Beit Furik, Huwwara, Za'tara (Tapuah), Mon 4.8.08, Morning

Translation: Hanna K.

Za'tara 06:30 -
The soldiers enable most of the cars to pass without checking them. A few cars are directed to the parking area for checking.

Beit Furik 07:10 -
There is no car queue and few pedestrians. Everything proceeds quickly. We sit in the café "at the parlor of Abu Salah". A carpet pads the sitting area and the table. We are told that there is a rumor that soon the barrier will be taken down. The soldiers will watch the ongoing from above, perhaps from the tower, and only at night they will shut the gate. It will be possible to pass with cars and taxis. Inshallah.

Huwwara 08:00 -
There are quite a lot of people at the passage. The atmosphere is relatively calm. There are no soldier-women.
The CP commander demands that we stand on the other side of the blue line. We refuse and this succeeds this time too. Later one of the women passing comes up to us and asks in Hebrew that we tell the soldiers to make two different queues for men and women.The CP commander explains to us that this is possible as far as they are concerned, but that it is not his duty to arrange it. They can manage this themselves according to their wish. He really means it. A boy passes with his family crying. We ask what happened and a grown-up tells us that he is frightened of the soldiers.
A soldier at the vehicle checking station, with tassels hanging out from under his uniform and with a beard, tries too to move us away, to no avail.

Yaassuf 09:30 -
On the way back at the Za'tara junction we see a rolling CP at the exit from the Palestinian road, in the direction of Yaassuf and Salfit. Palestinians sit outside their cars and wait. Military cars drive back and forth. Rumors say that settlers have stolen a herd of sheep. A quarter of an hour later they open the barrier and enable the traffic to flow.
We drive in the direction of the village of Yaassuf, with the aim of continuing from there via Ariel home. It turns out that the Palestinian road does not connect to the other road.  The soldiers at the rolling CP after the second village tell us to return to Za'tara/Tapuah and to drive from there. On the way back we meet the shephered whose herd has been stolen, and see that he is wounded from stones that were thrown at him, so the says, as well as other people who tell us that the settlers shot at their houses and kidnapped Ibrahim's herd. The army blockings were probably intended to restore law and order. The settler was in the police jeep and claimed (according to the Palestinians) that the herd was his.In the meantime, after conferring with Azmi [of "Yesh Din"- ("There is a Law")] and the people of the village we take Ibrahim the shepherd and his son to the Ariel police-station to file a complaint.