Barta`a checkpoint: Switzerland is here
Switzerland is here
Barta’a Checkpoint at 5:50 a.m. – morning passage already overfilled
The lower car-park (on the West Bank side) from where the terminal is entered, hundreds of people stand in four fairly straight lines, leading to man-wide tracks inside the transit shed, from where they will continue towards the four turnstiles. From there they run freely into the terminal. Order is exemplary! People speak quietly. As they do in Switzerland…
Since 4:30 a.m. until 6 a.m. – this is the time it takes for a person to get from the entrance to the exit of the checkpoint. They were on their way from home for a half-hour or more, and then they walked from the parking quite a ways – so their morning begins around 3:30 a.m.
The waiting lines are very long and stretch from far away in the car-park until the waiting shed. A few years ago, every morning chaos reigned. Palestinian ushers armed with clubs (!) and wearing black uniforms were there, and nervous young men would climb the fences over the heads of the men waiting. The authorities would lock the checkpoint for people to calm down. Our good friend Eyad would come here early and voluntarily care to calm people down. He no longer does.
So what happened? Have people here become Swiss?
On the sides stand men who do not wish to crowd in line and can afford to wait for the line to thin out. They chain smoke. Drink coffee. One of those on the side is in a hurry (comes from a village near Jenin), is head of a construction team at Harish, and if he misses his contractor’s transport he will have to pay for a taxi and be significantly late. So why are you standing aside? We wondered. After crossing the line for the first time and reaching the inspecting guard, he remembered that he forgot his phone in the car. He turned back, crossed the line in the opposite direction, ran to his car, ran back and crossed the line for the second time with his phone in hand. Happens to the best of us…
But here, man plans and god is amused: The security guard told him to get out of line and come back only at 8 a.m. Why? “Here you don’t cross twice during the same hour!” said the guard. Order and precision. Swiss-like.
Only 27-year-olds and older cross this checkpoint. “Under this age it’s youngsters who carry out terrorist attacks”, the Palestinian explains. Two women stand at the entrance to the transit shed, at the head of the track meant just for them. They are waiting for a miracle. The men ignore them and the sign saying this is a track for women only, and conquer the track for themselves.
Two women wait for a miracle. The track for women only is taken
https://photos.google.com/u/0/photo/AF1QipNdHsrAc2AfxvMZhOQxz_yOUX-L4IR8ZBsjAbQm
Anin Checkpoint at 6:50
This checkpoint was supposed to be opened between 6:45 and 7 a.m. No one can swear which. So one gets here at 6:15, 6:30 to be sure. Today over 100 men, boys, 3 women and two girls were waiting for the opening of the gate, all waiting from 6:20 until 8 a.m. An hour and a half. Among them were also residents of Tayibe and Roumana, distant villages. Their agricultural checkpoint, no. 154, below Umm Al Fahm, is closed until further notice because part of the separation wall is being built. Of concrete.
At 8, bearly everyone who had come passed. We think two people were turned back. At 8:20, after the checkpoint was already locked and the soldiers looked like they were leaving, a group of men from Anin arrived and crossed. They were tired of waiting and began to drive to the distant Barta’a Checkpoint, but got a call mid-way telling them to come back, and they did. An old acquaintance explained: All week we go to Barta’a checkpoint and cross there. It is far away and costs us 50 NIS each way. Twice a week we are allowed to cross here. For nothing. But they drive us crazy until they get here.
What we saw here today (as we have at other vigils lately) was that soldiers (apparently Military Police) scold those waiting and order them to “behave”. Get back, they order. Irja la wara. All this while the gate is still locked and those who are supposed to open it have not even arrived yet.
Later the DCO officer told us that this morning’s tardiness was expected, and that the Palestinians were notified. They did not hear about it…
Anin checkpoint at 8:15, People come out heavyhearted after having waited for an hour and a half for the checkpoint to open
'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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