Irtah (Sha’ar Efrayim)
Irtah/Sha'ar Efrayim. Dawn (Normal pressure and chaos)
05:01 – the gate is opened one minute late, and the crowd protests loudly.
In spite of the promise made yesterday by the checkpoint chief (report to be posted on the website soon), the women’s gate does not open As on every Friday. The men are already waiting in a long line and climb into the queue underneath the barbed wire placed on the entrance ceiling. Same entry beats: gates close and open according to the crowd at the entrance. Women entered as a tightknit group. We wondered whether the women’s gate was opened. On our way to the side where they exit from Israel, we learned that it wasn’t.
05:14 – we chose a person to check the pace of movement at the checkpoint, and crossed over to the side where the Palestinians enter Israel. The person we monitored exited at 05:26, namely spending 12 minutes inside the structure.
We paced the exit – 26 persons a minute. Slow. There were days when over 50 people came out in one minute. People are angry as they come out. Many complain about the pace and the waiting lines inside. Passers claimed that of 16 windows, only three were opened at 5:00. After a while a fourth window was opened. A woman whom we know said that there had been difficulties at this checkpoint all week, not just today.
5:40 – since we were told by the managers that there was no need to open the checkpoint before 5 on Tuesday, and that by 6:00 there was no more pressure, we came again to the side of the fence overlooking the entrance to the checkpoint. Indeed, there was hardly any pressure by this time, hardly a line near the gates. Every person who arrived got in. True, these people coming now would no longer make it to the shuttles that the employers offer the workers for free and that leave the place at 5:45. But there are still dozens of free lance drivers waiting for passengers.
6:00 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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