‘Anin, Reihan, Shaked, Thu 6.10.11, Afternoon
Stories of Two Children
15:05 A'anin CP – First Story
The gates of the CP are open. About ten people, two tractors and one donkey are waiting to go through to the village after a day's work. During the olive-picking season the CP is open daily in the morning, at noon and in the afternoon. The hours are: 05:30-06:30, 12:00 – 13:00, 15:00 – 16:30. This is something of an improvement over previous years. Some people, most of them young, arrive and go through immediately. They complain that they received permits only for one month. We gave an older man three bags of used clothing, not very big bags. Every pair of pants and every shirt was inspected on the ground. A well-dressed child arrives at the CP without a parent accompanying him. The soldiers ask every person going through if they know the child and if they can call his father to come to the CP with the child's birth certificate. A few try to phone the father. There is no answer. The soldiers also make phone calls to some place or another. The child without no certificate does not go through.
15:50 – At long last they find the father. Within ten minutes the father arrives without the child's birth certificate, and the child is not listed in his ID either. The father and the child shake hands and the child returns to the seamline zone, where a car is already waiting for him. It turns out that the child lives with his mother, an Israeli citizen in Umm el Fahem. He wanted to visit his father, but did not succeed. At least they met and shook hands in the CP. Two sweet little girls riding a donkey go up to the Bedouin village at the foot of the CP. They continue to ride and meet their grandmother who is sitting under the tree at the end of the road that leads to the CP.
16:10 Shaked-Tura CP
Very little traffic in both directions. A driver goes to be inspected and in the meantime a sheep waits quietly in the back of his pickup truck. The driver leaves the inspection hut and says that this evening he will have (the sheep) roasted on a campfire.
16:30 Reihan-Barta'a (seamline zone side) and the Second Story
Dozens of workers come down the sleeve together with us to the opening of the terminal. Opposite us some women students are coming up to spend the weekend in the seamline zone. We are afraid that there will be a terribly long queue, but to our surprise, the queue is not too long and the passage is quick. Two windows are operating. One of them is for those going from the West Bank to the seamline zone. Six detainees sit on a bench. Four women and six children join the queue. The men who are waiting let them go ahead.
17:00 People keep arriving and there is no queue. One of the detainees is allowed to go on his way and when we go up the sleeve again, a man asks to speak to us. His five-year-old son is a lifeguard at a pool! 'Soon he will be listed in the Guiness Book of Records', says his proud father. He himself is a resident of Ya'abed and he has a business in East Barta'a and also a swimming pool in Ya'abed where he is also a lifeguard. He taught his son how to swim and to be a lifeguard – on his telephone screen he shows us a TV program about his son, the young lifeguard. The child has a dream, to get to the sea and his father tried to get him a one-time permit to enter Israel for this purpose. But he did not get it. He heard too late about the days at sea and the trips that took place in the summer. The entrance fee for the pool is NIS 15, 10 for a small child. The only swimmers are little girls and boys. One day a week is for girls. There is a bit of a life in Palestine, but no trips to the sea.
'Anin checkpoint (214)
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'Anin checkpoint (214)
'Anin checkpoint is located on the Separation Fence east of the Israeli community Mei Ami and close to the village of Anin in the West Bank. It is opened twice a week, morning and afternoon, on days with shorter light time, for Anin farmers whose olive groves have been separated from the village by the fence it became difficult to cultivate their land. Transit permits are only issued to those who can produce ownership documents for their caged-in land, and sometimes only to the head of the family or his widow, eldest son, and children. Sometimes the inheritors lose their right to tend to the family’s land. The permits are eked out and are re-issued only with difficulty. 55-year-old persons may cross the checkpoint (into Israel) without special permits. During the olive harvest season (about one month around October) the checkpoint is open daily and more transit permits are issued. Names of persons eligible to cross are held in the soldiers’ computers. In July 2007, a sweeping instruction was issued, stating that whoever does not return to the village through this checkpoint in the afternoon will be stripped of his transit permit when he shows up there next time. Since 2019, the checkpoint has not been allways locked with the seam-line zone gate (1 of 3 gates), and the fence around it has been broken in several sites.
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Barta’a-Reihan Checkpoint
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This checkpoint is located on the Separation Fence route, east of the Palestinian town of East Barta’a. The latter is the largest Palestinian community inside the seam-line zone (Barta’a Enclave) in the northern West Bank. Western Barta’a, inside Israel, is adjacent to it. The Checkpoint is open all week from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. Since mid-May 2007, the checkpoint has been managed by a civilian security company subordinate to the Ministry of Defense. People permitted to cross through this checkpoint into and from the West Bank are residents of Palestinian communities inside the Barta’a Enclave as well as West Bank Palestinian residents holding transit permit. Jewish settlers from Hermesh and Mevo Dotan cross here without inspection. A large, modern terminal is active here with 8 windows for document inspection and biometric tests (eyes and fingerprints). Usually only one or two of the 8 windows are in operation. Goods, up to medium commercial size, may pass here from the West Bank into the Barta’a Enclave. A permanent registered group of drives who have been approved by the may pass with farm produce. When the administration of the checkpoint was turned over to a civilian security firm, the Ya’abad-Mevo Dotan Junction became a permanent checkpoint. . It is manned by soldiers who sit in the watchtower and come down at random to inspect vehicles and passengers (February 2020).
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Tura-Shaked
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Tura-Shaked
This is a fabric of life* checkpoint through which pedestrians, cabs and private cars (since 2008) pass to and from the West Bank and the Seam-line Zone to and from the industrical zone near the settler-colony Shaked, schools and kindergartens, and Jenin university campuses. The checkpoint is located between Tura village inside the West Bank and the village of Dahar Al Malah inside the enclave of the Seam-line Zone. It is opened twice a day, between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m., and from 12 noon to 7 p.m. People crossing it (at times even kindergarten children) are inspected in a bungalow with a magnometer. Names of those allowed to cross it appear in a list held by the soldiers. Usually traffic here is scant.
- fabric of life roads and checkpoints, as defined by the Terminals Authority in the Ministry of Defense (fabric of life is a laundered name that does not actually describe any kind of humanitarian purpose) are intended for Palestinians only. These roads and checkpoints have been built on lands appropriated from their Palestinian owners, including tunnels, bypass roads, and tracks passing under bridges. Thus traffic can flow between the West Bank and its separated parts that are not in any kind of territorial contiguity with it. Mostly there are no permanent checkpoint on these roads but rather ‘flying’ checkpoints, check-posts or surprise barriers. At Toura, a small (less than one dunam) and sleepy checkpoint has been established, which has filled up with the years with nearly .every means of supervision and surveillance that the Israeli military occupation has produced. (February 2020)
Mar-21-2022Anin Checkpoint: A magnificent breach in the center of the checkpoint
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