Forbidden to enter Israel: prisoners of the Shabak, the police and the civil administration
Every entry to Israel, to a settlement or to the seam zone (the area between the Green Line and the separation wall/fence) by a Palestinian resident of the occupied territories for work, business, cultivation of land trapped in the seam zone, travel to Jordan, medical treatment in East Jerusalem or in Israel, visiting relatives, visiting inmates held in prison in Israel, etc., requires a permit (to cross into, and be present in, Israel). A sweeping “prohibition of entry” has been imposed on tens of thousands of Palestinians in the occupied territories, one of the more serious aspects of the occupation regime. The prohibition is imposed on Palestinians on the basis of their putative danger to security (those prohibited by the Shabak), as punishment for entering Israel without a permit or with a forged permit, for work (those prohibited by the police), because of debts of suspicion of administrative violations (those prohibited by the military) and for countless additional reasons. A substantial proportion of these prohibitions are baseless! Machsom Watch teams have since 2005 followed the issue of prohibition of entry permits and documented them, have filed complaints with the Civil Administration and other bodies regarding persons prohibited entry and assisted them to file official requests to cancel the prohibition. The teams published a number of booklets available on the website, containing the information that has been collected. Click here for a full description of this activity.
Assistance to village councils and Palestinian farmers vis-à-vis the Civil Administration
In 2009, a number of Machsom Watch members began visiting Palestinian villages located next to and between checkpoints in the central West Bank. Conversations that began in the street continued in people’s homes, and between one cup of coffee and the next friendships formed with local residents, including with holders of public office. As a result of the information we gathered about the difficult conditions in the shadow of occupation in the West Bank in general, and in Area C (under Israeli control) in particular, from discussions with local council members, we began to transmit complaints and requests to improve conditions in the villages to the appropriate institutions of the Israeli regime. For example, increasing the per-person water allocation, or connecting villages in Area C to the electric grid. An additional team began to initiate meetings between farmers and heads of the DCL in an attempt to solve one of the most pressing existential difficulties faced by the Palestinians, created by the separation fence, their lack of free access to their agricultural lands in Area C.