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‘Anin, Reihan, Shaked, Mon 19.11.07, Morning

Place: 'Anin checkpoint (214) Barta’a-Reihan Checkpoint Tura-Shaked
Tags: Identification Cards (ID) Slow passage
Observers: Netta G, Anna NS(reporting)
Nov-19-2007
| Morning

06:00 – 09:10
06:00 Aanin Checkpoint

People coming out of the checkpoint in the direction of the Seam Zone tell us that a hundred are waiting below at the entrance.
Today they are not listing ID numbers, and everyone is content.
People are coming out with yellow (16 litre) oil containers. A tractor and a donkey also cross.
N. waits with his young son who does not yet have an ID, so can’t pass the checkpoint by himself. The boy went to school and returned. They are waiting for the mother to come and collect the child from the checkpoint. N. is very pressured. He is hurrying to work, and they are waiting for him, but he fears leaving the child unsupervised facing the soldiers. Finally he goes, and keeps looking back.
07:00 – the soldiers continue to pass people. Less than 20 are now waiting below.
N.’s wife arrives, gives us biscuits in honour of the last birth. As the last people pass from Aanin, she enters and returns with the child to the village.

07:10 Shaked Checkpoint

On the West Bank side some 20 people are waiting. From the Seam Zone, mostly teachers and schoolchildren. Taxis arrive, the passengers alight, the driver advances to vehicle inspection and the passengers are called to get in.
The schoolchildren approach the soldiers with open satchels.
Transit is slow and involved.
They tell us that in the hut there is only one soldier checking both directions and listing.
Children from the lone house, on their way to school, arrive on a cart harnessed to a donkey.
A youngster with an illegible permit is delayed for a check with the DCO. After 20 minutes, his father arrives and the boy is passed through, while the father returns home to Hirbet Radia. He is bitter, tells about old promises to link electricity to Hirbet Radia, Dahar el-Malch and Um el Reihan. Nothing. DCO Head Fares jokingly promised: "till we leave you will have electricity" and the man understands that there is little chance of it happening soon. Shaked was linked from the first days, he says angrily. We were here before them. Shaked gets water from a six and a half inch pipe, while we get from a two inch pipe. They have a few score people – we have a thousand. It’s not enough that they have surrounded us with a fence, like animals in a cage, and they open the gate for us twice a day, but they also don’t give us electricity or water…

08:10 – 09:10 Reihan Checkpoint

Eleven loaded pick up trucks are waiting for routine inspection, as are a number of cars. At the checkpoint four vehicles (pick ups and cars) are being checked together, with dogs.
In the closed inspection compound the pick ups are being offloaded with a fork lift. A dog sniffs at the produce (food!) And a soldier checks with the dog. Each vehicle is checked for half an hour outside the compound and another half hour inside.
After poking into personal possessions, asking personal questions, checking them against the occupation authorities, x-raying and magnometering them, they proceed down a net sleeve, behind a concrete wall that hides them (from whom?), beyond which a well tended and irrigated garden has appeared, on their land – that which was grabbed from them – and an Israeli flag floats over it all.

  • '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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