RAMALLAH, September 29, 2026 (WAFA) - Hundreds of Palestinian families are still stranded inside their vehicles for hours at the Atara checkpoint, north of Ramallah, due to tightened Israeli restrictions.
The occupation forces sealed off the permanently staffed checkpoint, with large numbers of vehicles backed up and long queues stretching for considerable distances.
The gun-toting soldiers also closed the Ein Sinya checkpoint, north of Ramallah, forcing Palestinians to wait for hours in their vehicles.
Israel periodically imposes closures on the West Bank for various reasons, including Jewish holidays. The current closure runs from September 27 to October 3, coinciding with the Jewish festival of Sukkot.
While Israeli colonists move freely across the occupied West Bank, and even storm Palestinian villages and towns under Israeli army protection, Palestinians are forced to wait for hours at closed checkpoints.
The occupation forces have tightened military measures across the occupied West Bank hours after the release of 90 Palestinian prisoners as part of the Gaza ceasefire went into effect on January 19, 2025. Such restrictions were further tightened under the pretext of and since the onset of the Israeli-Iranian war, dismembering and isolating cities and governorates from one another using military gates, barriers, and concrete blocks.
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.
Israel severely restricts Palestinians’ freedom of movement within the occupied West Bank through a complex combination of 942 checkpoints and barriers, including 824 fixed checkpoints and 118 linear barriers (earth mounds, trenches and roadblocks), extending for approximately 107.7 kilimeters, not to mention 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 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.
