Sarra, Beit Iba, Jit

SARRA, BEIT IBA, JIT JUNCTION, Saturday 11 December 2004 AMObservers: Miri Z., Solly F., Hava H. (reporting)colour=red>Following up a conversation between a Sarra villager and one of our observers last week – we went to the Sarra checkpoint which we had not visited for some time.There were no turnstiles and no concrete "sleeves" leading to the checking stations here: it was just a large outpost on the hill and a small position in the middle of nowhere, manned by two soldiers. The people passing through came from four villages - Iraq Burin, Madama, Tell and Sarra. Pickup trucks brought them to the checkpoint where they got out, were checked and got into the vehicles again, to be taken on to ….the Beit Iba checkpoint. There they were checked again and finally went through to Nablus.We asked first if the soldiers had received instructions regarding the elections to the Palestinian Authority. It transpired that as far as they were concerned (and the same sense was conveyed at all the other checkpoints we visited today) these elections might just as well be taking place on the moon. They knew nothing about them and had been given no instructions. We chatted with the soldier on duty about the occupation and its implications.We left Sarra at 09:00 and drove to Beit Iba. At the Jit junction where vehicles from Qalqiliya, Tulkarm and all the villages around go through to Nablus, there was an unannounced checkpoint – with several vehicles waiting to go through on either side. The passengers were not told to get out and all the vehicles were released to go on their way almost as soon as we arrived. There too we talked to the soldiers who told us about the leaflets which the Blue and White [Likud-sponsored women's] organization handed out to them telling them to beware of Machsomwatch.At Beit Iba we discovered that the age restriction at the checkpoint had changed: it was now the 14 to 25-year-olds who had difficulties in passing through [it used to be 16 to 30 or 35-year-olds. All others went through without checking. There were seven detainees who were released after 15 minutes.[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]. While we were talking to the soldiers about Qusin village, which lies above the checkpoint, one of them told us that they had lived there for a month. Thus we discovered that the house which the army had requisitioned and whose occupants it had driven out a year ago was still being used by the army.By the time we were on our way back, the unannounced checkpoint at Jit junction had disappeared, but several new ones were dispersed along the road as far as Huwwara.