TULKARM, March 12, 2026 (WAFA) – Israeli occupation forces on Thursday evening closed the Jubara checkpoint at the southern entrance of the northern West Bank city of Tulkarm, according to local sources.

They said that the occupation forces sealed off the permanently-staffed Jubara checkpoint, also known as al-Kafriyat checkpoint, causing dozens of vehicles to queue up and obstructing passengers’ movement.

They added that the gun-toting Israeli soldiers unleashed a barrage of tear gas canisters towards the vehicles and passengers stranded at the checkpoint.

The checkpoint is located on a section of Israel’s apartheid and segregation wall and is closed to Palestinians, except for farmers with entry permits to the seam zone.

The occupation forces have been tightening military measures across the occupied West Bank since hours after the release of the first batch of Palestinian prisoners as part of the Gaza ceasefire went into effect in January 2025, dismembering and isolating cities and governorates from one another 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 917 fixed and flying checkpoints and gates, including 244 gates 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 to terrorize Palestinians and displace 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 59-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.