Irtah (Sha'ar Efrayim)
The checkpoint opened as usual at 4:00.
In the course of the morning we witnessed two problems: one man forgot his ID in the building and needed to go back to retrieve it, the other felt ill and decided to go home. In both cases the guards responded apathetically, and we felt that our intervention speeded up their resolution. But why aren’t there procedures in place to take care of these kinds of events?
One man at the exit told us that there was a lot of trouble at the other side, and we should go there. At 5:15 we did so, and found going into the “black box” there was an enormous crowd, with a lot of unease and pressure, even though the checkpoint had been open for more than an hour. In spite of the pressure, we saw no young men climbing over the roof to get ahead of the line.
Another man who spoke to us asked (again) for the checkpoint to open earlier on Sundays.
The first people through the checkpoint got out in 5 – 7 minutes, later it took 15-20 minutes.
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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