Beit Iba, Shavei Shomron

Beit Iba 11 January Afternoon Shift14-16Watchers: Nurit S. Yam-Li Ella H. (Reporting) Ilana K. (Reporting and Translating)Summary: A frustrating shift. The regular army unit is dysfunctional and particularly hostile both to the Palestinians and towards us. A taxi driver is held with handcuffs and eye cover for 1 hour as punishment. No trace of pre-election relaxation. 14:00 – Shavei Shomron - the checkpoint is empty, except for the soldiers on top.14:30 – Beit Iba. Our eye catches from afar a Palestinian with eyes tied with an armed soldier in the army outpost on the hill above the checkpoint. Ella and Ilana walk over to check, but do not find anybody. G’, the commander of the checkpoint approaches and with controlled anger asks us to get off the grounds, and down to the checkpoint. He refuses to answer the questions regarding the detainee (“It is none of your business”). Down at the checkpoint Nurit an Yam-Li get an angry welcome from the soldiers. Between 150-200 women, men and children are crowded behind the turnstiles. The commander prefers to discipline the Palestinians, rather than to speed up the passage. We could not find anybody from the DCO, so we called Raaed. After a while H. from the DCO showed up, who made long pauses for telephone calls ignoring the long lines. Later higher “brass” from the DCO inspected the situation. Finally, T.’ the M.P. came to help.We try to cross over to see the line from the road, and meet a family with a newborn baby, who had to get off the bus traveling from Nablus to Tulkarm, and were trying to avoid the 30 minute wait behind the turnstile. G’, takes their ID’s and sends them to the end of the line. We try to intervene but he scolds us: “you are getting in my way”, get out of my checkpoint”. We retort: ‘this is not your checkpoint’. He corrects:” the checkpoint under my control.” We hear G’ talking on the phone, saying “I can’t control the women of MachsomWatch. What, you don’t know what is Machom Watch?” In a short while appears a policeman, who is amused to find out who caused this big problem for G’. He asked us with a smile to stick to the left corner and not to get in the way, and drove off.The 4 Palestinians detainees asked us “what are you here for” when we could not speed up their release. At 15:40 T. releases the tied Palestinian. His eyes squinting from the light, and handcuff marks on his wrists. We recognized him as one of the taxi drivers. In reply to our questions, T. answered that the driver crossed the checkpoint with his cab without stopping, as ordered. “So why was he tied up”? A: “He resisted arrest”. The driver would not answer out questions, saying, “nobody will help us”. His gloomy glance expressed the message: “you are not part of my small act of resistance to the occupation.”For personal reasons we had to leave early, frustrated and feeling powerless. On our way out, we saw G’ running after a 14 year old girl because she did’nt have documents. H. from the DCO told us that earlier, G ran after an 11 year old girl with the same pretext. It seems that this unit is going to harass adolescents who have not reached the age of IDs.