Beit Iba

BEIT IBA, Saturday 27 November 2004 AMObservers: Yvonne V., Efrat S., Nurit S. (reporting)colour=red>At about 08:00 we reached Jubara on our way to Beit Iba and soldiers told us there was no passage. After parking, we tried to clarify the meaning of the instruction which seemed illegal to us. One of the soldiers said that entry was forbidden to Israeli Arabs and permitted for Jews, but not for us. We asked what would happen if we had wanted to go to one of the Jewish settlements and he said that then they would have known our destination and let us through. We said it was not reasonable to approve passage on the basis of political views.( A ban on grounds of nationality also seemed illegal to us). A woman soldier intervened and said we could go through, so we continued on our way.08:30 – Beit IbaWe were greeted by numerous taxi drivers who asked us to find out why they were not being allowed into Nablus. The very courteous commander explained that only five taxis had permits to go through the checkpoint. The rest could go from Nablus to the checkpoint and from the checkpoint out. In other words, people taking a taxi in Nablus have to get out at the checkpoint, go through on foot and take another taxi to their destination. Relative to the number of people going through, there were very few taxis available There were three detainees at the special area and they were released fairly fast, and replaced by others. [Detainees are, typically, men aged from 16 to 30 or 35 who have no passage permits; recently, young women, too, have been detained. The detainees' ID details are phoned through to the General Security Services (GSS, also known as the Shabak or the Shin Bet, the Hebrew acronym for the GSS) for checking against a central list of security suspects and the answers are then relayed back to the checkpoints. This cumbersome process can take considerable time, and that can be prolonged even more if the soldiers wait to accumulate a batch of ID cards before passing them on to the GSS , or if they behave in a similarly tardy manner at the end of the process, waiting until they have a batch of GSS clearances before they release individual detainees. Meanwhile, the detainees are virtually prisoners at the checkpoint where the soldiers retain the ID cards until the entire process is completed]. Processing was rapid compared to previous occasions, perhaps because ID numbers were passed on immediately. Also, there was a woman soldier present which made it possible to check women who arrived with their husbands but without their own ID cards.Since the checkpoint was not overloaded today, we were able to talk to the soldiers. They said that as far as they knew, the Palestinian who'd been photographed playing the violin at the checkpoint had done so on his own initiative. The commander asked if we had brought sweets for the children. We explained that, as we saw it, our aim was to express our objections to the checkpoint policy in principle, even when it was carried out in a humane fashion; we also wanted to bring events here to the knowledge of the Israeli public which tended to ignore such happenings. Our aims were political, and so we didn’t hand out sweets as ladies from charitable organizations might do. We left at 10.30 due to the indisposition of one of our group. Before we left, E. complimented the soldiers on their work and conduct.On the way back, we passed Jubara again and, apparently because of the new regulation, there was a long line of cars held up there, which seemed to us to belong to Israeli Arabs.