Irtah (Sha'ar Efrayim)
We arrived a little before 4:00. The parking lot was already full of vans. We went to the separation barrier to see the people crossing. At 4:01 we heard an announcement, and the gates opened. Hundreds of people, who had been waiting under the roof beyond the separation barrier, poured into the checkpoint. Within five minutes the line was empty. We picked some people to watch for and went to see them come out. The transit was quick, people said ten stations were open in the building.
Several people complained to us about problems on Sundays and Fridays. Friday is a short day, the checkpoint doesn’t open until 5:00, so in spite of a relatively small number of people coming to work there is crowding. They want the checkpoint to open earlier. One man said that he was almost crushed to death last Sunday.
People told us that on Sunday both this week and last week, the checkpoint opened ten or fifteen minutes late.
Today, Tuesday, was rainy, which may have lessened the number of people crossing. The process was relatively smooth, I may have gotten used to the sight of men and women, young and less so, arriving in the pre-dawn darkness.
I asked an elderly man why he came so early – before 5:00, when he doesn’t need to catch his ride to work in Netanya until 7:00. He said that he lives close by, in Tul Karm, which didn’t really answer the question. It appears that people allow a lot of time for unexpected problems.
We left after an hour, and plan to go again next Sunday.
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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