With West Bank under total Israeli closure, settlers are seizing the moment
Israeli settlers have killed two Palestinians and raided countless villages amid the war with Iran, as the army restricts movement and backs up the attackers.
With global attention fixed on the escalating U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, Israel has imposed a total military closure on the occupied West Bank. Israeli settlers, backed by the army, are seizing the opportunity to try to expel more rural Palestinian communities from their land, as they did in the days immediately following October 7.
Within hours of the war beginning on Saturday morning, the Israeli army shut all checkpoints across the West Bank and blocked roads between cities and villages with iron gates and earth mounds. It also installed new iron gates in locations where none had previously existed. Settlers brought in excavators to seal makeshift passages Palestinians had carved out over the past two and a half years, in areas where the army has kept roads closed since the start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
On Sunday, soldiers distributed leaflets to Palestinians in several localities announcing that the army “has imposed a preemptive security cordon around the entire Judea and Samaria area,” banning movement between different West Bank districts “until further notice.”
For residents of Ramallah and its surrounding towns and villages, access to the main roads leading to the rest of the West Bank has been cut off entirely. “It’s impossible to leave,” one resident of the city told +972. “I tried to drive out of one checkpoint in the opposite lane, which is used for entering the city, but soldiers caught me, detained me, and searched my car and body.”
In the village of Duma, east of Ramallah, soldiers and settlers have blocked off the sole exit since Saturday. Residents cannot leave even on foot or transfer between vehicles — a common workaround at other blocked gates across the West Bank.
“The army is preventing entry and exit for laborers, children, and the sick,” said Duma’s mayor, Hussein Dawabsheh. “On Monday, we tried to coordinate the evacuation of an 88-year-old patient, but [the army] refused. The village is surrounded by settlers, so it’s impossible to leave on foot.
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https://www.972mag.com/west-bank-closure-israeli-settler-violence-iran/