Translator: Charles K.
06:10 A’anin agricultural checkpoint
The first person just crossed; it seems the checkpoint has opened late again. Many of those crossing are young. They’re worried because the permits they received for the olive harvest are about to expire and they don’t know whether they’d be renewed. These stresses and concerns result from the ways the occupation spices things up to ensure everyone behaves well.
One by one they spread the meager contents of the plastic bags they’re carrying out on the ground before the soldiers; the soldier’s hands are in his pockets, the female soldier leans against the concrete barrier on which the computer sits.
Home-made cigarettes are prohibited. We telephone the DCO representative, who doesn’t answer. Nor does the DCO.
07:00 We leave after a few dozen people and three tractors have crossed, but no women.
07:10 Tura-Shaked checkpoint
The school transport arrives with the children who pour out in a run and go through the checkpoint to the village of Tura where the kindergarten and elementary school are located. A few female students and older girls also cross, apparently to the college in Jenin. Towards 07:30 the white collar workers cross to the West Bank – Palestinian Authority officials and bank employees.
The school bus driver asks the soldiers to inspect him quickly because the children are waiting. Laborers and teachers cross from the West Bank to the seam zone.
One man keeps complaining that the checkpoint opens at 07:00, not at 06:00, and we keep responding that the mukhtar of Dahar al Malik has to take care of it with the Civil Administration.
A (really) nice soldier comes over to talk to us. He serves here in order to ensure that the rights and the dignity of those crossing are preserved. What naivety. A bleeding heart from Tel Aviv.
07:40 The new Reihan-Barta’a checkpoint
People cross quickly; everything operates like a well-oiled machine. People enter in groups of five and go through the revolving gate. Once a sixth man tried to get in but the revolving gate stopped until the rebel retreated. Ordnung muss sein. One of the drivers says, “Charlie is A-OK.” Charlie is the new checkpoint manager. A young man from A’anin tells us the police stopped him near the Umm Reihan school and confiscated his agricultural crossing permit, saying he wasn’t allowed to be there. Now he’s worried, doesn’t know when or whether he’ll get it back and how he’ll get home to A’anin. We telephone the DCO representative, and the DCO, but there’s no answer.
Two pickup trucks wait to be inspected. They entered before we left.
At the seam zone entrance to the terminal: We’re told that today it takes only a few minutes to cross.
A few cars being inspected at the station on the road. A little boy, the son of one of the drivers, climbs on the rock opposite the inspector. He tries to peek in, touches the device that checks the magnetic card…the crossing is a game to him. He’ll learn…
08:30 We left.
'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)
Mar-21-2022Anin Checkpoint: A magnificent breach in the center of the checkpoint
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