Habla, Irtah (Sha’ar Efrayim)
Dawn. Routine.
4:54 Hundreds if not thousands are already out of the checkpoint, some stretched out to rest, others sitting and looking around or standing by the kiosk's serving windows.
By the separation fence, at the entrance to the checkpoint, nothing is happening. The turnstiles are stopped. Many people wait patiently. Two men walk slowly back into Palestinian territory. We don't manage to make contact with them. (The new, efficient facility is quite effective in preventing contact, even speaking, across the separation barrier. There is no way, for example, to meet and talk with the ecumenicals as we used to.)
5:00 The gates open and the crowd hurries in towards the magnetometer. Over a hundred people manage to get in, before the gates close again in two minutes. Another man goes back. We hear shouting in the building.
5:06 The turnstiles open again. We pick people to watch for and move to the other side of the building.
5:12 on the Israeli side: We notice that the out-of-service toilet stalls that stood for months in the yard have disappeared. "Gardening" – artificial grass – has been laid down around what will be the commercial center. Two new turnstiles have been set up near it. It looks like the plan is to move the exit from the building out to that point, so we will have less access and no way to see anything inside – currently we can peek in and get an impression of how many lanes are in use.
A large crowd is trying to get out the single turnstile, and pulling on the gate next to it, which eventually opens and eases the pressure. A man pauses on his way out to tell us that at the entrance to the covered lanes on the Palestinian side there's a lot of crowding. A man we noticed got out in seven minutes – nearly a record. Another man takes ten minutes.
Someone asks us for advice. His employer made him sign that he won't ask for compensation if he's laid off. He asks if this is legal, and what he can do about it. We give him the phone number for Kav Laoved.
5:30 On the entrance side. The turnstiles are closed, but there's no crowd waiting. The gates open and shut.
5:50 We leave for Habla.
6:25 When we arrive at Habla the gates are open, and the first group of five is leaving the checkpoint building. We hear shouting from the entrance – someone who gets through explains that it's because of people pushing into line from the side. We watch several more groups of five pass through without incidents.
6:40 We leave.
Habla
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Habla CP (1393)
The Habla checkpoint (1393) was established on the lands of the residents of Qalqilya, on the short road that
connected it for centuries to the nearby town of Habla. The separation barrier intersects this road twice and cut off the residents of Qalqilya from their lands in the seam zone.(between the fence and the green line).
There is a passage under Road 55 that connects Qalqilya to the sabotage This agricultural barrier is used by the farmers and nursery owners established along Road 55 from the Green Line and on both sides of the kurkar road leading to the checkpoint.
This agricultural checkpoint serves the residents of Arab a-Ramadin al-Janoubi (detached from the West Bank), who pass through it to the West Bank and back to their homes. The opening hours (3 times a day) of this agricultural checkpoint are longer than usual, about an hour (recently shortened to 45 minutes), and are coordinated with the transportation hours of a-Ramadin children studying in the occupied in the West Bank.
Nina SebaAug-18-2025Habla: The gate is in the process of closing
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Irtah (Sha'ar Efrayim)
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The checkpoint is for Palestinians only. It is the main barrier to the passage of workers from the northern West Bank to Israel. Workers with a permit to work in Israel and also for trade (with appropriate permissions), medicine, and visiting prisoners. One can cross the checkpoint only on foot. The checkpoint is located north of Road 557 and south of Tulkarm. Operated by a civil security company, opening hours: between 4:00 and 19:00 on weekdays. As members of Machsom Watch, we began our shifts to this location in 2007. We arrived before it opened at 4 in the morning and report since, on the harsh conditions and the long and crowded queues of workers. The workers who pass by continue their journey by transportation to work throughout Israel. In the first period of its activity, about 3,000 and then 5,000 people passed through this checkpoint every day. Due to the small number of checking points and arbitrary delays for long periods of time in the "rooms", workers feared losing their transportation. Hence workers leave their homes at 2:30 at night to be among the first. Today, 15,000 pass and the transition is faster. Workers are still leaving their homes very early to get past the checkpoint at 7 p.m. In an adjacent compound, there is a terminal for the transfer of goods on a commercial scale, using the back-to-back method.
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