Barta’a-Reihan, Tura-Shaked
Barta'a checkpoint 06:10
The checkpoint is full of workers waiting for their transportation, taxi drivers waiting for passengers, all trying to make a living. People who are done with the process in the terminal are coming up the sleeve [a narrow fenced area, leading to the terminal or out of it],. We walk towards the lower parking lot, on the Palestinian side. People are coming and going through the terminal all the time, and we see a long line of people who have gone through the turnstiles and past the woman soldier in the shed, and are waiting to enter the building itself. There does not seem to be any pressure. We selected several people, and then went up to the upper parking lot on the seamline zone, to see how long they had been inside. The three people we chose came out fifteen and twenty minutes later.
Tura checkpoint 07:00
The checkpoint is open, and some of the soldiers are already inside, and one more soldier is coming up now.
On the West Bank side, the Tura side, people are waiting to enter the turnstile and the inspection room. At 7:10 the first one emerges from the West Bank side into the seamline zone, and then the others follow. A school headmaster and some teachers who came with him were the first to enter from the seamline zone on their way to work in the West Bank. Children/pupils arrive on foot from the nearby village and go through the Tura checkpost without being checked. The fabric of life is being woven. [The "fabric of life" is the military term for the checkpoints they opened in the separation wall, to enable the population to keep their contact through the wall that has torn their lives apart].
As we were talking about what had happenned in Tura a week ago, about the young couple from Tura who stayed overnight with the wife's parents in the village of Um Reihan, in the seamline zone, and soldiers had broken into their house and behaved as though they owned it. According to a person whom we always meet here, who had told us that this couple are his family, his son knocked at the door while the soldiers had been there. They cuffed him, and beat him until he lost consciousness. The officer who had been there stopped the beating, and woke the son up. Ruthie suggested that he file a complaint, and gave him the phone number of our friend in "Yesh Din" (there is law) organization, but he was afraid, and said that his son would not want to file a complaint. This is not the first time we meet a Palestinian who has been beaten, but is afraid to file a complaint about the soldier's aggression.
Towards eight o'clock we got back to the Barta'a checkpoint, in order to take the boy Ali to Rambam hospital (in Haifa). We saw women going down the sleeve, apparently the seamstresses from Yabed, who work in the sewing workshops in Barta'a. Are they back from night shift? We could not tell.
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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