suwandi-tan
A Palestinian family in the occupied West Bank is mourning the loss of a 66-year-old mother whose death they attribute directly to Israeli movement restrictions that delayed her emergency medical transfer. Zahriya Abu Hijleh collapsed on September 20 while attending her niece's wedding reception in Deir Istiya, a town northwest of Salfit, after suddenly feeling dizzy. What should have been a short trip to a hospital only eight minutes away became a fatal journey through a landscape of locked gates and blocked roads.
Her son, Mohammed Abu Hijleh, recounted how the ambulance summoned to take his mother to Salfit Governmental Hospital could not reach the town's medical centre because Israeli forces had shut the iron gate at the entrance. Instead, medics rushed her by ambulance to the gate itself, where she was lifted off the stretcher and carried through on foot before being placed in a second ambulance waiting on the opposite side. Medics later determined she had suffered a pulmonary embolism and needed immediate treatment.
"My mother was breathing her last; had the gate been open, we wouldn't have lost her on the way," Mohammed told Al Jazeera, adding that apart from diabetes she had no prior health conditions. The family says the delay cost Zahriya her life — a scenario they describe as painfully familiar to Palestinians across the territory.
The physical barriers Israel has installed throughout the West Bank — military checkpoints, iron gates and road closures — have become a defining feature of daily Palestinian life, disrupting access to work, schools, universities and hospitals. For the sick, the consequences can be measured in minutes that determine survival. For everyone else, they translate into hours of waiting, missed appointments and journeys that stretch deep into the night.
Israel imposes periodic, sweeping closures on the West Bank for a range of reasons, including Jewish holidays. The current closure runs from September 27 to October 3 and coincides with Sukkot. During such periods, Israeli settlers continue to move freely between West Bank cities — and in some cases enter Palestinian villages and towns under army protection — while Palestinians queue for hours at shuttered checkpoints.
Ibtihal Mansour, from Nablus, experienced that disparity firsthand last Friday while visiting her in-laws in al-Janiya, a village near Ramallah. Her family set out at 10am expecting to reach Nablus within 45 minutes. Instead, they found the Atara and Ein Siniya checkpoints north of Ramallah closed, effectively trapping them in the area.
"We tried taking alternative routes west of Ramallah, but were surprised to find the road between Ramallah and Nablus blocked by settlers, with all vehicle traffic completely halted. We remained on the roads, trying to find any way through, until midnight, a span of more than 14 hours," she told Al Jazeera.
The ordeal took a traumatic turn at a roadblock near Nablus in an area called al-Lubban Asharqiya. According to Mansour, a soldier ordered her to wake her sleeping children. When her 11-year-old son did not stir, she said the soldier punched him in the head, jolting him awake in tears. "The scene was heartbreaking; I felt a deep lump in my throat and profound sorrow. Long hours of waiting in the vehicle ended with an assault like this, and the ordeal didn't even end there," she said.
The family was ultimately forced to turn back and spend the night at a sister-in-law's home in Ramallah before trying again early the next morning. Their experience mirrors that of countless Palestinians who, when caught between closures, must seek overnight refuge in hotels, with relatives, or in makeshift shelters.
In response, some municipalities have converted wedding halls and mosques into temporary shelters for stranded travellers, with residents of nearby towns donating meals. The informal relief effort underscores how routine movement between Palestinian cities and villages has become dependent on community improvisation rather than freedom of travel.
Data collected by the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission (CRRC) shows the scale of the problem is growing. As of September 25, the commission recorded 942 checkpoints, closure points and obstacles across the occupied West Bank — up from 793 in March 2024. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the obstacles span roughly 107.7 kilometres (70 miles) in total length.
The CRRC says these closures effectively fragment Palestinian communities, making access to workplaces, schools, medical facilities and agricultural land contingent on whether roads happen to be open. The result is a patchwork of isolated enclaves in which something as ordinary as reaching a hospital, a job or a classroom can hinge on the whims of a gate operator or the timing of a holiday closure.
For families like the Abu Hijlehs, the toll is irreversible. Zahriya's death has become one more entry in a growing record of medical emergencies complicated — and sometimes ended — by restrictions on movement. Her son's account, and Mansour's 14-hour nightmare with her children, illustrate how a system of closures designed as security measures translates into lost time, lost health and, in the worst cases, lost lives for ordinary Palestinians trying to go about their days.
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