Irtah (Sha'ar Efrayim)
Dawn. A good day
I phoned the checkpoint manager a few days in advance, to ask what time the checkpoint would open. He said 4:00, so that’s when we planned to come.
When we arrived, a few minutes before 4:00, a few Palestinians had already crossed and were walking around the parking lot on the Israeli side. We told the guard we had arrived, and he opened the gate to the fence for us, as the manager had promised. In the course of the next hour we walked back and forth three times, checking how long it took selected individuals to pass through the checkpoint. One man got through in just four minutes, others took a little longer – up to ten minutes, still quite reasonable.
On one of our visits to the exit from the building, we noticed that one of the turnstiles was stuck, and a large crowd collected behind the single working turnstile. We pointed this out to the guard, and the problem was corrected immediately. A man thanked us for our efforts. He said that the checkpoint employees are sensitive to our presence, and that when no observers are around they work less efficiently.
We found an explanation for the congestion we noticed two weeks ago on the narrow path to the parking lot. Several hundred people paused to pray together in the courtyard. When they finished, they all moved together towards the parking lot. The same as last time, the guard unlocked the large vehicles gate to let them through. When we passed by fifteen minutes later, the big gate was locked again.
It seems to me that this illustrates two opposing philosophical positions: Our liberal stand favors maximum freedom. We accept that border checks are necessary, but once a person has passed security his movement should not be further restricted. The other, conservative, stand favors maximum control. If you have a lock, you keep it locked unless someone need to pass through at that moment. The guards are evidently conservatives.
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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