JORDAN VALLEY, January 31, 2025 (WAFA) – Israeli occupation forces Friday evening held two Palestinians at a flying checkpoint near the Ein Al-Hilweh junction in the northern Jordan Valley, according to a local activist.

Kamal Bani-Odeh, Director of the Palestine Prisoner’s Society (PPS) Office in Tubas, said that the soldiers briefly held two brothers, identified as residents of Tubas, at the checkpoint for several hours before releasing them.

The occupation forces have been tightening military measures across the occupied West Bank since hours after the release of 90 Palestinian prisoners as part of the Gaza ceasefire went into effect, dismembering and isolating cities and governorates one from the other using military gates, barriers, and concrete blocks.

They have severely restricted Palestinians’ freedom of movement within the occupied West Bank through a complex combination of approximately 898 fixed and flying checkpoints and gates, including 18 gates that have been installed since the start of 2025 and 146 others installed in the aftermath of October 7, 2023, settler-only roads, over 200 military bases, and various other physical obstructions.

The Israeli military measures are in parallel with ongoing attacks by Israeli colonists across the West Bank with the aim of terrorizing Palestinians and displacing them from their lands to seize them and build illegal Jewish colonies that separate Palestinian communities.

Closures besides other measures, taken under the guise of security, are intended to entrench Israel’s 58-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.