Barta'a-Reihan, Tura-Shaked

Barta’a-Reihan Checkpoint, 05:45

Many workers are waiting for transportation at the parking lot of the seamline zone. Most of them work in construction in Harish.  A young worker turned to me with a permit to work in Israel, on which was written: “Despite the fact that he is blacklisted by the police.”  The blacklisting had expired, but he was afraid to ask for a clean permit for fear that they would extend the blacklisting, as they did to his friend.  According to him, with a permit like that, he would earn about NIS 200 less per day of work. I hope that Tammy will be able to give him at least some good advice and I promise to keep in touch.

06:15 – In the parking lot on the Palestinian side the line is so long that it splits into two at the end.  A., the volunteer attendant, says that this morning, the passage is very slow; the turnstile is always locked for extended periods of time and in fact causes considerable tension that we haven’t seen in a long time here.

Tura-Shaked Checkpoint, 06:50                                         

The checkpoint is open and people and cars pass from side to side.  One of the workers, who comes from the West Bank, informs me that at the checkpoint “there are Bedouin soldiers who are trash.”  According to him, yesterday, Saturday, they completely undressed one of the young men, even his underpants, and told him to go outside the inspection room naked. He refused, obviously. “Here he is, a good boy. Today he passed through without any trouble.” I spoke with the officer in charge, a lieutenant, who claimed that it couldn’t have happened:  “If something like that had occurred, I would have known; that would cause a lot of noise.”  The lieutenant then told me about other malicious stories the Palestinians spread about his excellent soldiers.

 At 07:45 a sad boy with a backpack arrives from the direction of the West Bank.  He is returning home to Dahar-al Malach. Two sad workers return to the West Bank; the contractor in Harish notified them that the building material did not arrive.  There goes a day’s work.  I pick up a hitchhiker.  He lives with his wife and children in Umm Reihan (in the seamline zone) and is now returning from his mother’s house is Anin, where he stays twice a week. “I love her very, very much.”  Even on the days that the Anin Checkpoint is open, he isn’t allowed to pass through it because he is no longer a resident of the place.  And so, instead of an 8 kilometer trip, he travels 27 kilometers, all around.  In the days before the West Bank, he would jump in and visit in 10 minutes.  He worked for years in a building in Natania.  Now they are finishing a 7-storey building in Umm-al-Fahm and after that, he will work in Harish.