Irtah (Sha'ar Efrayim)
We arrived before 4:00. The people waiting for the gates to open were not crowded today, the last day of Ramadan.
The first people passed through the checkpoint in five minutes, later it took ten minutes. It was very quiet.
We were glad to see that the request from our last report, for extra lights in the parking lot, has already been taken care of.
One man requested, as others have often done, that the checkpoint open earlier on Sundays and Fridays. On Sundays an extra fifteen minutes makes a big difference in the feeling of crowding, and on Fridays when the checkpoint opens later he has trouble getting to work on time. He said that for the last twelve years he has worked in agriculture, on a moshav nearby, and he earns 160 shekels for an eight hour day. When he asked for a raise his boss said plenty of people would be glad to take his place.
We noted the great difference between busy Sunday mornings, our usual time at the checkpoint, and this Thursday in Ramadan.
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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