Morning

Driving our car on Road 60, it was not as empty as last Saturday and there was significant movement of green plate cars. Some of us felt safer last week, when we went by transit. We parked very near the checkpoint. We took a large supply of water for ourselves as well as for people passing the checkpoint, because of the heatwave. Overall, the situation was as bad as last Saturday. Some locals told us Saturday is a particularly difficult day, because many people return home after a week's absence, creating a lot of traffic.There were new soldiers at the checkpoint, including some Ultra Orthodox . We met an officer who told us that he had taken command 2 hours earlier, and was studying the situation. We tried to explain and complain, to no avail. The southern part was in disarray and much more problematic than the northern part, where soldiers were able to keep order. At the southern side from time to time a huge crowd collected and people in need, unable to bypass the crowd, were forced to go up and down a difficult slope. An hysterical sergeant with the Russian accent was unable to handle the situation. We asked him to let women and children pass, but his response was negative. Our presence created additional chaos, because soldiers became less strict and the crowd became even more unruly, which was disadvantageous for people in need (we need to be conscious about this problem!). We started to call for help. Suddenly women, people with children, and the old were allowed to pass, and the situation improved temporarily. The sergeant was moved elsewhere, and things were better until he returned, but then two of us had to go North and complained about him. A DCO officer named Itai appeared and some improvement was achieved again. People began asking for our help, as we had created a wrong impression that we were powerful, and raised false expectations. Our only ability was in helping many needy people it is not only the soldiers who fail to realize that a person needs special attention. The Palestinians are also not particularly helpful towards these weaker people. The terrible Hamsin increased the tension (we need to request from the army to supply water for the passers by). We called Habib from Physicians for Human Rights, who managed to negotiate help for two cases. Ambulances passed slowly at the beginning, but our pressure forced soldiers to be more efficient. One soldier particularly went out of his way to help a real emergency ambulance which came racing to the checkpoint with its siren blaring. He took over for a moment from the young soldier who'd never done checkpoint duty before.Conclusions: We need to continue to go to Huwwara. It is very important to meet the commander of Nablus or maybe DCO who is rather responsive and active in this area (Itai said the army is working on a plan to improve the checkpoint layout, so we must keep the pressure on until this is done).