<\/p>\n
2 October 2026<\/p>\n
GENEVA<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Israel\u2019s expanding system of checkpoints, road gates and other movement restrictions in the occupied West Bank is fragmenting Palestinian territory and aggravating the arbitrary system of control that costs Palestinians time, livelihoods, education and lives, a UN expert warned today.<\/p>\n \u201cArbitrariness itself becomes a form of torment when every journey, every appointment and every family visit depends on whether a gate is open or a soldier allows passage,\u201d said Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.<\/p>\n \u201cNumbers alone cannot capture what this system inflicts. It steals hours and days from people\u2019s lives, separates families, deprives students of education and workers of livelihoods and obstructs access to life-saving health care.\u201d<\/p>\n Highlighting one case among hundreds, the Special Rapporteur said that in July 2026, four-month-old Ahmed Zaid died after Israeli soldiers prevented his family from reaching an ambulance waiting beyond a military checkpoint for more than an hour. \u201cAhmed\u2019s death is a devastating illustration of what this system means in human terms,\u201d Albanese said. \u201cFor millions of Palestinians, reaching work, school, university, hospital or family can take hours, involve being rerouted without warning or become altogether impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n As of December 2025, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs\u00a0documented 925 checkpoints<\/a>\u00a0and other obstacles restricting the movement of some 3.4 million Palestinians across the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem \u2013 the highest number in 20 years, and 43 per cent above the average of the preceding two decades.<\/p>\n Recent investigations reviewed by the mandate, drawing on on-the-ground reporting, surveys of hundreds of Palestinians, satellite imagery and billions of GPS data points, show that this choking regime has only intensified. Since October 2023, delays around Nablus have surged beyond levels recorded anywhere else in the West Bank. In Beit Furik, a town of nearly 16,000 people with a single gate, a 15-minute drive routinely took more than five hours, and up to 10 hours on the worst days. About half of those surveyed said checkpoints had affected their own or their spouse\u2019s ability to find work.<\/p>\n The Special Rapporteur pointed to an unmistakable link between the proliferation of checkpoints and the rapidly deteriorating situation across the West Bank: settler terror, accelerating settlement expansion, demolitions, forced displacement and the deliberate destruction of Palestinian agricultural life.<\/p>\n \u201cPalestinian communities are increasingly being transformed into isolated enclaves \u2013 separate cells of\u00a0a long-exposed carceral regime<\/a>, connected or disconnected at the whim of the occupying power,\u201d she said. \u201cThe checkpoints are not isolated inconveniences. The checkpoint system is unlawful, as is the occupation from which it emanates.\u201d<\/p>\n In its\u00a0July 2024 Advisory Opinion<\/a>, the International Court of Justice found that Israeli policies had fragmented the West Bank, severed East Jerusalem from it and encircled Palestinian communities in enclaves, obstructing the Palestinian people\u2019s right to self-determination.<\/p>\n \u201cThe international community\u2019s unforgivable delay in giving effect to the Court\u2019s demand that Israel\u2019s unlawful presence end \u2018as rapidly as possible\u2019 is a hallmark of complicity.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis system of fragmentation and control must end,\u201d Albanese said. \u201cPalestinians must be able to move freely across their own land, live together as a people and exercise their right to self-determination.\u201d<\/p>\n 2 October 2026 GENEVA\u00a0\u2013 Israel\u2019s expanding system of checkpoints, road gates and other movement restrictions in the occupied West Bank is fragmenting Palestinian territory and aggravating the arbitrary system of control that costs Palestinians time, livelihoods, education and lives, a UN expert warned today. \u201cArbitrariness itself becomes a form of torment when every journey, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"country":[],"document-category":[1329],"document-source":[6854],"committee-meeting":[],"document-subject":[2517,5358,6251],"entity":[1729],"document-language":[6542],"class_list":["post-320414","document","type-document","status-publish","hentry","document-category-press-release","document-source-special-rapporteur-on-the-situation-of-human-rights-in-the-palestinian-territories-occupied-since-1967","document-subject-access-and-movement","document-subject-ClosuresCurfewsBlockades","document-subject-west-bank","entity-united-nations-system","document-language-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/320414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/document"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/320414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":320420,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/320414\/revisions\/320420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=320414"},{"taxonomy":"document-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-category?post=320414"},{"taxonomy":"document-source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-source?post=320414"},{"taxonomy":"committee-meeting","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/committee-meeting?post=320414"},{"taxonomy":"document-subject","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-subject?post=320414"},{"taxonomy":"entity","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/entity?post=320414"},{"taxonomy":"document-language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-language?post=320414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}