BETHLEHEM, February 26, 2025 (WAFA) – Israeli occupation forces Wednesday sealed off the roads leading to the southern rural occupied West Bank governorate of Bethlehem, according to security sources.

They said that the occupying forces closed the gates installed at the entrances of al-Manishiya, Marah Rabah, Umm Salmuna, and Jorat ash-Sham‘a, denying Palestinians access from the southern cluster of villages and towns access to the city and vice versa.

The Israeli restrictions are in parallel with ongoing military aggression on the northern West Bank cities of Jenin, Tubas, and Tulkarm and their refugee camps as well as with attacks by Israeli colonists across the West Bank to terrorize Palestinians and displace them from their lands to seize them and build illegal Jewish colonies that separate Palestinian communities.

Israel severely restricts 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.

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.