Eyal Crossing, Irtah (Sha'ar Efrayim), Tue 20.12.11, Morning

I

03:50 at dawn

– Irtah

We waited on the other side of the layers of fences which close in the electrical turnstiles area.

The women stood, as usual in the last year, in a separate queue. An open sided shelter leaning on thin pillars had been built above part of the fence-a covering lane leading from the building on the other side to the last part of the enclosure lane. This is the part that approaches the exit by way of the electrical turnstiles to a yard which leads to the checking facility.  The part over which the shelter had been built is constructed in a straight line, while the part which isn't covered and in which many people crowd before passing, is built as a zigzag winding lane.

The CP was opened at four o'clock.The women passed only in the second round of outgoing personsn.

On the other side of the checking facility only two posts for document checking were manned at the beginning and a quarter of an hour later approximately 4 were manned. From this stage on the tempo of the men and women's passage increased very much: 120 in three minutes. Almost all the women were elderly and the few  young women, were like in the former instances we observed, dark skinned. The average age of the people passing at Irtah seemed a bit higher that of the people passing through the Eyal CP. After a long period in which more people passed through Eyal, it seems that there is a process of equalization in the number of people passing, which perhaps is the result of more orderly procedures at the Irtah CP.

A reinforcement of this assumption can be found in the fact that people said that owing to the greater number of persons wanting now to pass through Irtah, they arrive very early, to ensure that they pass in time in order to reach their workplaces. As a rule they have to be there between six and six thirty. As compared to a former period during which we observed the CP, the women did not gather in groups at the margins of the field where they came out from the checking installation, but almost all of them tried to pass quickly, almost at a run, and then walked quite a distance along the road which doesn't have any marked edges, to the place there they would wait for their employers who were due to fetch them.

CP Architecture: In the meantime a passage with a very very high covering shed, which is probably intended for cars. On its side there is a building with three opening for offices. At another part of the CP area one can see beyond the surrounding fences two big sheds whose roofs are tent cloth.

05:00 Eyal

When we arrived there were already very many people who passed the CP and crowded in the waiting area of sat on the low fences along the exit road of the vehicles, and waited for their transportation.

Here too a shed had been built, this time on the part adjoining the turnstile for leaving the checking installation. This shed enables a certain crowding for a few moments when it rains, but doesn't change at all the great distance people have to pass exposed to wind and rain in order to reach the taxis which transport them from there.

We tried to get permission to obsderve the entrance to the CP Lane which was forbidden to us at the Eyal CP.  We didn't succeed.  A worker of the security company explained to us with an expression of somebody who seeks "only what is good" that there is a plan for the improvement of the passage conditions. The building of more shed etc. We referred a person who was prevented by the General Security Service, to Silvia.

An absolutely ordinary colonial abuse day.