Movement and Access in the West Bank | April 2026

23 Apr 2026

Fact Sheet

Key facts and figures

As of December 2025, OCHA documented 925 movement obstacles that permanently or intermittently restrict the movement of 3.4 million Palestinians across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This is 43% more than the annual average of 647 movement obstacles in the preceding 20 years. About half of the documented increase in obstacles since early 2023 was recorded by March 2024.
Documented obstacles include: 89 checkpoints staffed 24/7; 218 partial (intermittently staffed) checkpoints, of which 152 (70%) have gates that are either usually open (90) or frequently closed (62); 232 road gates (of which 159 are frequently closed); 114 linear closures (such as earthwalls, road barriers and trenches); 167 earthmounds; and 105 roadblocks.¹
Checkpoints and road gates comprise nearly 60% of movement obstacles and form the backbone of the current access regime, signaling a further entrenchment of movement restrictions. Two decades ago, this type of elaborate infrastructure accounted for 15% of movement obstacles whereas ad-hoc or temporary obstructions such as earthmounds and roadblocks constituted about 73% of total obstacles. At present, at least 20% of documented closures block access to agricultural, land of which about 60% are earthmounds and roadblocks.²
In 2025, OCHA documented the installation of over 120 new road gates, as standalone gates or as part of partial checkpoints. The proportion of gates out of the total number of movement obstacles also increased from 34% in February 2025 (288 out of 849) to more than 41% in December 2025 (384 out of 925).
At least half of all movement obstacles (459) block or hinder access between Palestinian towns and villages and main roads that run through the West Bank; of these obstacles, about 20% are assessed to have governorate-wide access impacts or affect the movement of Palestinians across multiple governorates. These obstacles funnel Palestinian traffic onto longer, secondary road networks, disrupting the movement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and their access to workplaces and services. About 26% (121) of these obstacles block access to Road 60, the main north-south artery in the West Bank.
Nearly 40% of all checkpoints (34 out of 89) and 11% of all movement obstacles (101 out of 925) are in the H2 area of Hebron city. The part of H2 subject to strict movement regulations is home to about 7,000 Palestinians and several hundred Israeli settlers. Since October 2023, Israeli authorities have restricted access to this area to registered Palestinian residents through three main checkpoints operating between 07:00 and 20:00. Outside these hours, the checkpoints are generally closed.
The 712-kilometre-long Barrier (of which 64% is built and 85% runs inside the West Bank), together with its gate and permit regime, remains the single largest obstacle to Palestinian movement within the West Bank. Only three out of 13 checkpoints along the Barrier can be used by Palestinians who hold West Bank IDs and Israeli-issued permits, which are difficult to obtain, to access East Jerusalem and Israel. Most permits have been revoked or suspended since 7 October 2023, including over 800 permits that had been issued for nationally recruited humanitarian workers.
To access agricultural land isolated between the Barrier and the Green Line, Palestinian farmers must obtain special permits or prior coordination to cross through about 62 agricultural Barrier gates, the majority of which are closed year-round. During the 2025 olive harvest season, 74% of the gates were open for a limited number of days to allow farmers’ access. In addition, 98 Palestinian communities across nine governorates are now required to apply for ‘prior coordination’ arrangements to be granted by the Israeli military to enable owners to access their farmland on the outskirts of Israeli settlements twice a year.
Over 14,000 Palestinians holding West Bank IDs cards and living between the Barrier and the Green Line are forced to coordinate their access with Israeli forces to cross the nearest checkpoints to access basic services and markets as well as maintain family and social ties on the West Bank side of the Barrier. Of the total, over 3,500 live in 18 communities on the East Jerusalem side of the Barrier, including about 2,600 people who live in three Palestinian villages (Beit Iksa, An Nabi Samuel and Al Khalayla) and were first issued ‘Seam Zone’ permits by Israeli authorities in September 2025 that replaced prior coordination arrangements.³
In 2025, about 2,000 access incidents were documented across the West Bank, with an average of about 38 incidents per week. These include incidents where Israeli forces deployed mobile checkpoints (38%) or staffed partial checkpoints (31%) to conduct vehicular and ID checks. The remaining incidents primarily included: extended delays or closure of checkpoints; preventing access to agricultural land; installing a new closure; and shooting toward, or detaining, Palestinians attempting to cross the West Bank Barrier reportedly to reach workplaces in East Jerusalem and Israel. On average, Israeli forces deployed 15 ad-hoc or ‘flying’ checkpoints each week in the West Bank.
In 2025, WHO documented 233 attacks on health care in the West Bank, affecting 25 health facilities and 165 ambulances, with 84% (196 out of 233) involving obstructed access, including checkpoint delays, searches and harassment of medical staff, and restrictions on ambulance movement. In parallel, 36% of 87,427 patient permit applications for access to East Jerusalem and Israeli health facilities in 2025 were denied or remained pending, compared with 18% in 2022.

Movement obstacles by type

Background

Movement obstacles form part of a wider system of restrictions imposed on Palestinians since 1967, including permit regimes, physical barriers, and the designation of areas as restricted or closed. Together, these measures severely impede access to services and resources, disrupt family and social life, undermine livelihoods, and contribute to the fragmentation of the West Bank, with cumulative impacts on Palestinians’ economic, social and cultural rights.
The permit regime imposed since the early 1990s, and the construction of the Barrier in the 2000s, have progressively isolated East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, transforming its geography, economy, and social life. These measures impede the access to East Jerusalem of Palestinians from any other part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), including Gaza, whether they need to access services, including health care unavailable elsewhere, to visit holy sites, or to meet their relatives.
Under international law, the Israeli authorities have the obligation to facilitate the free movement of Palestinians within the OPT. Exceptions to this obligation are recognized only for imperative reasons of security and only in response to specific security threats. The sections of the Barrier running inside the West Bank, together with the associated gate and permit regime, are unlawful under international law (see the International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinion on the Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, 9 July 2004).
On 19 July 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an Advisory Opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), including East Jerusalem. The Court found that Israel’s continued presence in the OPT is unlawful and must end as rapidly as possible, that all new settlement activity must cease, and that measures enforcing near-complete separation between settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem breach the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The ICJ further stated that States and international organizations must not recognize the unlawful situation and that the UN, particularly the General Assembly and Security Council, should consider measures to bring Israel’s unlawful presence in the OPT to an end.
A UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) thematic report released in January 2026 documents a long-standing and increasingly entrenched system of discriminatory laws, policies and practices applied by Israeli authorities in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which severely restrict, among other rights, Palestinians’ freedom of movement. The report highlights the existence of two distinct bodies of law for Palestinians and Israeli settlers, resulting in systematic inequality in movement, access to land, livelihoods and essential services, and notes that these restrictions have intensified since December 2022 and following 7 October 2023. OHCHR concludes that such practices contribute to dispossession of Palestinians and raises concerns that the severe racial discrimination violates Article 3 of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination which prohibits racial segregation and apartheid.

Poster-size map: West Bank Access Restrictions | December 2025

[1] Checkpoints on the Green Line are not included in this data, nor are agricultural gates installed along the Barrier to control access to agricultural lands located between the Barrier and the Green Line, areas declared as “closed military zones,” or the closure of Jenin and Tulkarm refugee camps for the return of displaced families.

[2] This excludes Barrier agricultural gates that restrict access to land behind the Barrier and are not included in the overall closure count.

[3] The ‘Seam Zone’ refers to land between the Barrier and the 1949 Armistice Line.