Israeli checkpoint

An Israel Border Police checkpoint at Jericho's southern entrance, 2005

Israeli checkpoint outside the Palestinian city of Ramallah. August 2004

An Israel Defense Forces checkpoint, usually called an Israeli checkpoint (Hebrew: מחסום, machsom, Arabic: حاجز, hajez), is a barrier erected by the Israel Defense Forces with the stated aim of enhancing the security of Israel and Israeli settlements and preventing those who wish to do harm from crossing. Most of the checkpoints in the West Bank are located throughout the West Bank.

Since the 1990s, and especially since the violence associated with the Second Intifada, Israel has created hundreds of permanent roadblocks and checkpoints staffed by Israeli Military or border police. However, according to the IDF, in the central region covering the West Bank areas of Judea and Samaria, there are only 12 checkpoints.

In September 2011, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said there were 522 roadblocks and checkpoints obstructing Palestinian movement in the West Bank, up from 503 in July 2010. That number does not include the temporary checkpoints known as "flying checkpoints," of which there were 495 on average per month in the West Bank in 2011, up from 351 on average per month in the previous two years.

IDF checkpoints may be staffed by the Israeli Military Police, the Israel Border Police, or other soldiers.

In July 2013, the Israel Defense Forces is reportedly preparing to remove checkpoints within the West Bank as part of a goodwill gesture ahead of the anticipated peace talks between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli Government.

IDF viewpoint

West Bank checkpoint tower

The IDF has stated that during 2008, it has removed the crossing joins, 140 roadblocks and eight central checkpoints, in an effort to improve freedom of movement for the civilian Palestinian population. As of December 2010, Israeli authorities report that 27 out of 41 manned checkpoints, and more than 200 unmanned roadblocks- more than a third of the total roadblocks- have been removed.

According to the IDF, a Palestinian civilian in the West Bank can travel from the northern city of Jenin to Bethlehem, just south of Jerusalem, without encountering a single military checkpoint.

According to program director Col. Triber Bezalel, the IDF employs humanitarian officers at various checkpoints, which are responsible to make life easier for those who cross the borders and aid the elderly and sick.

Criticism

Many Palestinian residents of the West Bank, claim that despite the checkpoints' intended use, in practice they violate Palestinians' rights to transportation and other human rights. Palestinian complaints of abuse and humiliation are common: Israel Defense Forces' Judge Advocate General, Maj. Gen. Dr. Menachem Finkelstein, states that "there were many—too many—complaints that soldiers manning checkpoints abuse and humiliate Palestinians and that the large number of complaints 'lit a red light' for him". Hundreds of Israeli women have monitored the checkpoints as part of Machsom (Checkpoint) Watch. The organization circulated daily reports on the checkpoints and published a book of testimonies that co-founder and author Yehudit Kirstein-Keshet says demonstrates "Israel's imprisonment of an entire population in a web of closures and checkpoints." Kirstein-Keshet also reports, "We Watchers … have witnessed the daily humiliation and abuse, the despair and impotence of Palestinians at checkpoints."

The United Nations, in its February 2009 Humanitarian Monitor report, has stated that it is becoming "apparent" that the checkpoint and obstacles, which Israeli authorities justified from the beginning of the second Intifada (September 2000) as a temporary military response to violent confrontations and attacks on Israeli civilians, is evolving into "a more permanent system of control" that is steadily reducing the space available for Palestinian growth and movement for the benefit of the increasing Israeli settler population.

Unmanned roadblock in the West Bank. July 2006

Flying checkpoints

An Israeli soldier buys from Palestinian children selling drinks near a checkpoint

See also: Random checkpoint

Checkpoints and Medical Care

In March 2002, an explosive device was found in a Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) ambulance. The Red Crescent expressed shock at the incident, and began an internal investigation. On January 11, 2004, a PRCS ambulance not carrying patients was stopped and searched at a flying checkpoint near the village of Jit. The ambulance was escorted by military jeep to the Qadomin bus station where after 10 minutes the ambulance crew got their IDs back and were allowed to continue working. In another case, on the same day, an ambulance transporting a diabetic patient to the hospital in Tulkarm was stopped, searched, and allowed to proceed after the companion of the patient was arrested.

In 2008, an Israeli soldier in command of a checkpoint outside Nablus was relieved from duty and imprisoned for two weeks after he refused to allow a Palestinian woman in labour to pass through.

See also

• West Bank closures
• Machsom Watch a left-wing human rights group of Israeli women monitoring IDF checkpoints.
• Palestinian freedom of movement