RAMALLAH, October 26, 2026 (WAFA) – Israeli occupation forces on Monday evening tightened movement restrictions around the Ramallah and al-Bireh cities, according to local sources.

They said that the occupying forces closed the entrances to the towns of Jaba’, Ein Sinya and Atara, north and northeast of Ramallah, beefing up restrictions on civilians’ movement and causing major traffic congestion. Video footage showed severe congestion at the Atara checkpoint.

Meanwhile, the occupation forces closed the road to Qalandiya as they raided the refugee camp, north of Jerusalem, at a time when they raided the town of Silwad and the village of al-Mughayyir, and set up checkpoints around the town of Turmus Ayya, further hampering movement between towns and villages across the governorate.

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.

This combination of checkpoints and barriers includes 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.