MIDDLE EAST: Day in and day out, at dirty congested military checkpoints throughout the West Bank, groups of Israeli women stand and watch how Palestinian civilians are treated by their soldiers, in their name.
They are the checkpoint checkers, a troop of mostly middle-aged and middle- class activists who last year conducted almost 3,000 observation shifts at the formidable barricades of concrete blocks, sandbags, turnstiles and metal detectors that control the movement of Palestinians between towns and villages within the occupied territories.
Machsom (Checkpoint) Watch this week revealed the detailed testimonies of its 500 volunteers, exposing what it calls a pattern of abuse and humiliation which feeds Palestinian rage and resentment and leads to the very terrorism the checkpoints are supposed to prevent.
"Right there in front of our eyes the tragedy happens," says volunteer Hanna Barag, who served during her own military career in the 1950s as secretary to then army chief of staff, Gen Moshe Dayan. "Our young lads, the soldiers, are keeping an entire generation of Palestinians under lock. The most basic human rights are trampled on and the use of force against civilians is rampant."
The incidents documented in Machsom Watch's report, A Counterview: Checkpoints 2004, include unwarranted lengthy delays of the sick and elderly and arbitrary detentions of mainly young males who are handcuffed and confined for hours in open-air pens which soldiers call "cesspits", waiting for security risk checks which should take only minutes.
"The soldiers define this procedure as an educational measure," a senior activist, Lia Nirgad, says. "We hear them say constantly 'hey, detain this guy for a long time because he gave me a dirty look'."
Asked by Machsom Watch women why certain people were detained, soldiers have responded with: "Every ninth male"; "Someone who comes without a permit"; "Anyone who looks suspicious".
"Last September we heard the best answer," Nirgad says. "It was 'Anybody who's called Mohammed'."
In a state where military service is compulsory and belief in the moral behaviour of the army is virtually unassailable, the testimonies of Machsom Watch volunteers make for uncomfortable and unwelcome reading.
But unlike other activists, these well- dressed women with respectable jobs and army service under their belts are not easily dismissed by the predominantly rightist Israeli society as unpatriotic left-wingers, self-hating Jews, traitors, seditionists or bleeding hearts.
Machsom Watch insists that it is not opposed to security checks, but to the overbearing regime which stifles movement of Palestinian civilians in the territories and amounts to collective punishment. Its volunteers intervene where they can and last year filed 100 written complaints to military and police authorities and to the government. The responses received were "minimal and generally insufficient", the group says.The Checkpoints 2004 report logs the exact times and locations of incidents such as the August 16th detention of a young woman for an hour in a stuffy solitary confinement holding cell at Beit Iba checkpoint outside the northern West Bank city of Nablus. "The soldiers said she had sworn at them," the report states.
On September 15th, during a closure ahead of a Jewish holiday, an ill pregnant woman on her way to hospital in Jerusalem collapsed in front of soldiers at a checkpoint in Abu Dis. After Machsom Watch volunteers intervened, an ambulance was called.
On July 25th, also at Beit Iba, a soldier beat and shot a 26-year-old male university student, apparently without provocation. After Machsom Watch reported the incident to the media and the army, the soldier was jailed.
The Israel Defence Force (IDF) maintains that its checkpoints are designed solely to thwart the Palestinian terrorist infrastructure by crippling the ability of militant networks to communicate and preventing the smuggling of suicide bombs into Israel.
Col Erez Weiner, the IDF's operations director in the West Bank, says more than half of the security crossings and roadblocks in the West Bank have been removed in the past two years.
"In addition, we have introduced advanced technological means which allow for quick and efficient security checks and we have improved conditions at the crossings, adding roofs and clinics and drinking stations," he adds in a statement.
The army says it listens to Machsom Watch and is developing and implementing training programmes to enable soldiers to carry out their work in the "most moral and respectful way possible".
According to the United Nations, only four of the 61 permanent checkpoints in the West Bank have been lifted since last November.
Machsom Watch volunteers who work at checkpoints around Arab East Jerusalem, where Israel's separation wall is under construction, say movement restrictions there are actually getting worse.
On a hot afternoon last Wednesday, Ivonne Mansbach, a 57-year-old scientist, took up her watch at Ar-Ram checkpoint, through which Palestinians seeking to travel between the West Bank town of Ramallah and Arab East Jerusalem must pass.
"Many people who live in this neighbourhood work in Jerusalem or study in Jerusalem and it's quite impossible to get a permit to cross it," Mansbach says.
She acknowledges that the women can do little more than exert some moral authority by their presence - they call it the "grandmother effect", the expectation that the presence of a middle-aged Jewish woman will temper soldiers' behaviour.
"Here we have very little leverage," she adds. "We talk with the soldiers but they are not interested at all."