Here's some more of the documentation I promised:

http://www.palestinemonitor.org/Special%20Section/Closure/hatred_despair_fomented.htm

Where hatred and despair are fomented
By Gideon Levy
Ha'aretz
January 18, 2004

"All of the Israel Defense Forces checkpoints in the occupied territories are immoral and illegitimate. Therefore, they must be removed unconditionally. There is no place to discuss their security value. Even if someone were to succeed in proving that a connection exists between locking residents in their villages and preventing terrorist attacks in Israel - which is highly doubtful - that would make no difference one way or the other. A law-abiding state does not adopt immoral and illegitimate measures, whatever their value.

Equally irrelevant is the discussion about the physical conditions that exist at the checkpoints. Disgraceful as they are, improving them will add nothing to their legitimacy. The only question is why checkpoints exist deep in occupied territory? By what right? Only to satisfy the settlers and abuse the Palestinians? The question of whether the orders that IDF soldiers receive at the checkpoints are legal is also irrelevant. Is the soldier who let an injured boy go through the checkpoint at Beit Iba last week, but prevented the passage of a man who had a slipped disc moral? The answer is unimportant. The very fact that he is posted there, and the authority he is given to routinely deprive people of their basic right to move about freely in their country and in their village is immoral. So the IDF initiative to post Arabic-speaking soldiers at checkpoints is ludicrous. Depriving someone of his rights in Arabic is hardly any more just.

A state that defines itself as a democracy and law-abiding country does not imprison three-and-a-half million people in their villages and towns, slice up their country into strips, and declare roads for the use of Jews only. In Israel, though, the illegitimacy of the checkpoints is not enough to get them removed. The only discussion one occasionally hears has to do solely with their usefulness to security and the need to improve the soldiers' behavior.

A special committee that was established not long ago by the government coordinator of activities in the territories is examining the actions at four different IDF checkpoints. There is no need for a committee; all that has to be done is to dismantle them. Another initiative by Meretz MK Roman Bronfman, who last week convened a group of MKs that will visit IDF checkpoints and monitor events there, is praiseworthy. Like the article in Haaretz by former Tel Aviv mayor and retired major general Shlomo Lahat, who described what he saw at checkpoints, this new parliamentary initiative will be able to generate interest over what happens there. The MKs will see with their own eyes and will report to the public about the soldiers' behavior, the women in labor who are made to wait endlessly, the women who are forced to tell soldiers that they are bleeding so their hearts will soften, and the boy who tries to persuade a soldier to let him pass so he can visit his grandfather. But this welcome initiative must not focus on improving the conditions at the checkpoints; it must focus on getting them removed altogether.

Since the dawn of the occupation, the Palestinians have not been subjected to a harsher decree than the one that deprives them freedom of movement. The dozens of internal checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been augmented by hundreds of other obstacles: concrete blocks, earth ramparts, locked iron gates, fences, walls, surprise roadblocks, trenches and pits - a whole array of imprisonment methods. There is no other nation in the world today that is as incarcerated as the Palestinians have been, by us, for years. However, the majority of Israelis don't have a clue about the scale of the incarceration. The confusion that exists between the checkpoints on the 1967 Green Line, which are legitimate because they are the gates of entry into the country, and the internal checkpoints, which make up the majority and have no other purpose than to make life miserable for the population, helps blur the dimensions of the wickedness. Far from the eye, at checkpoints deep inside the West Bank and Gaza Strip an entire people is being subjected to humiliation as a matter of routine. This has nothing to do with security - or perhaps it does: the checkpoints are the great hothouse of terrorism. It is there that the hatred and the despair are fomented. "Humanitarian officers at the checkpoints?" That is a phrase that is as much an unacceptable internal contradiction as "enlightened occupation."

It's hard to imagine what it means to go through a checkpoint day in and day out - between Ramat Hasharon and Tel Aviv, say - with a foreign soldier who humiliates you, a huge line, and a good chance of being shamefully expelled back to where you came. In this spectacle, even the most humanitarian soldier plays a distinctly inhuman role. One day we will yet have to answer the questions that are not even on the public agenda now: Who gave us the right to control the fate of another people? By what right have we imprisoned millions of people for years? When that happens, the question of whether the soldier allowed the woman in labor to pass, or whether he knew Arabic, will become secondary, as it should be.:

http://www.un.org/unrwa/emergency/stories/deirammar.html

"Mustafa outlines some of the main problems encountered on a daily basis: the checkpoints, the UNRWA ID and the permits issued by the IDF granting passage into Israel or on the so-called 'settler roads' inside the West Bank. He says that with regard to the checkpoints, the fact that he is driving a clearly marked UN vehicle is of little consequence at crossing checkpoints. He maintains that if he ever tried to jump the inordinate queues at checkpoints to exercise his rights under the privileges and immunities accorded to UN staff members, the IDF would detain him.

He complains that the UN IDs don't help either. "UNRWA issues a number of different IDs and many times the IDF maintain that my ID is fake," he says. "It causes a lot of delay before they check our IDs and let us pass."

The permits issued by the IDF to enter Israel or use 'settler roads' inside the West Bank are often of little use. He says, "The IDF don't recognize their own documents and it makes no difference if we do or do not carry these permits. If the soldier at the checkpoint doesn't want to let us pass, we just don't pass."

"But," says Mustafa, "the delays are not our main concern. Traveling in the West Bank in a UN marked car is dangerous." He explains that while driving on 'settler roads' the mini-van carrying the mobile team is frequently stoned by Israeli settlers. Prior to the shooting last week in Ramallah there were two other incidents involving IDF firing shots at or in the direction of the UNRWA mini-van. "The problem is," says Mustafa, "that there is little official appreciation for the trouble UNRWA staff have to go through on a daily basis just to go to work.""

http://www.btselem.org/English/Freedom_of_Movement/Background.asp

http://www.btselem.org/English/Testimonies/index.asp

http://www.btselem.org/English/Testimonies/040111_Soldiers_Beat_Medic_Jamal_Abu_Hamade_near_Ofra.asp

http://www.btselem.org/English/Security_Forces_Violence/index.asp

Violence by Security Forces (B'Tselem)

"Violence against Palestinians by Israeli security forces is not new, and has accompanied the occupation for many years. However, the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifada resulted in a significant increase in the number of beatings and abuse, in part because of the increased friction between Palestinians and Israeli security forces. According to many testimonies given to B'Tselem and other human rights organizations, the security forces use violence, at times gross violence, against Palestinians unnecessarily and without justification.

Most cases involve a "small dose" of ill-treatment, such as a slap, a kick, an insult, a pointless delay at checkpoints, or degrading treatment. These acts have become an integral part of Palestinian life in the Occupied Territories. However, from time to time, cases of severe brutality occur.

Many instances of abuse are not exposed because they have become the norm, and, for Palestinians, filing complaints is very time consuming. Furthermore, many Palestinian, primarily those who entered Israel without a permit, even refrain from filing complaints in cases of severe brutality because they fear that filing the complaint will harm them. Based on past experience, many do not file complaints because of lack of trust in the system, which tends not to believe them and to protect, rather than prosecute, those who injured them. The numerous restrictions on movement imposed by Israel in the Occupied Territories make it very difficult for Palestinians who want to file complaints to do so.

Israeli law, like international law, allows security forces to use reasonable force in self-defense and for duty-related purposes, such as dispersing rioters, arresting suspects resisting arrest, and preventing a detainee from fleeing. However, the law does not allow beatings, degradation, or ill-treatment of persons who are not rioting, resisting arrest, or fleeing. Also, the requirement that reasonable force be used in those instances where force is allowed demands that the measures taken be limited in severity to that which is necessary to prevent commission of the offense.

The acts described in testimonies given to B'Tselem and to other human rights organizations deviate greatly from what the law allows and constitute flagrant violations of human rights. In this context, an Israeli district court held that, "The exercise of illegal force by police officers is a phenomenon characteristic of regimes that are abhorrent, and undemocratic, of the kind that trample on human rights. It is misuse of the [police officer's] function."

Cases of beatings and abuse receive special condemnation. For example, the former Minister of Public Security, Shlomo Ben-Ami stated: "I relate with great severity to brutality by police officers. I think that that, among the possible sins committed by the police, this is gravest, because the police cannot fight violence by employing violence against citizens." Regarding another incident, in which a soldier beat a settler from Kedumim, the IDF Spokespersons responded that, "The IDF views with great severity the case and violence by IDF soldiers."

However, these condemnations remain solely declarative, while security forces, misusing their power, continue to abuse and beat Palestinians, among them minors. Both the army and the Border Police have yet to make it unequivocally clear to security forces serving in the Occupied Territories that it is absolutely forbidden to abuse and beat Palestinians, and their educational and information actions in this regard have been more lip service than a frank and honest attempt to uproot the phenomenon once and for all.

Until a few years ago, the Israel Police Force itself investigated claims of police brutality. In 1992, handling of these claims was transferred to the Department for the Investigation of Police (DIP), of the Ministry of Justice. B'Tselem forwards to the DIP testimonies it receives regarding police brutality against Palestinians, and requests that the matter be investigated and that the offending police officers be prosecuted. In many cases, the DIP responds that the file is closed, for reasons such as "offender unknown" or "insufficient proof." At times, the DIP decides to close a file following an incomplete investigation or when the complainant was unable to reach DIP offices to give testimony because the complainant's request to enter Israel was rejected. In cases where police officers are prosecuted, they receive light sentences.

The defense establishment's refusal to issue a message of this kind to forces serving in the Occupied Territories has far-reaching consequences. If a message is sent to security forces, it is that, even if the establishment does not accept acts of violence, it will not take measures against those who commit them. The effect of such a message is that the lives and dignity of Palestinians are meaningless and that security forces can continue, pursuant to the function they serve, to abuse, humiliate, and beat Palestinians with whom they come into contact."