Habla, Irtah (Sha’ar Efrayim)
5:00 On our way to the entrance of Irtah CP we see three lanes of traffic open, but the women's lane, which of course is full of men, stays closed. We pick two people to watch for.
5:05 On our way around the building, a civilian guard, evidently new, stops us and asks what we're doing. In an authoritarian tone he asks to see our IDs. We refuse, and tell him he has no right to interfere with our movements, and walk on. Around 5:15 we hear shouting from inside the building. A quarter of an hour later someone coming out explains that the interior gates closed suddenly and without warning, leaving people who had already passed the first stages of processing stuck.
The people we chose get through in 18 and 20 minutes–longer than we've become accustomed to in the past year.
5:25 On our way around the building again, people stop us to ask if anything is being done about additional toilets… a well-known old problem.
This time the women's line opens first, and after a couple of minutes also the other lines. In the space of three minutes more than a hundred people enter the checkpoint. They tell us that there's a lot of pressure at the entrance to the lines on the Palestinian side, but we have no way to observe it.
On our way out a man asks if we can help his brother get a work permit. We give him Sylvia's contact information.
5:40 We head for Hable. As usual the road past Taybe is jammed and the traffic is lawless.
6:20 We arrive at Hable. The gates are already open, the second group of five people is passing into the seam zone. The procedure seems to go smoothly, the line waiting isn't long or pressured. We decide not to wait around.
6:35 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.
Ronit Dahan-RamatiApr-25-2025Habla Checkpoint: system of gates
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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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