Beit Iba

BEIT IBA, Thursday 9 December 2004 AMObservers: Deganit I., Yael B.-S., Ofra K., Yudit A.-D. (reporting)Guest: Petra colour=red>The watch began at Jubara and Anabta – see report under the Tulkarm area. 09:00 – Beit IbaThere was a long line of trucks waiting to proceed in the Nablus direction; the drivers said they'd been held up there for two hours. Half an hour later the line had almost disappeared. There were no vehicles at the exit from Nablus when we arrived, later there was some crowding which was eased after 20 minutes.Traffic through the checkpoint was lively: the tracks were empty, everyone was passing through, including those in the "dangerous " age group, i.e. the 15- to 35-year-olds. Orders were that everyone should be allowed through, without checks on documents, except for suspicious-looking individuals. The Palestinians approached the checking positions clutching their ID cards and finding it hard to believe. The same situation held good at the entrance, the exit and the eastern checkpoint.There were four detainees in the "pen" . [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]. One of the detainees , bruised and scratched all over, said he'd been beaten by a border policeman at the exit from Nablus. He didn’t want us to intervene. Only then did we notice a border police jeep parked behind the checkpoint in the Nablus direction, and the border policemen detaining young men and "suspects" for checking. The area was out of bounds for us. They left shortly after we first spotted them. This seemed to be a new procedure. Last week a jeep of border policemen took over the taxi area at Huwwara, stopped, checked and detained people on their way to and from the checkpoint. There too they left after an hour or so.Two of the detainees were taxi drivers who'd crossed the "virtual" line that keeps them at a good distance from the checkpoint . One of them, a diabetic, needed his insulin shot and had gone through for a second to take something. The other had halted close to the checkpoint to let down a cripple in a wheelchair and had himself got out of the taxi to off-load the chair. Both were given two hours' detention as punishment.10:30 – The checkpoint was almost empty . We left.