---
title: "925 Obstacles and One Week’s Closure: Mapping the West Bank’s Checkpoint State"
description: "Al Jazeera maps the machinery that governs 3.4 million Palestinians’ movement, as a holiday shutdown seals the crossings"
author: "Tomasz Idle"
published: 2026-09-28T08:50:37Z
modified: 2026-09-28T15:17:58Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/925-obstacles-and-one-week-s-closure-mapping-the-west-bank-s-0cccdf
language: en
tags: ["security", "israel", "palestine", "infrastructure", "economy", "mideast"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# 925 Obstacles and One Week’s Closure: Mapping the West Bank’s Checkpoint State

*Al Jazeera maps the machinery that governs 3.4 million Palestinians’ movement, as a holiday shutdown seals the crossings*

By Tomasz Idle · September 28, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/925-obstacles-and-one-week-s-closure-mapping-the-west-bank-s-0cccdf

## In brief

- Israel Katz ordered West Bank crossings sealed Sunday through Saturday for Sukkot, on the military’s recommendation
- Closure cuts access to Al-Aqsa and the Ibrahimi Mosque; roads blocked near Ramallah; checkpoints raised elsewhere
- West Bank Palestinians working for Israeli employers fell from about 160,000 pre-war to about 27,300 by mid-2024
- UN OCHA counts over 300 checkpoints among 925 obstacles restricting 3.4 million Palestinians, as of December
- Main crossings include Qalandiya, Checkpoint 300, Eyal, Taybeh and Tarqumiyah

Some maps tell you where things are. Al Jazeera’s new map of the occupied West Bank tells you where you cannot go, when, and on whose say-so. It is a map of locks: more than 300 Israeli military checkpoints, embedded in 925 obstacles of one kind or another, controlling the movement of 3.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to the UN’s humanitarian coordination office.

This week somebody turned the big key all at once. Defence Minister Israel Katz on Sunday ordered the West Bank’s crossings sealed until Saturday, acting on the military’s recommendation and citing the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. It is the same holiday closure that Israel’s far-right finance minister marked by [calling on the army to do in the West Bank what it did in Gaza](https://rews.cc/a/do-in-the-west-bank-what-we-did-in-gaza-smotrich-calls-for-w-94451f). For the duration, controls tighten further at the checkpoints and barriers that already form the load-bearing structure of Palestinian daily life.

The immediate effects, as Al Jazeera reports: access cut off to holy sites, including the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem and the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron. On Sunday, Israeli forces in the Ramallah and el-Bireh governorate blocked roads and shut the entrances to the towns of Turmus Aya, Aboud, Nabi Saleh, Atara and Taybeh. In Yabroud, Ein Siniya and Jaba, soldiers set up checkpoints to search vehicles and check IDs.

The closure also bars Palestinians who still hold permits to work in Israel and its settlements — a workforce that has already collapsed. Before the war in Gaza began in October 2023, about 160,000 West Bank Palestinians worked for Israeli employers, most inside Israel and the rest in settlements, according to the Palestinian Institute for Economic Policy Research. After Israel barred most permit holders, that figure fell to about 27,300 by mid-2024. West Bank unemployment climbed from 12.9 percent in September 2023 to 30.7 percent a year later, according to the Israeli rights group Gisha. Under the current closure, only workers deemed essential may enter Israeli industrial zones in the territory.

For decades, Palestinians have sought that work for simple reasons: high unemployment and low wages at home, which Al Jazeera attributes to nearly six decades of occupation that has restricted the Palestinian economy, land and movement. The UN General Assembly passed a resolution in September 2024 calling on Israel to end its “unlawful” occupation within a year. Instead, Al Jazeera notes, Israel has intensified raids, sent soldiers out alongside increasingly frequent settler attacks on Palestinian towns, and expanded settlements that are illegal under international law.

And then there is the catalogue — because a one-week closure sits on top of a whole filing system of immobility. The 300-plus checkpoints that the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs counts, as of December, break down like this: 89 checkpoints staffed around the clock; 218 partial checkpoints staffed intermittently, 152 of them gated — 90 gates usually open, 62 frequently closed; 232 road gates, 159 of them frequently closed; 114 “linear closures,” which is to say earth walls, road barriers and trenches; 167 earth mounds; and 105 roadblocks. It reads like the inventory of a very thorough warehouse, except that what is being stored is people.

Between those gates sit hundreds of thousands of people rerouted onto longer journeys to work and school, and trips to medical care made harder. A few crossings have become famous through sheer friction: Qalandiya, the main passage between Ramallah and East Jerusalem, once handled about a third of all movement between the West Bank and Israel; Checkpoint 300 blocks the road between Bethlehem and Jerusalem and is the main route for Palestinians working in East Jerusalem and other central cities; Eyal serves workers from Qalqilya — where the separation wall has pushed unemployment up — and from across the northern West Bank; Taybeh sits just south of Tulkarem; Tarqumiyah lies near Hebron.

The holiday ends Saturday; the map does not. When the crossings reopen, the 925 obstacles will still be in place, doing the quiet job they were built for: turning a working week, a prayer, a hospital appointment, into someone else’s scheduling decision. A lock that is opened once a week is still a lock.