Huwwara

HUWWARA, Tuesday 30 November 2004 PM Observers: Rachel B-A., Pit'hiah A., Hurit P., Lee A. (recording), Hannah C. (reporting)Guests: Michal B-A. and another three actors from the Cameri Theatre colour=red> Huwwara North.We arrived at 14:00 to find crews from Fox News and Canadian TV being hosted here. We were surprised by the smiling reception we received, at the initiative of the District Coordinating Office (DCO) representative, A., who announced that he was at our service [the DCO is the army section that handles civilian matters; it generally has representatives at the checkpoints ostensibly to alleviate the lot of the Palestinians] . We were also happy to see that the soldiers checking pedestrians no longer held their weapons aimed into the faces of the Palestinians . With all this, there were still the two usual problem foci: the slow movement of the line through the turnstiles [these are not simple turnstiles such as one finds in a subway station, but high , revolving gates made of steel bars: each segment is barely large enough to admit one average-sized person; there is virtually no room to spare for anything that person may be carrying , whether a child or a parcel; passage for pregnant women or for the elderly is extremely difficult and frightening] and the endless waiting in the detention shed.The line being processed through the two double contraptions of the turnstiles was moving one step back – according to orders, and then one step forward – because of the pushing, since some of the turnstiles were not functioning. The adults complained about the long time they had to spend on their feet and were irritable. The DCO representative claimed t that there was no pressure, but in fact the crowding was quite serious at the furthest , turnstiles. The pressure lessened somewhat after a controlled flow of adults was let through on the side.The detainees' compound was occupied by those born between 1974-1984. [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]. The DCO representative promised that many of them would be released by 15:30. When that hour came, we brought him the medical records of a detainee who was supposed to have been at the hospital at 15:00, for an operation to remove kidney stones. After he'd taken time off to check this case, at 15:45, about half of the detainees were indeed released, but the numbers swelled again as more of the 20-to-30-year-olds sought to go through the checkpoint. Meanwhile, a man approached us from within the line: he had recently turned 30. He told us he had already been sent back twice, although he had a special permit which was supposed to allow him to pass through the checkpoint. The soldier reacted with the usual expressions of suspicion: "He may possibly be pretending and perhaps the permit is forged." But the checkpoint commander let him through because he was in any case eligible for passage on the grounds that he was over 30. When the TV crew left, the closed military zone – where we were forbidden to stand – immediately grew in size , and we were sent off to a distance , so that there was no contact between us and the detention shed.15:10 – Lee and Pit'hiah were at Huwwara South. The documents of six of the detainees, two of whom were doctors, had been taken during the previous shift and the six had now been waiting for an hour and a half, with no one willing to talk with them. A Japanese journalist, with a foreign passport, who had come here to write about the Greek church in Nablus, was refused entrance, and had been waiting for about five hours. A 35-year -old man was separated from his wife and sent to the detainees' shed: the soldier thought the two were only pretending to be a married couple. Then the checkpoint commander discovered that their identity documents held a surprise: they were, in fact, properly married, and the husband was immediately released.16:15 – Back at Huwwwara North, all those who were wearing the "wrong" kefiyyehs [Arab headscarfs worn especially by men], i.e. those patterned with Hamas symbols , were sent to the detention shed.16:40 – We left.