BETHLEHEM, October 7, 2026 (WAFA) – Israeli occupation forces on Wednesday held seven workers while they were engaged in land reclamation in the village of Husan, west of Bethlehem, according to WAFA correspondent.
He reported that the occupation forces detained the seven workers who were carrying out land reclamation and rehabilitation work for the Husan Village Council in the Ain al-Balad area of the village.
Meanwhile, the occupation forces set up a military checkpoint in the Qabr Hilwa area, northeast of Bethlehem, stopping and searching Palestinian-licensed vehicles, checking passengers’ ID cards, and obstructing their movement.
Husan village and the entrances to the western countryside of Bethlehem governorate have witnessed an escalation in Israeli occupation measures, including the repeated setting up of military checkpoints, closure of entrances, and obstruction of the movement and travel of Palestinians.
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 925 checkpoints and barriers restricting the movement of 3.4 million Palestinians across the West Bank and East Jerusalem. They include 89 permanently staffed checkpoints, 218 partially staffed checkpoints (152 of which have gates (90 usually open and 62 frequently closed), 232 road gates (159 of them frequently closed), 114 linear closures, (such as earth walls, road barriers and trenches), 167 earth mounds, and 105 roadblocks.
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.
