Beit Iba, Tue 6.1.09, Afternoon

Gaza is being ground down to dust just a few dozen kilometers away, yet the checkpoint are functioning in their usual way in the West Bank.

13:30-14:50

We heard from some people on the way that the checkpoint at Beit Iba, has been closed for more than an hour in the afternoon.  The soldiers there confirmed the information.  "There was a suspicious object" they said.  Someone forgot a bag.  So they closed the checkpoint and called  in bomb experts.
Two stations were operating for inspection of pedestrians:  one for ordinary inspection and the second for faster inspection of women, older people and children.  Very few pedestrians.  Those being checked in the ordinary line need to empty their pockets, take off their belts and sometimes also their shoes.  In both line, packages are taken apart.
A man in his 30's arrived with heavy packages at the checkpoint and tried to go through the fast line.  The soldiers return him to the ordinary line.  He begs them to inspect him and let him through anyway, he is in a hurry, carrying heavy packages;  if they return him to the second inspection line, he will have to wait all over again.  The soldiers don't respond to his requests and he has to go back.
The soldiers at the fast inspection station change shifts and the new soldier shouts at the people going through ("stop there!  open your coat!" he screams at an American citizen who isn't used to the checkpoint procedures), and makes fun of them ("great tie, he says to a well-dressed youth he is checking).
The soldiers receive our presence with silent hostility, until we take out the camera.  Then then attack us, "Forbidden to photograph!", "Don't take our pictures!", "This is a military area!"  "There is an official order that you cannot photograph at a checkpoint,"  They throw the whole arsenal at us, threaten to call the police.  We are not convinced and then they begin to photograph us and try to block us from photographing.
The DCO officer at the checkpoint tells us that the rumors about the checkpoint being dismantled are not true.  The new kind of checkpoint on the entrance road to the village of Beit Iba is not supposed to supplant the present checkpoint, at least as far as he knows.