Beit Iba, Tue 19.8.08, Afternoon

 15:00At the entrance to the checkpoint there is light traffic of vehicles.  In the humanitarian and the regular lines, very few people pass through, probably because the academic year at the university has not yet begun.  Eventually, the pedestrian traffic increased and an additional line was started. 

When we arrived, there were 3 detainees:  2 for unclear reasons, who were released in 15 minutes, and 1 because he tried to skirt the checkpoint;  he was held for 3 hours.  When we showed the sheet of guidelines to the checkpoint commander, which state that you cannot detain people as a means of punishment, he answered by saying he was not aware of these guidelines and that these were his orders.  We called one of the numbers on the bottom of the sheet.  The girl who answered said that she didn't know what we wanted from her and, as an answer, noisy music blasted out of the phone.  Later, another detainee was added, called a "bingo", which means that his ID number was suspicious.  The clarification took a long time.