Huwwara , Beit Furik

HUWWARA, BEIT FURIK, Monday 27 December 2004 AMObservers: Yael B.-S., Ofra K., Yudit A.-D. (reporting)colour=red>08:20 Beit Furik The checkpoint was spotlessly clean, manned by reservists, and the equipment had been upgraded by the introduction of laptop PCs. The [ID details of ]15-25 year- olds were checked, everyone else went through freely. The local 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] is now to be closed for three months.A young man arrived with a permit due to lapse tomorrow, and was told he ccould go into Nablus but won't be able to return. A young man who was detained at Huwwara checkpoint told us that the army had extended valid permits by three months. Nobody knew what the procedure would when the DCO was closed.09:25 – AwartaThere was only one truck waiting to be checked here.09:30 – Huwwara NorthThe checkpoint was packed with soldiers and border policemen. They had to deal with only very few Palestinians, most of whom went through without problems. The soldiers cast a cursory glance at their documents, and checked against lists and photos on the laptop screens.There were two detainees and they were released after a short time.10.45 – Huwwara South The checkpoint commander was hostile. Despite the easing of restrictions, he was very strict over everything whenever matters were left to his discretion. The checking was manual which caused delays.There were three detainees when we arrived, and eight half an hour later, all of them holders of valid permits. [Detainees are, typically, men aged from 16 to 30 or 35 who have no passage permits; recently, young women, too, have been detained. There has also sometimes been a downward shift in the ages affected – now from 14 to 30, but this can vary. 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 were told the delay was due to [security/terror] "alerts".The commander forbade the soldiers to talk to us. When Ofra went over to talk to the detainees he prohibited that too and, when she insisted, he asked for her ID details and threatened to call the police.11:20 – We left.