Northern Checkpoints: Olive Harvest is Underway
11:50 Anin Agricultural Checkpoint
During the brief olive harvest season, the Anin checkpoint opens daily, three times a day. We wanted to observe during opening hours (12:00-1:00 PM).
We arrived about ten minutes before opening time, six people and one tractor are waiting already to return home at this early hour. One person asks how we are and says he is not doing well. We are concerned about his health but he explains that the situation, not he himself, is not good. He is right, of course.
The soldiers arrive on time and open the checkpoint gates. This time there are two women-soldiers from the rescue unit. They don’t know MachsomWatch and ask about us. The commander, a Sergeant, listens and says something like, “Well, I’m doing my job, protecting the homeland.”
For around half an hour about a dozen people cross over into the seam zone (where their olive trees are) and with them also a donkey and a cute colt. About a dozen others have finished work and are returning home, to Anin. One of those crossing to the seam zone says he wants to come back in a while. The sergeant answers that the checkpoint will be open until one. Another holds an expired permit, it turns out he already has a new permit on the computer, but not yet in his hand. The problem is familiar since this morning. The man passes.
12:30 TURA-SHAKED Checkpoint
Very little traffic of people and cars in either direction. Eight nice young women-teachers arrive at the checkpoint from the new school in Dhar al-Malek. They live in Jenin. They ask to see our badge, read it, marvel and thank us for our presence. Two girl-students and a boy arrive in a car at the checkpoint and continue on foot to the lone house down the dirt road.
13:10 Barta’a-Reihan Checkpoint, Palestinian Side
The parking lot is full and there are cars on the edge of the road and in the remote parking lots. There is almost no pedestrian traffic at this hour and there are no coffee and snack vendors either. Three drivers are waiting for passengers who do not arrive. The new kiosk is not yet operational. The parking lot for trucks next to the vehicle checkpoint is full. To our surprise, much of the merchandise is marble slabs and siding stones. We don’t know what they are meant for.
13:40 We return to the car; a bored Palestinian usher says goodbye to us.
'Anin checkpoint (214)
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'Anin checkpoint (214)
'Anin checkpoint is located on the Separation Fence east of the Israeli community Mei Ami and close to the village of Anin in the West Bank. It is opened twice a week, morning and afternoon, on days with shorter light time, for Anin farmers whose olive groves have been separated from the village by the fence it became difficult to cultivate their land. Transit permits are only issued to those who can produce ownership documents for their caged-in land, and sometimes only to the head of the family or his widow, eldest son, and children. Sometimes the inheritors lose their right to tend to the family’s land. The permits are eked out and are re-issued only with difficulty. 55-year-old persons may cross the checkpoint (into Israel) without special permits. During the olive harvest season (about one month around October) the checkpoint is open daily and more transit permits are issued. Names of persons eligible to cross are held in the soldiers’ computers. In July 2007, a sweeping instruction was issued, stating that whoever does not return to the village through this checkpoint in the afternoon will be stripped of his transit permit when he shows up there next time. Since 2019, the checkpoint has not been allways locked with the seam-line zone gate (1 of 3 gates), and the fence around it has been broken in several sites.
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Barta’a-Reihan Checkpoint
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This checkpoint is located on the Separation Fence route, east of the Palestinian town of East Barta’a. The latter is the largest Palestinian community inside the seam-line zone (Barta’a Enclave) in the northern West Bank. Western Barta’a, inside Israel, is adjacent to it. The Checkpoint is open all week from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. Since mid-May 2007, the checkpoint has been managed by a civilian security company subordinate to the Ministry of Defense. People permitted to cross through this checkpoint into and from the West Bank are residents of Palestinian communities inside the Barta’a Enclave as well as West Bank Palestinian residents holding transit permit. Jewish settlers from Hermesh and Mevo Dotan cross here without inspection. A large, modern terminal is active here with 8 windows for document inspection and biometric tests (eyes and fingerprints). Usually only one or two of the 8 windows are in operation. Goods, up to medium commercial size, may pass here from the West Bank into the Barta’a Enclave. A permanent registered group of drives who have been approved by the may pass with farm produce. When the administration of the checkpoint was turned over to a civilian security firm, the Ya’abad-Mevo Dotan Junction became a permanent checkpoint. . It is manned by soldiers who sit in the watchtower and come down at random to inspect vehicles and passengers (February 2020).
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Tura-Shaked
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Tura-Shaked
This is a fabric of life* checkpoint through which pedestrians, cabs and private cars (since 2008) pass to and from the West Bank and the Seam-line Zone to and from the industrical zone near the settler-colony Shaked, schools and kindergartens, and Jenin university campuses. The checkpoint is located between Tura village inside the West Bank and the village of Dahar Al Malah inside the enclave of the Seam-line Zone. It is opened twice a day, between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m., and from 12 noon to 7 p.m. People crossing it (at times even kindergarten children) are inspected in a bungalow with a magnometer. Names of those allowed to cross it appear in a list held by the soldiers. Usually traffic here is scant.
- fabric of life roads and checkpoints, as defined by the Terminals Authority in the Ministry of Defense (fabric of life is a laundered name that does not actually describe any kind of humanitarian purpose) are intended for Palestinians only. These roads and checkpoints have been built on lands appropriated from their Palestinian owners, including tunnels, bypass roads, and tracks passing under bridges. Thus traffic can flow between the West Bank and its separated parts that are not in any kind of territorial contiguity with it. Mostly there are no permanent checkpoint on these roads but rather ‘flying’ checkpoints, check-posts or surprise barriers. At Toura, a small (less than one dunam) and sleepy checkpoint has been established, which has filled up with the years with nearly .every means of supervision and surveillance that the Israeli military occupation has produced. (February 2020)
Ruti TuvalMar-21-2022Anin Checkpoint: A magnificent breach in the center of the checkpoint
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