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‘Anin, Reihan, Shaked, Mon 24.3.08, Morning

Place: 'Anin checkpoint (214) Barta’a-Reihan Checkpoint Tura-Shaked
Tags: Palestinian farmers Slow passage
Observers: Neta G, Anna NS (reporting)
Mar-24-2008
| Morning

06:00 – 09:15

06:00 Aanin Checkpoint

About 50 people, tractors and a donkey waiting in the center of the checkpoint to cross to the Seam Zone. The pace is faster than usual. One boy is not allowed to pass.
06:30 – the soldiers close the lower gate. Forty people waiting quietly, the sun already oppressive. Some of the people are sitting on the railing, others move away, looking for shade. There is no roof or bench…
06:45 – an elderly woman, walking with difficulty, gives the soldier her ID then sits on the ground. Later she rises in agony, and plods towards the exit. Behind her the little old man with his grey donkey. He offers the woman a ride, and she climbs on with difficulty and they both disappear down the slope.
06:50 – ten people waiting.

07:05 Shaked-Tura Checkpoint

Cars, workers, schoolchildren and students crossing in the direction of the West Bank or the Seam Zone. The women students are not requuired to be checked in the hut. A mother, student with two young children, has to be checked. Two flocks pass into the Seam Zone while the shepherds are checked in the hut.
07:30 – a pair of teachers on their way to Jenin wait in their car, as they do every morning, and when the transit is delayed, the man goes to the soldier to speed him up. The soldier starts an "educational exercise": the car crossed an imaginary line. The front is inside the area of the checkpoint. Forbidden. The soldier sends the car back and closes one wing of the checkpoint gate.

07:50 Reihan-Bartaa Checkpoint

Everything is as usual. Only the decorations have changed. In the main square of the checkpoint, a white path has been paved in the red gravel up to the garbage bin. The well and bucket, an inviting bench… Our acquaintance B., a taxi driver from Dahar el Abed, has stopped working as a driver because he cannot bear the run around and delays each time he returns from the West Bank.
People coming out of the terminal say that a few score are waiting inside. According to one, they are holding 70 year olds and older for inspection in the small rooms. Why? Just because!
More than ten private cars, tenders with agricultural produce, waiting under the blazing sun. The drivers are sprawled in the shade of their vehicles and smoking.
The parking lot is clean, as the civilian boss wants it.
The toilets are dirty.
Tobacco planting has begun in the West Bank.
M. contends that quarantine has been removed and the age restrictions are not in force in Jerushia.
The parking lot in the area of Zabda is full. In the lot an improvised kiosk is beckoning customers with meat on the charcoal.
09:15 – we leave.

  • '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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