Reihan, Shaked, Tue 24.3.09, Morning
Translation: Bracha B.A.
The entire area on the way to the checkpoints is full of police and border patrol vehicles on the sides of the roads and at the entrance to Um El Fahem because of the right-wing demonstration due to take place today
.Reihan Checkpoint
06:24: Workers are getting into cars to go to work as usual in the Israeli parking lot. We asked one of them how the passage through the checkpoint had been and he told us that it was all right, but asked us to give the checkpoint commander a piece of paper with a list of seamstresses who work in Barta’a. There is a problem with the biometric I.D. apparatus at Reihan. There are seamstresses that the machine does not identify and they are not permitted to go through. We take the list and give it to the checkpoint staff. A worker who walked through the sleeve with us tells us that he also had problems with the palm scanner and he was not allowed to go through several times, but in the end it sorted itself out. Neta jokes that perhaps he changed his broken hand, and all of us laugh that typical laugh when there is nothing else to say in ridiculous situations.A man whom we know tells us that he saw the scanning machine operate and that it shows a person’s entire body and that it is humiliating. I am reminded of a post written by Attorney Yael Barda that I read about this entitled “The Erotic Nature of the Occupation – Searching and Undressing”
.06:47 – The lower parking lot is empty. The seamstresses and workers going to the Shahak industrial zone have already gone through and the rest of the Barta’a workers have not arrived yet. Ten tenders with goods are waiting for the cargo inspection checkpoint to open at 7:00. Some little girls are walking along the road from Z’bada which is some distance away to the Z’bada school opposite the checkpoint. They are smiling and happy despite the cold weather.
07:00 – A man from A’anin whose sister married and moved to Barta’a wants to visit her and he has been given a permit for only one day, and no one else, including his brother, has been given any permit at all. We wrote down his name and details.
07:06 – Almost all the tenders have gone in to be checked. One is left. A driver tells us about his son who has been detained for 6 years. When he was 15 he was sentenced to 10 years and yesterday his father went to visit him. He is permitted to visit him once or twice a year, which is horrible.
Shaked Tura Checkpoint
07:18 When we arrived we met a man from Tel Aviv who had come to pick up a Palestinian girl who needs leukemia treatment in Hadassah hospital. She is not being allowed through and they want her to go to Reihan. The man says, “She’ll get to Jerusalem, no matter what!” It is moving to hear him say so. The sick girl is standing on the other side with a mask on her face waiting in the cold for the results of Yuval’s phone call. We are under the impression that today the soldiers are new and are not functioning very efficiently. Students are being held up in the entrance to the inspection booth. One car is waiting to get through on the side of the seamline zone and three on the West Bank side.
7:32 – Three cars on the seamline zone side, the first is the one that was waiting before.
07:50 – A man driving through from the West Bank calls us and stops at the side of the road and gets out to let off steam – he has been waiting since 6:50 to get through and it’s not fair to hold him up every time he takes his children to school. A representative of the Liaison & Coordination Administration has been sitting in a big white car all this time observing what is going on but not helping. He continues complaining that the teachers who pass through each day have to put up with lengthy checks and suspicion every day. I don’t know what to say, since the entire situation is false. At the exit from Tura we confront a police car blocking the road because of the demonstration at Um El Fahem – apparently to prevent the right-wing demonstration from exceeding the number of demonstrators that were permitted.
Jalameh
We arrived to pick up a woman to be treated at Rambam Hospital. Two busses are waiting to pick up prisoners’ families, despite the fact that it was publicized that these visits would be stopped as a means of putting pressure on Hamas to free Gilad Shalit.
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)
Mar-21-2022Anin Checkpoint: A magnificent breach in the center of the checkpoint
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