As of 2026. Checkpoint, gate and permit restrictions were sharply tightened after October 2023 and remained in force through 2026; OCHA's counts of movement obstacles are updated periodically and have risen.
Since the general closure policy introduced in the early 1990s, Palestinian movement in the West Bank has been governed by a system of physical obstacles and individual permits: OCHA documented 925 movement obstacles as of December 2025, a 43 per cent increase on the twenty-year average, comprising 89 staffed checkpoints, 218 partial checkpoints, 232 road gates, 167 earthmounds, 114 linear closures and 105 roadblocks, with more than 120 new road gates installed during 2025 alone. About half of these obstacles block or hinder access between Palestinian towns and villages and main roads, and around a fifth block access to farmland, producing enclaves in which communities depend on gates opened at the discretion of the military. Construction of the separation barrier from 2002, about 85 per cent of it inside the West Bank, placed communities and land on the Israeli side and created a "seam zone" whose residents require permits to live in their own homes. Access to East Jerusalem, including its hospitals, is permit-based: of 87,427 patient permit applications in 2025, 36 per cent were denied or unresolved by the appointment date. The International Court of Justice held in its advisory opinion of 9 July 2004 that the barrier's route in occupied territory and its associated regime were contrary to international law and impeded freedom of movement, and in its advisory opinion of 19 July 2024 it held Israel's continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory unlawful and found that Israeli legislation and measures breach the prohibition of racial segregation and apartheid in Article 3 of the Racial Discrimination Convention. Israel rejects both opinions, maintaining that the barrier and closures are temporary security measures that have reduced attacks and that the territory's status is a matter for negotiation.
Israeli military and civil administration restricting Palestinian movement in the occupied West Bank through checkpoints, gates, permits, the separation barrier and Area C planning controls
Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics estimates put the West Bank at roughly 3.3-3.4 million in the mid-2020s, projected from the 2017 census. Israeli demographers have disputed PCBS projections as overstated by up to a few hundred thousand; the order of magnitude is not in dispute.
No source attributes a quantified death toll to the closure, permit and barrier regime itself. OCHA and B'Tselem record Palestinian and Israeli fatalities in the West Bank from armed clashes, Israeli military operations and settler violence, and OCHA documents deaths following delays at checkpoints for patients and women in labour, but these are counted under conflict violence and access-to-health indicators rather than as a toll of the movement regime. What the regime is measured in is obstruction: OCHA recorded 925 movement obstacles as of December 2025, 43 per cent above the twenty-year average of 647, restricting 3.4 million people.
OCHA documents the closure regime and the demolition of Palestinian homes and structures in the West Bank, and the ICJ's 2024 advisory opinion found that Israeli practices in the occupied territory include land confiscation and forcible transfer of the Palestinian population.
Palestine