UN expert says Israeli checkpoints choke Palestinian life in West Bank

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese stated on Friday that Israel’s expanding network of checkpoints and road barriers in the occupied West Bank is increasingly restricting daily Palestinian lives. She described the system as arbitrarily dividing the territory and subjecting millions to unpredictable military control over their movements.

Albanese cited United Nations figures showing 925 checkpoints and other movement obstacles were in place across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as of December 2025. This number represents the highest documented level in two decades and is 43 percent above the average recorded over the previous twenty years.

These physical barriers affect the movement of approximately 3.4 million Palestinians. The restrictions include permanently or intermittently staffed checkpoints, road gates, earth mounds, roadblocks, and trenches. Nearly 60 percent of these documented obstacles consist of checkpoints and road gates, according to UN data.

The rapporteur emphasized that arbitrariness becomes a form of torment when every journey depends on whether a gate is open. She noted that delays have risen sharply around Nablus. In Beit Furik, a 15-minute drive has at times stretched to between five and ten hours due to a single gate serving nearly 16,000 residents.

Albanese highlighted the death of four-month-old Ahmed Zaid in July as a devastating illustration of the human cost. Israeli soldiers held his family at a checkpoint for more than an hour while they tried to reach an ambulance. The infant died after the delay prevented timely access to emergency medical care.