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‘Anin, Reihan, Shaked, Mon 18.2.08, Morning

Place: 'Anin checkpoint (214) Barta’a-Reihan Checkpoint Tura-Shaked
Tags: Crowding Slow passage
Observers: Shula B, Neta G (reporting)
Feb-18-2008
| Morning

06:00 – 08:00

06:00 Aanin Checkpoint

The gates are already open. The check is going on below, between the middle gate and the one on the Aanin side. We cannot observe. The checkpoint commander, a second lieutenant, watches to see that we do not approach and threatens that no one will pass if we do not leave the area of the fence. He contends that it is also forbidden to take photos since this is "a closed military area" – but he does not have the commanding general’s order in his hands. We showed him the letter about permission to photograph and he says he will check with brigade.
06:10 – finally a man passes.
06:15 – a woman passes with a child. The soldiers are numbering the transients.
06:25 – number seven passes. The pace is slow and annoying. We are told that 70 people are waiting.
06:45 – the soldiers go, with weapons drawn, to close the gate on the Aanin side. If anyone arrives after this, he will not pass.
06:50 – five tractors go through, one after the other. Number 16 passes.
07:00 – number 21 passes. Scores of people still waiting between the gates.
On our way to Shaked-Tura Checkpoint we are stopped by a man from Aanin who tells us that his brother’s permit was confiscated because one day he felt ill and crossed at Reihan Bartaa outside the opening hours of Aanin Checkpoint. Serious sin! They have to return through the checkpoint by which they left for the Seam Zone! Raya is dealing with it.

07:10 Shaked-Tura Checkpoint

A group of children from the Seam Zone cross to school in Tura which is beyond the fence. Perhaps 20 people waiting to enter the Seam Zone. One of them, a resident of Tura, says that forty people cross during the morning. He says that part of his land is on the site of the army camp, and can’t be cultivated.
There is an innovation at the checkpoint: across the road on both sides are strewn sandbags. Seams that they are to serve as speed bumps.

07:40 Reihan-Bartaa Checkpoint

In the upper ("Israeli") parking lot someone (a 24 year old) tells us that today was good. It took him ten minutes, even though he was checked in one of the rooms. On other days it is prolonged, so he says, for half an hour or an hour. He works eight hours a day in the carton plant at East Bartaa, for 50 shekels a day, and the journey from his home in Yabed to work and back costs him 20 shekels. Previously he worked in a sausage plant in Tulkarm 14 hours a day for 40 shekels. He recalls nostalgically his workdays seven years ago in a packing plant in Hadera and in Kfar Vitkin. Apologizes that he has meanwhile forgotten his Hebrew.
07:50 – a bus arrives from Bartaa. The passengers alight and go down the sleeve to the terminal. At 08:00 we see the bus in the lower parking lot. The passengers have also passed and gone on their way.
In the lower (Palestinian) parking lot, eight loaded pick up trucks are waiting. Four are being inspected. Fifteen people arrive and are swallowed into the terminal.

  • '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.

  • 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).

  • 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)
      מחסום עאנין: פרצה מפוארת במרכז המחסום
      Mar-21-2022
      Anin Checkpoint: A magnificent breach in the center of the checkpoint
      View the full album
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