'Anin, Barta'a-Reihan, Tura-Shaked
14:45 – Tura-Shaked Checkpoint
At this hour, the checkpoint is quiet and no one passes through. They have finally emptied the overflowing trash container, but the area around it is filthy with plastic bags, bottles, and used army disposable food trays that are scattered around it. This doesn’t bother the soldiers of the checkpoint at all. Only they use the container for their garbage (the container serves only the soldiers), so what do they care that at this checkpoint, called by the ironic name “the Fabric of Life”, the Palestinian residents and the children walking to school have to pass by these piles of army garbage!
15:05 – Anin Checkpoint
About twenty people and two tractors, loaded with junk, wait for the opening of the checkpoint. One of the people tells us that his son, a veterinarian, is not permitted to go through the checkpoint if he carries medicines. In that case, he can cross only at the distant Barta’a Checkpoint. According to the residents, 300 people from the village requested to renew their permits to pass through and only 82 received them. An man and a child pray on the road (with no rug; it is forbidden to kneel where it’s wet) and the soldiers who’ve come to open the checkpoint wait patiently for them to finish.
15:20 – The soldiers collect identity cards and permits from the people outside the gate and the passage begins at 15:25. The first person is called for clarification and this is his problem: He has left in the morning through the Barta’a Checkpoint, where he doesn’t need a permit because he is over 55. Now he wants to return home through the checkpoint but that isn’t easy. First they have to check his clothes. Are his shoes and clothes dirty enough to prove that he indeed returns from agricultural work? Now the rest of the people enter in groups of three, and the passage is quick. Two tractors also pass. One more worker is delayed. At 15:30, a vehicle arrives with two soldiers. They take the permits from two who have been delayed and allow them to pass. However, (as best we were able to hear), they will probebly have to go through a hearing.
15:45 – Barta’a Checkpoint
Three of the parking lots are full of vehicles. The one close to the checkpoint is orderly and allows for movement. Two Palestinian security people with a club and phone maintain order. Many workers go out from the terminal through the new installation, in narrow, enclosed lanes. Some of them ask for Sylvia’s phone number.
'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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