TUBAS, Tuesday, May 28, 2024 (WAFA) – Israeli occupation forces Tuesday evening severely restricted Palestinians’ movement at the Tayaseer checkpoint, east of the northern occupied West Bank city of Tubas, according to a human rights activist.

Aref Daraghmeh said that the occupation forces severely limited the access of Palestinians through the Tayaseer checkpoint in both directions, causing a traffic jam.

According to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, the occupation army set up the Tayaseer and Hamra checkpoints on the roads leading from Tammun and Tubas Districts to the northern Jordan Valley in the late 1990. In recent years, Palestinians have been allowed to cross them freely, but since 7 October, the checkpoints have been staffed again and the soldiers stationed in them carry out lengthy checks of Palestinians who are not registered as Jordan Valley residents, including teachers and physicians working in the area and Palestinians traveling to Allenby Bridge en route to Jordan.

These checkpoints also impede water deliveries to pastoral communities in the Jordan Valley, which depend on these deliveries as Israel refuses to connect them to the water grid. Ever since 7 October, these checkpoints have been the scene of long car queues, with waiting times of up to two hours.

Israeli severely restricts Palestinians’ freedom of movement through a complex combination of over 100 fixed checkpoints, flying checkpoints, settler-only roads and various other physical obstructions.

Closures besides to other measures, taken under the guise of security, are intended to entrench Israel’s 57-year-old military occupation of the West Bank and its settler colonial project which it enforces with routine and frequently deadly violence against Palestinians.

K.F.