Beit Furik, Huwwara, Za'tara (Tapuah), Wed 3.10.07, Afternoon

Translation: Hanna K.

13:30 – 16:45

13:30 Za'atara:
From north to south about 8 cars, from East to West 15 cars.
Burin:
A CP next ti which there is a hammer.
13:45 Huwwara:
Crowdedness at the CP is terrible, noise and shouts of the Palestinians and the soldiers, there are three checking lanes and one humanitarian queue, but at times some of the posts are not manned, it was not clear whether this was due to a formal break or whether the soldiers just left the post and took a recess. This of course increased the crowdedness and the nervousness of the people in the queues, people who are anyway very hungry, thirsty and tired at the end of a fasting day.
The soldiers were on the whole relatively courteous, the commander. lieutenant M. an affable person who listened to us and answered politely, but even so there was a number of soldiers who behaved rudely towards the persons passing at the CP and towards us. Exceeded all the others a woman soldier called D. whose screeches could be heard from afar and whose checking tempo was very slow.
When we arrived there was no DCO representative on the spot, and after a few telephone conversations with E. from the DCO Y. arrived and helped us with a few cases we referred to him but after a few minutes he announced that he had to go somewhere else, but he didn't leave a telephone number and said he could be reached via E. from the DCO, which later proved to be untrue.
At 2:45pm the car queue became very long, and at 3:30 when we returned from Beit Furiq there was a terrible congestion in the checking queue and the noise and shouting were deafening, in the detention cell there were a few detainees who were held there because they left the queue. The persons who left after being checked were furious and told us about the disgraceful attitude of the soldiers, and they mentioned especially a red-headed soldier whose name they didn't know (the CP commander didn't know to whom they referred), one of the soldiers emerged with a torn bag and said the soldiers had done this.
Suddenly the noise and the shouts became more intense, the passages were closed and two bound man were led by the soldiers to the detention cell, one of them was on the verge of fainting and the other wounded in his head.
The people who were on the spot said he had been hit by the soldiers. All This happened without the presence of a DCO representative. We phoned Ellen as Y. had told us to, but she claimed she had not way of contacting him.(we herewith address colleagues who are able to reach the higher echelons and ask them to try and do something in the matter, it is not possible that in such a sensitive place, expecially in the Ramaddan period, there should be no DCO representative the whole day long).
We contacted the humanitarian Center and they promised to take care of the matter, after a short while the company commander appeared (we don't know whether this was as a result of our phone call) there was an investigation and we saw the wounded man point to one of the soldiers. At the end of the investigation the wounded man was released from his handcuffs but was put into the detention cell. When we asked why, the company commander said he had to complete the inverstigation. We do hope it was a fair one. During the event the passage were closed, a further aggravation of the terrible suffering that the population that has to pass through the CPs has to undergo.
3:15 Beit Furik:
The traffic is sparse. We are told that there is no passage for people who are not inhabitants of Beit Furiq and Beit Dajan.
16:46 Za'atara:
The CP is nearly empty. .