A Palestinian centre specialising in Israeli affairs has stated that more than 400 military roadblocks have been installed by Israel in Jerusalem and the West Bank in the last few years.
In its report, the Al-Quds Centre for Palestinian and Israeli Studies said that Israel continues with its attempts to stop the ongoing Palestinian uprising that erupted in Jerusalem on 1 October, resulting in the death of 118 Palestinians and 22 Israelis.
The report added that Israel’s tactic of erecting barriers to fragment the West Bank and Jerusalem is an “old policy” that was implemented by the Israeli occupation during the first intifada in the West Bank and Gaza, and it has continued to adopt it in the recent years. The report pointed to barriers in the cities of Jerusalem, Hebron, Bethlehem and Ramallah, in addition to those in the northern West Bank and the Jordan Valley.
The Al-Quds Centre report revealed that there are at least 412 points at which there are fixed or random checkpoints in West Bank areas.
The objective behind setting up these barriers, according to the report, falls in the context of a “collective punishment policy against two thirds of the population of the West Bank and Jerusalem” to secure “safe movement” for Israeli settlers by imposing restrictive measures on Palestinian citizens.