Access, Mobility, and Fragmentation
Closure and Access to Jerusalem
Jerusalem is known as an open, international, “city of peace.” For millions of Palestinians, however, it is a closed city, virtually unreachable, as unknown and unknowable as the sea. Here we explore closure, Israel’s system that controls movement based on identity and thereby profoundly alters the fabric of the city and its hinterland.
Featured in This Topic
Israeli police intensify pressure on Palestinian neighborhoods in and around northern Jerusalem with raids, arrests, and demolitions.
Israel finally allows Jerusalem’s Old City a respite after nearly six weeks of closure
Resilience in the face of attempted erasure
What does it mean that Israel is increasing its restrictive measures in the Old City?
Tens of thousands of Palestinians are under siege, rendering life exceedingly difficult.
As soon as the ceasefire in Gaza took effect, Israel turned on the West Bank just as Ramadan was getting underway.
Closure, a “temporary” measure introduced in 1991, is the system that controls Palestinians’ movement and blocks millions from accessing Jerusalem.
The black hole of blacklisting: How Palestinians with PA IDs get wholly banned from Jerusalem with one click on the keyboard
With each passing day, Jerusalem is getting harder to reach for Palestinians outside the city.
The right to medical treatment and even to relieve oneself are compromised by Israeli checkpoints, especially when extended closures are enforced.
What’s it like to live behind a military checkpoint in your own city?
A Palestinian Jerusalemite takes stock of Israel’s latest clampdown on the West Bank.
A young pregnant woman summons inner strength to get around a checkpoint while on the verge of giving birth.
What is closure, and how does it block Palestinians with certain IDs from moving freely? We asked Yael Berda, who worked within and studied this little-understood bureaucracy.
Teresa, 22, lives in Ramallah, but she’s never seen nearby Jerusalem due to Israel’s Separation Wall and permit regime. What lies behind the wall?
Rinad’s story shows how closure steals time, lives, and livelihoods, and robs Palestinians like her of the chance to enjoy and engage with their own city.
Jerusalem International Airport, once a gateway for an open region to the world, offers a study in sharp contrasts to the area’s present closure regime.
The history of mobility and the barriers that reshaped it
The Story in Numbers
34
Number of years since the first closure of the West Bank and Gaza in January 1991, and the introduction of the permit regime [1]
18
Checkpoints controlling access to Jerusalem [2]
26,000
Estimated number of Palestinians who pass through Qalandiya checkpoint, the major access point between Ramallah and Jerusalem, each day [3]
3
Number of checkpoints that all Palestinians with PA IDs are allowed to use to access Jerusalem [4]
15,000
Estimated number of Palestinians who pass through Checkpoint 300, the major checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, each day [5]
4.6 million
Palestinians living within the occupied West Bank and Gaza who cannot enter Jerusalem without a permit [6]
100+
Types of permits required for Palestinians with Palestinian Authority IDs to move from place to place for every possible life circumstance [7]
0
Types of permits required for Jews with Israeli IDs to move from place to place [8]
500,000+
Palestinians banned permanently from Jerusalem for 1–99 years [9]
Notes
1. See Jerusalem: A Closed City.
2. See Checkpoints, Part 1: Severing Jerusalem.
3. Harrison Jacobs, “I Took the Excruciating 10-mile Journey through Israel’s Most Notorious Military Checkpoint That Adds Hours to the Daily Commute for 26,000 Palestinians,” Business Insider, August 7, 2018.
4. See Checkpoints, Part 1: Severing Jerusalem.
5. ActiveStills, “Checkpoints: Israel’s Military Checkpoints: ‘We Live a Life of Injustice,’” Al Jazeera, 2018.
6. See The Unreachable City.
7. See Jerusalem: A Closed City.
8. See Closure and the Dismemberment of Jerusalem.
9. See Banned from Entry.
A young man shares his lifetime of experience of dealing with Israel’s closure of Jerusalem and how it has impacted his entire life.