"Awarta Gate" is closed by Israel and cuts off communication with the entire southern region of Nablus (Al Jazeera)

Nablus -

A few days ago, Palestinian Ibrahim Omran needed to go to the city of Nablus to fulfill some of his affairs after a long period of not leaving his village of Burin, south of the city, for fear of the Israeli occupation’s checkpoints and harassment. Instead of covering the normal road distance of 10 minutes, it took him 4 hours due to the military checkpoints set up north of the village.

It seems that Imran and 11,000 citizens in the villages of Burin, Madama, and Asira al-Qibliya, and more than 50,000 in other villages south of Nablus, in the north of the West Bank, will be exposed to more severe torture after the occupation army installed military gates at the entrances to their towns, which will increase the pressure on them and besiege them even more.

8 new gates were installed just a few days ago in the southern area of ​​Nablus, adding to more than 10 others previously installed by the occupation, encircling the area on all four sides and imposing a comprehensive siege on it, isolating it from each other and paralyzing movement between them.

A dirt barrier placed by the occupation army inside the village of Burqa, north of Nablus, paralyzing the movement of Palestinians (Al Jazeera)

"big prison"

In Burin, which was already besieged by 4 gates and fixed and mobile military checkpoints, especially the so-called “Al-Murabba’a” checkpoint, the occupation added a fifth gate at its main entrance to turn it into a “large prison,” as described by Imran, who is also the head of its village council.

Omran says that these gates - according to the occupation’s claim - are “precautionary and in anticipation of any emergency security event,” while in reality they are to further tighten the noose and isolate areas from each other and turn them into iron cages through which Palestinians lose their most basic rights to movement and travel.

He added to Al Jazeera Net, "Alleging that for security reasons, the occupation restricts the movement of citizens and controls it by forcing them to take roads that it determines. This is a moral war on the steadfastness of the Palestinians."

In addition to these gates, some of which the occupation provides with electronic cameras that monitor citizens' movements, the occupation closed alternative side roads and launched drones, in addition to the role of settlement guards who participated in setting up barriers, pursuing citizens, and assaulting them.

By closing the occupation of any of these gates in Burin, it separates the north of the West Bank from its south, as the village has become almost the only alternative corridor for the movement of citizens through what is known as the “Al-Murabba’” checkpoint, that is, from the Nablus area in the north of the West Bank to its center and south.

Omran confirms that the occupation gates and its “restrictive” military measures have paralyzed the movement of citizens in Burin and neighboring villages by more than 50%, especially university students and employees, and citizens began “counting to the million” before leaving their homes after they found that most of their time was wasted on the roads “and in order to avoid... Oppression and humiliation from the occupation soldiers.”

Also in Qusra and the surrounding villages southeast of Nablus, the occupation - after closing the main entrance to the town for 60 days - installed a military gate that further closed them off and isolated them from communicating with the surrounding villages.

The occupation closes the “Awarta” gate south of Nablus and cuts off communication with the entire southern area of ​​the city (Al Jazeera)

escalation

Although the policy of siege and isolation is not new, Israel has significantly and noticeably escalated its policy of siege and isolation of cities and towns in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem after the war on the Gaza Strip on the seventh of last October.

The West Bank was cut off through about 700 military checkpoints of various shapes and types, fixed and mobile, and special stone and dirt barriers inside and between the villages themselves, to further control the siege by installing 132 military gates.

The director of the Wall and Settlement Resistance Authority in the city of Nablus, Murad Shteiwi, says that some of these gates have been closed since the beginning of the war and passage through them is permanently prohibited, and others were installed by the occupation during its aggression, especially south of Nablus, and it was a qualitative addition in the torture of citizens and within the policy of apartheid.

It is also, in Shteiwi’s assessment, an implementation of the decision of the extremist Bezalel Smotrich, the Israeli Minister of Finance, to establish buffer zones around the settlements and prevent the Palestinian presence through construction and other things in them, in addition to controlling the main roads that the Palestinians used and transferring them to the settlers.

This was enshrined, adds Shteiwi, “a fait accompli policy by a decision from the Israeli Supreme Court to accelerate the construction of bypass roads in the West Bank for the benefit of settlers.”

Al-Murabba checkpoint gate north of Burin village, south of Nablus (Al-Jazeera)

Political risks

There are many dangers facing the Palestinians as a result of these gates, according to Shteiwi, the most important of which lies in preventing the movement of Palestinians on the roads, thus establishing a political reality that affects the lifeblood of the Palestinians by establishing an independent, viable and geographically contiguous state.

The occupation also seeks to force the Palestinians to create and take new roads to reinforce the policy of apartheid, and to target them in one place.

Shteiwi did not hide his fear that these gates would be turned into electronic ones, or equipped with electronic machine guns, such as those installed on sections of the apartheid wall, to control them remotely and reduce the burden of the occupation army’s presence on them.

The director of the Wall and Settlement Resistance Authority in Nablus also warned of health risks if the occupation provides these gates with radiation cameras, such as those spread at checkpoints and vital road joints.

In addition to its security risk of isolating the regions and defining the identity of insiders and outsiders through them, Palestinian military expert Major General Youssef Al-Sharqawi believes that its danger is greater political because it is “a translation of the spirit of the Oslo Accords.”

The agreement stipulates that “the Palestinian state, as envisioned by the Israeli doctrine, will be surrounded and isolated, thus eliminating the dream of an independent Palestinian state,” according to Al-Sharqawi.

He attributed the large number of these gates and their rapid spread recently to the expansion of the Nablus region and the multiplicity of its outlets. Consequently, Al-Sharqawi says, the occupation seeks to cut off communication within the villages and with the city, and to restrict the popular incubator of the resistance to prevent its exit.

29,000 Jews live in 14 settlements, in addition to 52 settlement outposts on the territory of Nablus. Ghassan Douglas, Acting Governor of Nablus, confirmed - in a previous interview with Al Jazeera Net - that settler attacks against citizens doubled by 208% after the Israeli war on Gaza.

Source: Al Jazeera