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Closure system

Properties2
tags
aliasesClosure, checkpoints, flying checkpoints

2 min read

Summary

The web of curfews, checkpoints, roadblocks, ditches, walls, fences and closures — 561 fixed obstacles and 69 flying checkpoints in October 2007, on U.N. figures — that has broken the West Bank into three sections and ten enclaves and separated it from Gaza, East Jerusalem and Israel (Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, PDF p.44-45, p.83-86).

Details

  • There were seventy-eight comprehensive closure days in 2006, on which all permits were summarily invalidated (PDF p.45).

  • The World Bank, May 2007: “The practical effect of this shattered economic space” is that reaching work, school, shopping, healthcare and land “is highly uncertain and subject to arbitrary restriction and delay” (quoted PDF p.45).

  • “The West Bank road network is one of the Israeli army’s most effective closure mechanisms. For Palestinians, roads have come to represent and embody paralysis rather than movement” (PDF p.73).

  • Checkpoint testimony in part 2: Farid Subuh barred at Huwwara from returning home with his family though he had crossed that morning; Abdallah Khamis beaten by seven or nine soldiers at the same checkpoint; a WHO investigation (2005) found sixty-one women gave birth at checkpoints between September 2000 and December 2004, thirty-six of the babies dying (Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, PDF p.87-93).

  • Israeli soldiers quoted on purpose: officers told one soldier his checkpoint “has no security value and was meant to harass the population”; “The idea is to make life hard for the Palestinian citizenry. There is no operational objective” (PDF p.95-96).

  • The general closure of 1993, announced as the Oslo negotiations began, permanently barred West Bank and Gaza Palestinians from Jerusalem and split the territories from each other and from Israel (PDF p.129).

  • The back-to-back goods system became routine in 2003 (World Bank, 2004): goods unloaded, carried through and reloaded at checkpoints, tripling transport costs to Hebron and depressing prices in producing areas while raising them in cities (PDF p.102-104).

  • Counts in the “Occupation by the Numbers” box: 528 fixed obstacles in January 2007, 537 in April 2007, 561 in October 2007; of 44 offered for removal in January 2007 none existed, per an Israeli army source; 180,000 Palestinians are on a secret travel-ban list, none officially informed (PDF p.107-108).

Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, Occupation by bureaucracy, Separation wall, UN-OCHA

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