Irtah (Sha’ar Efrayim)
Very calm. Quiet season – agricultural workers are absent.
We arrived earlier than necessary, and had time to notice that the roofed prayer area was dirty, strewn with trash.
3:48 The gates opened, a few minutes late. The first people got through the checkpoint three minutes afterwards.
Between 4:00 and 4:45 there was no significant pressure in the lines. We checked the time it took people to get through the checkpoint. One man managed it in six minutes, most (ten or so) took eight to ten minutes.
A man stopped and asked us if we get paid for getting up at such a godforsaken hour, and also if we thought we did any good. We asked his opinion–he said he personally didn’t see any benefit to our presence. We asked why everything has been so calm recently, and he said it’s because of the agricultural off-season. In September the agricultural workers will start crossing again, and the mess will return. Later we asked other people, and they agreed. Between June and September the agricultural laborers don’t work. Their permits are seasonal, and in the summer they are unemployed.
At 4:50 there was still no pressure on the lines.
We left.
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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