Restrictions on Palestinian movement in West Bank allegedly at levels not seen in decades

Nurit Yohanan is The Times of Israel's Palestinian and Arab world correspondent

It used to take Jack Abed about 15 minutes to travel from his home in the central West Bank village of Taybeh to Ramallah.

Today, the same journey regularly takes hours.

According to Abed, a Greek Catholic priest in the West Bank's only Christian village, before October 7, 2023, travelers had a relatively straight shot to Ramallah via a road through the neighboring town of Deir Jarir, making the approximately 19-kilometer (11-mile) journey largely hassle-free.

But after the Hamas attack, as Israel tightened restrictions on movement across the West Bank, concrete barriers were erected on the road on the approach to Ramallah. Even reaching Deir Jarir and Route 60 — the main north-south highway traversing the territory — is no longer straightforward, with the road occasionally blocked off by an iron gate installed by the army following the attack.

Other main roads in and out of Taybeh and nearby villages are also now gated, often restricting access to Silwad, Jerusalem and Jericho. The gates are periodically closed on military orders or manned by soldiers who conduct lengthy inspections of passing vehicles, Abed said.

"People spend an hour and a half waiting at the checkpoint," said Abed, an Israeli citizen born and raised in Jaffa who arrived in Taybeh in 1990 to serve as the village priest. "A month ago, a woman gave birth in an ambulance at the checkpoint on the road from Taybeh toward Jerusalem because they wouldn't let her through."

Restrictions on movement have long been a feature of West Bank life, but in the last three years roadblocks, checkpoints and other types of barriers have multiplied, reaching levels not seen since the Second Intifada over 20 years ago, according to the UN.

Palestinians say the intensified closures have created significant hardships, choking off economic activity and making both daily life and emergency situations much more difficult to navigate.

"It affects people's jobs, schools, workers trying to get to work," said Suleiman Dawabshe, head of the village council in Duma, south of Nablus.

While Israel has in the past described similar measures as necessary for security, it has offered no rationale for the dramatic increase. Critics claim that the army itself does not even know how many closures and checkpoints there are, deploying them with no apparent overarching strategy or concern for how they affect the local population.

"The IDF doesn't even aspire to know how many checkpoints exist at any given moment because it knows it isn't operating according to any orderly system," Reut Sha'ar, an attorney who is suing for the military to provide a full accounting of the restrictions, told The Times of Israel.

The increase in movement restrictions has become one of the most commonly cited grievances among Palestinians across the West Bank.

Since October 7, 2023, the IDF has installed hundreds of new gates at the entrances to Palestinian communities, allowing roads to be sealed off at short notice, according to an estimate by Sha'ar, who petitioned the High Court for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel in February 2025.

Roadblocks, staffed checkpoints and closures using earth mounds and concrete barriers have also expanded significantly, according to the United Nations.

Data collected by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) indicate that the number of movement obstacles has reached its highest level in 20 years.

The IDF has not publicly released comprehensive figures on the number of checkpoints and movement obstacles in the West Bank, nor has it offered public details regarding why they have been set up.

In response to ACRI's petition demanding a comprehensive picture of the orders governing movement restrictions in the West Bank, the state argued that the military commander in the West Bank is authorized to impose movement restrictions "to safeguard the security of the area's residents — Israelis and Palestinians."

Responding to questions from The Times of Israel about the increase in checkpoints, the IDF said: "Decisions regarding the placement, opening or closure of checkpoints are made solely in accordance with operational assessments and security considerations."

It added that the restrictions balanced security needs with freedom of movement, and were "continuously adjusted" in response to the situation on the ground.

According to OCHA , as of March 2026, there were 925 movement obstacles across the West Bank — representing a 43 percent increase over the average of 647 recorded annually during the previous two decades.

The sharp rise began after Hamas's October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, as the IDF clamped down on Palestinians across the West Bank in response to concerns of copycat attacks there. Though such incidents never materialized, the restrictions have continued to expand.

An OCHA survey conducted in March 2024 found that 86 new movement obstacles — including checkpoints, earth mounds and road gates — had been installed since October 2023.

Over the same period, the UN body said, the IDF tightened restrictions at roughly 100 existing obstacles, closing gates that had previously remained open and reducing operating hours at checkpoints, OCHA said.

In 2025, OCHA recorded the installation of over 120 more gates on roads in the West Bank.

Many of the restrictions are not only on roads between villages but in heavily populated areas in and around Palestinian cities.

Information published by Israeli civil rights group B'Tselem showed four roadblocks on roads leading into Ramallah restricting movement for Palestinians since October 7, 2023.

Aside from OCHA, little data is available regarding the scope of the restrictions on movement, with few organizations able to track the constantly changing web of roadblocks, checkpoints and other obstacles. Even OCHA's figures are only a snapshot, given the constantly shifting n...

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