The West Bank Under the Guillotine.. How is Israel Restructuring Land, Movement, and Economy?

Jerusalem - Afaq News Report - While the world's attention is focused on the devastating war that Israel has been waging on the Gaza Strip since October 2023, the Israeli occupation government is implementing a silent and systematic plan in the occupied West Bank, through cutting off the cities and villages with military checkpoints, an unprecedented escalation in settlement construction, and launching wide daily arrest campaigns, reaching the strangulation of the national economy through the piracy of clearance funds. Israel seeks to destroy the components of Palestinian life and weaken the national authority to the point of completely paralyzing it.

Engineering Isolation: Checkpoints and Iron Gates

The occupation forces have transformed the West Bank into completely isolated "cantons," using security as a pretext to implement an apartheid system that suffocates freedom of movement.

According to a survey conducted by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in early 2025, the number of physical obstacles has significantly increased to 849 obstacles, including military checkpoints, iron gates, earth mounds, and concrete blocks.

The closure policy has extended to paralyze the ability of Palestinians to access basic services.

Data has shown that a third of Palestinian communities in the West Bank are now forced to cross at least three checkpoints to reach the nearest hospital.

Waiting times have increased by more than 50% compared to before the war, with the average delay rising from less than 10 minutes to about 15 minutes per checkpoint, and it can extend to hours in many cases.

OCHA indicates that Palestinians lose the equivalent of 30 years daily due to wasted time at Israeli checkpoints.

The suffering does not stop at fixed checkpoints; rather, the number of "flying" (surprise) checkpoints has increased, and the occupation has closed the entrances to towns with earth mounds, as happened in the town of Sinjil north of Ramallah, where five entrances overlooking Route 60 were completely closed, leaving only one entrance controlled by the occupation forces.

Settlement expansion: A decisive year and annexation of lands.

The Israeli far-right government exploited the global distraction of the war to carry out the largest land grab of Palestinian territories.

A report issued by the Israeli organization "Peace Now" in 2025 described it as witnessing "the largest surge in settlement expansion in the West Bank."

The data revealed a terrifying pace of land confiscation and settlement expansion, which included:

* Establishing new outposts: 185 new settlement outposts were established.

* Legalizing settlements: 102 outposts and settlement neighborhoods were converted into recognized and independent Israeli settlements.

* The urban boom and land confiscation: More than 40,000 settlement units have been built, 223 kilometers of new bypass roads have been constructed, and approximately 26,000 dunams have been declared as "state land."

* Forced displacement: The systematic violence of settlers, supported by the occupation army, has led to the complete displacement of 118 Palestinian pastoral communities, with settlers taking control of more than 11,000 dunams designated for agriculture.

Systematic arrest campaigns: Prisons are overcrowded with thousands of prisoners.

In parallel with the geographic and settlement siege, the occupation forces have intensified their daily arrest policy, targeting all segments of Palestinian society.

Data from the Palestinian Prisoners Club and prisoner institutions indicate that the total number of arrests in the West Bank alone from October 7, 2023, until May 2025 has exceeded 17,000 cases.

The prisons are overcrowded with thousands of Palestinians under harsh conditions, and the excessive use of the policy of "administrative detention" without charge or trial has emerged.

Statistics recorded the presence of more than 3,500 administrative detainees, in addition to hundreds of children and dozens of female prisoners.

Human rights organizations documented the martyrdom of 73 prisoners inside the occupation's prisons between October 2023 and June 2025 due to torture and deliberate medical neglect, raising the total number of martyr prisoners to an unprecedented level in the history of the prisoner movement.

The war of bulldozers and the execution of the camps: Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams as "ghost cities."

Israel did not content itself with suffocating the cities, but directed its destructive military machine to uproot the camps in the northern West Bank and completely destroy their infrastructure.

Since January 21, 2024, the Israeli army has begun a military operation in the Jenin camp called "Iron Walls," which later expanded to include the Tulkarm and Nur Shams camps.

After more than 200 days of these ongoing operations, the Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nur Shams camps in the northern occupied West Bank have turned into what resembles "ghost towns."

The report documented the extent of this destruction with verified numbers:

* Jenin camp: The occupation's aggression has caused the displacement of about 22,000 citizens, who have been prevented from returning to their homes, alongside massive destruction in the streets and infrastructure.

* Tulkarm camp: Satellite analysis showed that the occupation demolished 335 houses, with a total demolition area of nearly 32,451 square meters (about 32.4 dunams) [cite: 1.2.4]. To tighten military control, the occupation expanded and paved 12 roads covering all directions of the camp, increasing the average width of the roads from 4.3 meters to about 16.7 meters at the expense of the demolished citizens' homes.

* Noor Shams Camp: The total number of demolished houses reached 134, with a demolished area exceeding 22,000 square meters [cite: 1.2.4]. In the context of this destruction, the occupation approved in May 2025 a plan to demolish 106 buildings in the Tulkarem and Noor Shams camps under the pretext of opening roads and changing the area's features.

The UNRWA has confirmed that Israeli occupation forces continue to demolish homes in a new pattern that raises concern.

Local officials in these camps have stated that the Israeli operations have rendered the camps uninhabitable in every aspect, as part of a clear political plan aimed at liquidating the refugee issue and systematically displacing them.

Economic destruction and the plundering of clearance revenues: paralyzing the Palestinian Authority

Perhaps the most influential front on the Palestinian institutional structure is the economic front, where the Palestinian Authority is subjected to deliberate financial strangulation led by the Israeli Ministry of Finance, manifested in the suspension and seizure of tax revenues (clearance funds) that constitute the main artery of the Authority's budget.

According to estimates from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the economy in the West Bank experienced a sharp contraction of 16% during the year 2024.

This contraction was accompanied by the prevention of thousands of Palestinian workers from reaching their workplaces inside the Green Line, leading to a frightening surge in unemployment rates that exceeded 42% in 2024, compared to 31% in 2023.

This systematic destruction, coupled with a sharp decline in foreign aid, has led to the Palestinian Authority's inability to pay its employees' salaries in full and a near-complete halt to developmental projects.

This reality directly serves the strategy of the occupying government, which aims to undermine the economic and security status of the Palestinian Authority, keeping the Palestinian community in a state of daily depletion, as part of the broader war objectives that extend beyond the borders of the sector to include reshaping the reality in the West Bank and imposing irreversible facts.