Irtah (Sha'ar Efrayim)
We came back as we promised ourselves, to check out the complaints we’d received about Sunday mornings. As reported, every Sunday is a war. The crowding was terrible.
The checkpoint opened on time at 4:00. From the start, we noticed a number of young men climbing over the roof to get to the front of the line. Quite early we saw a group of men gathered in front of the turnstiles. It turned out that one man was hit in the head by a metal bar that fell from above, evidently knocked down by someone climbing there. It took about half an hour before the checkpoint employees got organized to transfer the injured man to the Red Crescent ambulance that came to take him for treatment in the Palestinian Authority.
The main problem seems to be that the people who need to make the crossing all want to do so as early as possible, fearing delays. In addition, we were told that ten lanes were open inside the checkpoint building, out of a possible sixteen. On Sundays, at least, it seems important to open more lanes.
All the time we were there, until 5:30, the crowding and pressure didn’t lessen significantly.
Crossing the border is never easy, but on this Sunday the crowding and line-jumping seemed intolerable.
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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