Irtah (Sha’ar Efrayim)
We decided to arrive at 4:30, because we have noticed that with the new arrangements traffic flows smoothly at the start, but there have been complaints about problems around 5:30.
4:30 We arrive. Everything is calm, people enter the checkpoint facility freely and with no pressure.
5:00 Increasing pressure. People hurry and shout. Men fill the women's line. The lines are allowed to move by turns, one at a time.
5:02 All the lines are halted for two minutes. We hear shouting from inside the building. Two men return to Palestinian territory.
5:15 On the Israeli side: People leaving the building report that today is bad. Two people we chose to watch for pass through, one in 7 minutes, the other in 13 minutes.
There are still no toilets near the building's exit.
5:45 We leave. It appears that the crowding and pressure have moved from the first hour to later, so there may be not much point to arriving at 3:45.
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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