Irtah (Sha’ar Efrayim)
4:55 We arrived. The days are getting shorter, it's pitch dark out, but hundreds – maybe a thousand – of workers have already passed through the checkpoint and are waiting for their rides. A few minibuses are already leaving the area.
The new commercial center building looks ready to open, but the toilet cubicles are still standing locked and evidently forgotten in the corner of the lot.
4:56 At the entrance to the building, the turnstiles that were closed open up, and a large group – maybe a hundred men and women – go in to be processed.
4:59 The turnstiles close. The people in line wait patiently.
5:05 The turnstiles open again. We go around to the other side of the building.
5:15 A man comes out whom we saw go in at 5:05, at the same time as one from the previous batch (4:56). A family group, father mother and young son, three or four years old, also got through in only ten minutes. We approached them to ask their plans. The child has a medical problem and is getting treatments at Sheba Hospital, and they didn't have a transportation. We cut short our observation to give them a ride to the hospital, and gave them phone numbers for Yad LeHahlama.
Irtah (Sha'ar Efrayim)
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The checkpoint is for Palestinians only. It is the main barrier to the passage of workers from the northern West Bank to Israel. Workers with a permit to work in Israel and also for trade (with appropriate permissions), medicine, and visiting prisoners. One can cross the checkpoint only on foot. The checkpoint is located north of Road 557 and south of Tulkarm. Operated by a civil security company, opening hours: between 4:00 and 19:00 on weekdays. As members of Machsom Watch, we began our shifts to this location in 2007. We arrived before it opened at 4 in the morning and report since, on the harsh conditions and the long and crowded queues of workers. The workers who pass by continue their journey by transportation to work throughout Israel. In the first period of its activity, about 3,000 and then 5,000 people passed through this checkpoint every day. Due to the small number of checking points and arbitrary delays for long periods of time in the "rooms", workers feared losing their transportation. Hence workers leave their homes at 2:30 at night to be among the first. Today, 15,000 pass and the transition is faster. Workers are still leaving their homes very early to get past the checkpoint at 7 p.m. In an adjacent compound, there is a terminal for the transfer of goods on a commercial scale, using the back-to-back method.
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