Irtah (Sha’ar Efrayim)
04:00 By the Separation Barrier. The gates open on time. A few young men run towards the building, most just walk briskly. By 04:05 the first few are already outside, in Israel.
Going around the building we notice that until around 05:00 there’s no pressure. As usual, the turnstiles open sequentially, but no long lines build up of people waiting to pass through the checkpoint. People get through in five to eight minutes.
However, two people we were following didn’t come out even after twenty minutes. Were they held up? Turned back? We don’t know.
At one point, when we were near the Separation Barrier, we saw two people heading back. We weren’t there in time to speak to the first one, but the second one told us his fingerprint was rejected. He had this problem the day before and went to the Liaison & Coordination Administration, where they said everything was in order, but in practice, it still isn’t. He needs to go back to the Liaison & Coordination Administration. How many days’ work will he miss because of this?
Around 05:00 the lines get more crowded. We again see people climbing over the barriers between the lines, though not as many as we often see on Sunday mornings. It now takes 10-14 minutes to get through the checkpoint.
On our way back to the car around 05:30, a man spoke to us. In the course of the conversation, he mentioned that he lives in an Arab village in Israel. He spoke in English, thinking we were from some international group, and was amazed to hear we were local. It turned out that he speaks Hebrew, but prefers to use English. He comes to the checkpoint infrequently, is horrified by the very existence of a barrier, and hopes for a time with no borders or barriers. He probably hoped to speak to foreigners about the injustice of the occupation, hoping for international exposure. We told him we know about it, that’s why we come to the checkpoint and referred him to the MachsomWatch website.
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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