Beit Iba, not even at the Jit Junction or next to Dir Sharaf.At Beit Iba we saw a line of dozens of trucks, pickups and a carriage with a donkey, going in the direction of Nablus. A conversation with the soldiers and the commander revealed that whenever a bus arrives at the checkpoint, all the other checking procedures are halted, and only the bus is inspected. To inspect a full bus takes from 20 minutes to half an hour, during which time the checkpoint is frozen. The soldiers say that those are the orders, because they didn’t want to bring more soldiers to the checkpoint, since buses don’t go by all the time anyway, and the order is that it is forbidden for a pair of soldiers to do an inspection without cover. Since this is the case, there aren’t enough soldiers to check the trucks, as there are also pedestrians. I requested that, in spite of this, they find a team to inspect the trucks. Amazing – after a few minutes, a passage is opened to Nablus without any inspection for vehicles; and, within a few minutes all the vehicles went through which had been waiting and some of them even taunted us, “what are you? Sarid and Yossi Beilin are equally useless, we have been waiting here, fasting, for an hour and a half already.” So why were they waiting and not allowed through? In the end they weren’t even checked?Someone comes through the line and the soldier tells him that he is “wanted” and sends him to the shed, after taking his cell phone. I ask why he took it, he didn’t handcuff him, he passed his name along for checking – by what right did he take his telephone? He answered with some embarrassment that those were the orders that he had received, so that the boy wouldn’t tell anyone that he had been arrested at the checkpoint. But he wasn’t arrested, I said, you have only detained him to check his documents. The boy said that he had passed through here this morning, he is a business student at A-Najah University and lives not far from the checkpoint; he goes through every day. OK, he gives the boy his cell phone and goes off to find out why the GSS put his ID number in the list of wanted people. After less than a quarter hour, it became clear that the boy was not wanted and he was released…A family arrives of 3 sisters with the brother or husband of one of them, from Baka-al-Gharbiyya. They had spent the morning with their sick sister in Nablus. They entered this morning. They order the police, and meanwhile also send for a clarification at the GSS. They came out clean. We stand near enough for the soldiers to know that we can hear and see, but not so close that we annoy them. The checkpoint commander softens up slowly; after about a quarter hour, 20 minutes, he cancels the police order and sends the family on its way with a warning to ask for an entrance permit to Nablus next time. Meanwhile, the district commander arrives, a captain, who tells me not to talk with the soldiers. The soldiers themselves were quite friendly, 2 of them look like very nice youths who were not interested in being there…I crossed the checkpoint in order to get a better angle of view to see the line of trucks and buses coming from Nablus. He tells me that this is forbidden. I ask why. And he begins to tell me that this is a closed military zone and he has the right to say what is allowed and what isn’t. I tried to explain to him the meaning of a closed military zone, but he didn’t want to hear. He spoke very arrogantly and said he would immediately have it declared as a closed military zone. I started to say that only a general…and he interrupted with a “Vice General” – that is, he didn’t even know what the guidelines were for declaring a closed military zone – and he is the checkpoint commander. I patiently explained to him what a closed military zone is and that he could not change a public checkpoint into a military zone. I explained to him that an area through which thousands of civilians pass every day could not also be a military zone without it being officially declared, and without the necessary conditions, which were non-existent at this point. His final word was that it was of no interest to him what I though or what was legal, since he was the one who would decide what he wanted to do with me if I disobeyed his orders. I agreed and only asked that he take care of the huge line which had formed from the direction of Nablus.I thanked him for opening the checkpoint in the direction of Nablus and asked him to do the same for the vehicles coming from Nablus. This took more time, but things started to move. The best line of communication at the checkpoint was between me and a mute Palestinian who was organizing the traffic for the Palestinians there. He begs, he directs, his eyes full of understanding and intelligence. Since he can’t hear, they don’t pretend to speak the same language – not English, not Hebrew, and not Arabic, but universal sign language, facial expressions are the means of communication and very effective. I asked him about the line from Nablus and he reported to me every few minutes how many vehicles there were, etc.Altogether, the traffic was quite light leaving Nablus, and almost no one going into Nablus. Most people are travelling now in buses and taxis. We went to Nebe Elias at 16:30 – the roads were empty…