Beit Iba, Shavei Shomron

BEIT IBA, Wednesday 1 December 2004 PMObservers: Sarah P., Raya Y. (reporting) colour=red>We arrived just before 14:00 and learned that there was no through way via Shavei Shomron for taxis. We spoke to R., of the Samaria District Coordinating Office (DCO) [the army section that handles civilian matters; it generally has representatives at the checkpoints ostensibly to alleviate the lot of the Palestinians] , who said that he was aware of the problem and it was being dealt with.There were about 20 men in the detainees' enclosure, mostly fromJenin; they had been there for approximately an hour.[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]. We asked the checkpoint commander to try to speed up their release and, after he had made a phone call, 10 of the detainees were soon released. Half an hour later, another eight followed. We were surprised to see that a new watch-tower had been put up -- another sign of the increasingly permanent nature of the checkpoint. We phoned the DCO every half hour during the entire shift to see whether there was any change in the policy towards taxi drivers at the Shavei Shomron checkpoint who were not being allowed to drive through without permits. R. told us that the Brigade C/O wassupposed to have given instructions to let the taxis through.At 15:30, we drove to Shavei Shomron where more than 60 taxis were waiting . The local checkpoint commander said that he'd not received any new instruction about the taxis and that the owners knew that they had no through passage.We heard him yell at one of the drivers to go back home. I got back to R. again, who said he'd thought the problem had been solved. He was very attentive to our request that he continue to deal with the matter. When we returned to Beit Iba, people were going through at a normal rate and there were no special problems. We left at about 16:00 for Huwwara.