Huwwara South

Huwwara South Tuesday PM, 11.1.05Observers: Pithiah A., Racheli B-A., Lee A. (reporting)A generally quiet shift. Only a few people, as is typical of Huwwara South recently, the turnstiles are not operating and people are flowing through with almost no delay, from the side line. With all this, there were a number of incidents which did require our intervention:- An American citizen, born in Nablus, arrived for the funeral of her mother and was refused entry since she didn't have a permit to enter Area A. The checkpoint commander actually tried to help, and explained to her in broken English where she had to go, and even lent her a telephone, but, when she didn't manage to make contact with the correct number, she burst into tears. We came to help her and made contact with Shiran at the Central Command. She promised to organize a special permit for her. The process took a lot of phone calls from our side every few minutes, and lasted more than an hour, during which the woman was crying all the time. We also tried to clarify with the officer at the northern checkpoint whether it was possible for him to let her through, but he insisted that the permission of a general was needed for such an exception. Although the woman did get the permit in the end to enter Nablus, one must ask if there isn't a possibility to make such a decision at a lower level of command, especially when the case is obviously a humanitarian issue? Don't the generals have more important things to do with their time?- a female soldier from the military police was present at the checkpoint and demonstrated that, despite all the compliments given to the checkpoint teams by the military authorities, they still have a few things to learn. For example, Arabic, and perhaps a bit of patience: a mother, young son, and another of the forbidden age group, request to enter Nablus for medical examinations of the older son in the hospital. The female soldiers glances at their documents and decided: the mother and young son can enter, the older one can't (since he doesn't have a permit). The mother tries to explain to her that the examinations are for the older son and there is no point in their going without him, but the soldier who, of course, doesn't understand Arabic, loses interest in the situation and sends them off. The family stands on the side hopelessly, and we interevene. A request to the checkpoint commander solves the problem in a minute. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that, without our intervention, they would not have passed through.- Two children without documents, with an adult family member, ask to enter Nablus; we had seen them arriving from the northern checkpoint dragging packages. The female soldier finds out that one of them (about 10 years old) is from Ramallah, and decides that he cannot go in without a parent, and sends him off shouting "Get away, get away!" Just as though she is shooing away a bothersome fly, and not a small child whom she has just sent to go home alone to Ramallah. The three people, of course, try to explain to her, but as she doesn't understand Arabic, and has absolutely no patience, there is no use. We approached to find out what was going on. The older relative claimed that the 2 children were from his family, and were cousins. The parents of the child from Ramallah were visiting the parents of the other child, and he had taken them out of Nablus in otder to load things on the taxi which was going to Ramallah, and now they are simply not allowing them to go back. Racheli rushed off to the northern checkpoint and very quickly the order came back to let them in, since she warned them that the child from Ramallah couldn't leave Nablus without his parents. When Racheli returned it became clear that the instructions were for everyone still to be allowed to enter Nablus freely anyway, but the soldiers at the checkpoint decided "to go one step further" and not allow in anyone who might have problems leaving again. Wonderful.- There is a rumor that there is a new policy "To delay the ambulances, and to totally take them apart." And, in fact, one ambulance, without passengers, which arrived at the checkpoint was delayed from more than 20 minutes, in spite of the protests of the drivers that they had to go pick up a patient. A request concerning this directed to the checkpoint commander received the response: "Believe me, there are reasons," but it turned out that the reasons were not sufficiently good when the documents were returned to the drivers and they were released on their way to Nablus. Later we found out that a terrorist had been wounded, and they were worried that they might be transporting him in an ambulance to Nablus, so they decided to delays all the ambulances that were entering, and perhaps also those leaving.