Israel has sealed off the occupied West Bank for a week, shutting its crossings and tightening restrictions on Palestinian movement, citing the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. Defence Minister Israel Katz on Sunday ordered the closure on the military’s recommendation, and it will remain in place until Saturday. Palestinians already face severe restrictions on their movement due to hundreds of Israeli checkpoints and barriers across the occupied territory.
Now, controls at checkpoints and barriers across the territory will tighten further, cutting off access to holy sites such as the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem and the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron in the West Bank. In the Ramallah and el-Bireh governorate on Sunday, Israeli forces blocked roads and shut the entrances to Turmus Aya, Aboud, Nabi Saleh, Atara and Taybeh. In Yabroud, Ein Siniya and Jaba, soldiers set up checkpoints to search vehicles and check IDs.
The closure also bars Palestinians who still hold permits to work in Israel and its settlements, a workforce already sharply reduced since Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza began in October 2023. Only workers deemed essential are allowed into Israeli industrial zones in the West Bank. For decades, Palestinians in the West Bank have looked for work inside Israel because of high unemployment and low wages at home, which are the result of nearly six decades of Israeli occupation that has restricted their economy, land and movement.
The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution in September 2024 calling on Israel to end its “unlawful” occupation within a year. Israel has since doubled down, intensifying raids on Palestinians, deploying soldiers with settlers during their increasing attacks on Palestinian towns and expanding its settlements, which are illegal under international law. Before the war on Gaza began, about 160,000 Palestinians from the West Bank worked for Israeli employers, most of them inside Israel and the rest in settlements, according to the Palestinian Institute for Economic Policy Research.
After Israel barred most permit holders from entering, that number fell to about 27,300, by mid-2024. Unemployment in the West Bank rose from 12.9 percent in September 2023 to 30.7 percent a year later, according to the Israeli rights group Gisha. There are more than 300 Israeli checkpoints across the West Bank, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
As of December, they were among 925 obstacles restricting the movement of 3.4 million Palestinians across the West Bank and East Jerusalem. They are: For Palestinians in the West Bank, these checkpoints cut off or restrict access between towns and main roads, forcing hundreds of thousands of people onto longer routes to work and school. They also hinder access to medical care.
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