“In a cage”: everywhere in the occupied West Bank, the same stories describe the Israeli roadblocks which have multiplied and paralyzed traffic since the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, the other Palestinian territory.
AFP
Groups on the social network WhatsApp sharing information about traffic in the West Bank are abuzz. In the messages, opposite the names of crossing points and intersections, more and more red circles. We don’t pass.
“It started during the night from Sunday to Monday. We woke up to discover that there were metal barriers on the roads leading to Jericho, Jerusalem and Nablus,” Bachar Basiel, priest of the village of Taybeh, northeast of Ramallah, told AFP. .
“On Monday evening, people were returning from Ramallah” after their work “and they stayed in their cars from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m.,” he explains, specifying that each vehicle is searched by the Israeli army.
Unpublished since 2005
Several residents say they left work early on Tuesday and Wednesday, in anticipation of nightmarish journeys, during which, once in a queue, they can no longer turn around, with no visibility of what awaits them.
“We have not experienced such a difficult situation since the second Intifada,” summarizes Father Basiel, referring to the Palestinian uprising between 2000 and 2005.
From north to south, at regular intervals, the same bottlenecks repeat themselves, where dozens of cars, sometimes hundreds, wait bumper to bumper.
Anas Ahmad found himself stuck for more than five hours near the university town of Birzeit, on a road that was even more congested as the parallel roads were closed. “It’s such a waste of time,” sighs this police officer.
The West Bank is a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967 and fragmented by Israeli colonization, considered illegal by international law.
“898” barriers
Permanent roadblocks punctuate it, on the one hand, between it and Israel and, on the other hand, at certain major intersections, between the different governorates or near Israeli settlements.
-New checkpoints had already been installed the day after October 7, 2023, the day of the Hamas attack on Israel. But the situation worsened after the start of a truce on January 19 between Israel and the Islamist movement in the Gaza Strip.
“The Israeli government is making the Palestinian people pay the price,” assures Mr. Ahmad, who sees it as “a means of pressure.” At least 146 barriers have been installed in the West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza, including 17 in January 2025, according to the Palestinian Commission for the Fight against the Wall and Settlements, which claims to have 898 of these filtering points.
“We ensure that terrorists do not flee, but that civilians can come and go as they wish,” said an Israeli army spokesperson, without confirming the increase in roadblocks.
“In isolation”
“We already felt like we were in prison, but now it’s as if we had been put in solitary confinement,” describes a resident of the Ramallah area who requested anonymity for fear of repercussions, before explaining that a move which usually takes him twenty minutes took him two hours on Wednesday.
“Each village is isolated, what will happen next? A checkpoint on every street? In front of every house? “It’s like rabbits,” he continues, “in the morning, they can go out to eat, do things, and then in the evening, they have to go into a cage for the night.”
Noting that the blockades appear “permanent,” he asks aloud the question many are thinking: “Maybe this is the beginning of the total annexation of the West Bank?”
Also highlighting the increase in movement restrictions, Israeli NGO B’tselem said Tuesday that the Jewish state was “only shifting its attention from Gaza to other areas it controls in the West Bank.”
Several Israeli political figures have made no secret of their desire for annexation, notably the far-right Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich.
“We don’t feel safe and we can’t live like this,” adds Father Basiel, who dreads every trip. “We don’t know exactly what the Israelis’ plan is,” he says, “but they want us to leave the country.”
