Fadi the stick - Bethlehem
The sun has not yet sunk at the barrier of the northern city of Bethlehem, which separates it from occupied Jerusalem, but hundreds of Palestinian workers have tried hours before to cross the barrier to reach their work places inside the Green Line.
Most Palestinian workers are afraid to talk about their suffering at the checkpoints of the Israeli occupation. The fear is that they receive permits from the occupation authority after the security check.
This examination depends on the information collected by the occupation about them, which makes them prefer to silence in order to preserve their livelihood and the lives of their families.
One of them told al-Jazeera Net that after the security check he had to pay more than 2,600 shekels (about 700 US dollars), and because of the congestion at the checkpoint he worked only 12 days long hours, Which means that he works to get the price of the permit and left some crumbs.
It is clear that a stream of Palestinian workers is crowding between two security guards, no more than two meters wide and extending more than 200 meters to the junction of the apartheid wall before reaching the first checkpoints controlled by an Israeli soldier.
Five hours to cross
Workers start running inside the barrier, entering a new queue in front of the inspection gates.
Each of them removes part of his clothing that may cause the machine to beep, put it in the X-ray machine for examination, and then again to check the identity papers and magnetic card that the worker must have beforehand to obtain his permit.
After that, the worker comes out of the opposite side, which is only separated from the wall by a thickness of twenty centimeters.
It may take five hours. A worker at Al-Jazeera Net says he comes to the checkpoint at 2 or 3 in the morning and leaves at 8 am, and this is his daily journey to work.
Injuries and patients
The people of the heart, the pressure, the sugar, and the like do not bear all this, which led the Palestinian Red Crescent Society to keep an ambulance almost daily.
The director of the association in Bethlehem, Mohammed Awad, told Al-Jazeera Net that the situation at the checkpoint has become unbearable. Almost daily, patients are transferred to hospitals or field treatment is given to them.
Awad asserts that the Israeli soldiers, despite all this, can fire gas bombs at the workers, claiming the lack of regulation, which requires treatment of gas suffocation also, if not caused by other health problems.
However, Awad describes the workers at the checkpoints as good compared to those who are transported by Red Crescent vehicles who get injured while crossing the Separation Barrier without obtaining these permits.
If they are caught, they are beaten and abused, and fractured or dislocated in their limbs.
11 checkpoints
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Labor, there are more than 150,000 Palestinian workers working inside the Green Line, about half of whom have permits, and the rest are jumping from the Separation Barrier. This makes the Palestinian worker, if he arrives, work in illegal conditions and is denied insurance. Health, labor rights and others.
Head of the organization's unit in the Palestinian Ministry of Labor, Abdel Karim Mardawi, told Al-Jazeera Net that everything that is happening at the checkpoints is illegal and comes with a vague pretext for occupation.
He points out that the occupation has established 11 military checkpoints throughout the West Bank to cross over 82,000 Palestinian workers who have permits, not to facilitate their movement, but to complicate them.
In addition to the workers, the sick permits and facilities are crowded with them, and the traders who move in the morning from 4 am.
These conditions lead some workers to cross the checkpoint on Sunday every week, to stay in their workplaces in inhuman conditions, and stay there for a whole week or a month at times, so that they do not have to cross these checkpoints.