West Bank Closures Turn Medical Emergencies and Daily Commutes into Deadly Ordeals

A Palestinian family in the occupied West Bank is mourning the loss of a mother who died after Israeli road restrictions delayed her access to emergency medical care, highlighting the lethal consequences of a tightening system of checkpoints and closures across the territory.

Zahriya Abu Hijleh, a 66-year-old woman from Deir Istiya, a town northwest of Salfit, collapsed on September 20 while attending her niece’s wedding reception in her hometown. According to her family, she had no underlying health conditions apart from diabetes. When she suddenly felt dizzy and lost consciousness, she was rushed to a local medical centre, where the doctor immediately ordered her transfer to Salfit Governmental Hospital—a facility that would ordinarily be an eight-minute drive away.

But the ambulance dispatched to collect her could not reach the medical centre. The iron gate at the town’s entrance, operated by Israeli forces, was shut. According to her son, Mohammed Abu Hijleh, the ambulance from the medical centre had to transport her as far as the gate. There, she was taken off the stretcher, carried through the barrier on foot, and placed into a second ambulance waiting on the other side.

Medics later determined that Zahriya had suffered a pulmonary embolism and needed urgent treatment. She died shortly afterwards. “My mother was breathing her last; had the gate been open, we wouldn’t have lost her on the way,” Mohammed told Al Jazeera. “Sadly, she died due to the delay.”

The episode is not isolated. It reflects a broader reality in the occupied West Bank, where a dense network of military checkpoints and iron gates disrupts the movement of Palestinians on a daily basis. These obstacles delay access to workplaces, schools, universities and hospitals, and in medical emergencies they can mean the difference between life and death.

Israel periodically imposes comprehensive closures on the West Bank, citing reasons including Jewish holidays. The current closure began on September 27 and is scheduled to last until October 3, coinciding with the festival of Sukkot. During these periods, Palestinians are often forced to wait for hours at sealed checkpoints. Israeli settlers, by contrast, move freely between West Bank cities, and in some cases enter Palestinian villages and towns under army protection.

The human cost of these restrictions extends far beyond missed appointments. Ibtihal Mansour, a resident of Nablus, endured a 14-hour journey last Friday while trying to return home from a visit to her in-laws in the village of al-Janiya, near Ramallah. The family set off at 10am, expecting the trip to take about 45 minutes. Instead, they found the Atara and Ein Siniya checkpoints north of Ramallah closed, 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,” she told Al Jazeera. “We remained on the roads, trying to find any way through, until midnight, a span of more than 14 hours.”

Her children, exhausted and crying after being confined in the vehicle for so long, became part of the ordeal in a way she described as heartbreaking. At a roadblock near Nablus, in an area called al-Lubban Asharqiya, a soldier ordered her to wake her children. When her 11-year-old son did not stir, she said the soldier punched him in the head, causing him to wake up crying. “The scene was heartbreaking; I felt a deep lump in my throat and profound sorrow,” she said. The family was eventually forced to turn back and spend the night at a relative’s home in Ramallah before trying again the next morning.

Such experiences have become routine for many Palestinians travelling between cities and villages. Those who cannot complete their journeys often stay overnight in hotels or with relatives. In some areas, municipalities have converted wedding halls and mosques into temporary shelters for stranded travellers, providing meals donated by residents of nearby towns.

According to the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission (CRRC), there were 942 checkpoints, closure points and other obstacles across the occupied West Bank as of September 25—up from 793 in March 2024. Data from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs puts the total length of these obstacles at approximately 107.7 kilometres (70 miles).

The CRRC says the closures effectively fragment Palestinian communities. Access to workplaces, schools, medical facilities and agricultural land increasingly depends on whether roads and gates happen to be open at a given moment. For families like the Abu Hijlehs, that reality has already proven fatal. For thousands of others, it means daily journeys are transformed into unpredictable and sometimes dangerous ordeals.

The restrictions also carry wider economic and social consequences. When travel between towns becomes unreliable, patients miss dialysis and chemotherapy appointments, students miss exams, and workers lose wages. The cumulative effect is a slow erosion of normal life, with entire communities cut off from essential services and from one another.

For Mohammed Abu Hijleh, the loss of his mother remains raw. He believes the delay caused by the closed gate cost Zahriya her life. Her death underscores how a system of physical barriers—ostensibly meant to address security concerns—can exact a devastating toll on civilians whose only offence is needing to reach a hospital in time. As the current closure continues through early October, thousands of Palestinians face the same uncertainty that Zahriya did: whether the road ahead will be open, or whether another routine journey will end in tragedy.