The checkpoints are paralyzed but the occupation is flourishing

Place:

'Anin

Baqa

Barta'a-Reihan

Tura-Shaked

Tags:

Observers:

Shuli Bar (photo, report), Neta Golan

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Feb-20-2024

Morning

Tura checkpoint: checking cars with sting unit dogs

Photo:

Shuli Bar

Aanin checkpoint: Anemones bloom in the garbage

Photo:

Shuli Bar

Anin checkpoint is empty. closed. but under renovation

Photo:

Shuli Bar

Separation wall at the Aanin checkpoint - they still can't close it

Photo:

Shuli Bar

Baka: the wall that separates eastern and western Baka

Photo:

Shuli Bar

Heavy-hearted we went again to the same places we had monitored regularly for over twenty years. Until the breakout of the ‘black-Saturday’ war. Heavier-hearted we came back home. While on our way we remembered with longing days when we reported evil and hardship, days on which we met living people - even if they suffered and complained. Sometimes we even felt just and useful… But the situation now is seriously ill. No pulse, no air. No hope. In actual fact, since most checkpoints in the Occupied Territories are closed and no permits to be and work in the seam zone and in Israel are being issued, roads are empty, many businesses are closed, and a heavy cloud of no-livelihood-no-hope hovers over everything. The green and wonderful blossoming winter sights only deepened our sadness.

08:10 Toura-Shaked Checkpoint

Because of the Separation Wall and all sorts of installations, one can hardly detect the center of the checkpoint. But closer up one sees 2-3 cars being inspected at the same time. Car-doors are opened including the hood and boot. Dogs of the relevant army unit enter the car and sniff it out industriously. 10 minutes later the vehicles come out and continue on their way to the seam zone. There are Israeli-license-plate cars among them. We are not sure where they come from. This small and crowded checkpoint is constantly filled with more concrete and barbed-wire, shading tarpaulins above, bungalows, structures quite foreign such as water tankers, an arbitrary row of concrete blocks waiting who knows for whom, 2-3 black caravans and what not. A catalogue presentation of surveillance and defense means born to daddy occupation and mommy army in the past. The wall that divides the checkpoint parallel to the Separation Wall has grown a new story of spike-less iron netting that now makes it rise to a height of about 20 meters. All of this proves that defense against possible Palestinian terrorism must be renewed time and again. Furthermore, someone is making a LOT of money on all these nonsensical things. Most of the workers here are on their way to the Shaked industrial zone.

The LATE Agricultural Checkpoint Anin

It was closed down even prior to the ‘black-Saturday’ war, arbitrarily and with no consideration of Anin village farmers’ needs whose lands were already caged beyond the Separation Fence. Still - the checkpoint is being renovated. Will it be re-opened?

There are Arab workers here. The section of the Wall opened since its erection (about a year ago) has not yet been closed. In the past we were told that due to the high-voltage line running over this open section, it is dangerous to work there with cranes. Someone made a mistaken calculation and there is no solution in sight (‘one idiot throws a stone into a well and one-thousand wise men cannot find it.’)

Barta’a-Reihan Checkpoint

A few yellow minibus cabs wait in the car-park above for passengers who do not arrive. The drivers say that passage into the seam zone begins in the morning at around 6 a.m. About 200 people pass (prior to the war, mornings here saw about 5,000 men since 4:30 a.m.). They enter in groups of four, inspection takes time and therefore their passage is very slow. At Ya’abad-Dotan Checkpoint on the road to Jenin, traffic is sparse because of detailed and very slow inspection. Palestinians prefer to arrive at Barta’a Checkpoint om bypass tracks rather than get stuck at the Ya’abad Checkpoint.

Baq’a Checkpoint

Following the First Intifada, Israel confiscated 2000 dunams from Palestinian Baq’a village in order to erect the wall that separates it from Israeli Baq’a village, which eventually developed into a large, blooming town. They were both founded in the 17th century as two separate villages. Since the breakout of the war, pedestrians pass here twice a day, no vehicles allowed through. A soldier in the watchtower warns us of stones thrown from the Palestinian side. It happened only yesterday.

So how do Palestinians get along without permits and plenty of closed checkpoints?

When there is no livelihood, when hunger and despair gnaw away at any glimmer of hope for a normal life, the brain invents patents and even encourages cooperative initiatives. For example, Jews (undoubtedly religious) with vans pick up dozens of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. such a vehicle can hold 20-23 crowded people. Each of them pays the driver 800 shekels or his wife or son. The vehicles with the Israeli plate and the Jewish driver pass without any inspection at checkpoint at the entrance to Israel and from there bring their customers to their destination. We'll save you the calculation: 23X800 = NIS 18,400.

Location Description

Baqa

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The checkpoint is on the Green Line beween Baqa alGharbiya and Nazlat 'isa.

Anin agricultural checkpoint

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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, for periods of time that are growing shorter Lith time. It is meant for Anin farmers whose olive groves have been separated from the village by the fence. 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. At times 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 every day 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 according to which 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 info-icon ), and the fence around it has been broken in several sites.

Tura-Shaked Checkpoint

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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-22-2022

Ruti Tuval

The locked gate at the Anin checkpoint

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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).