On May 12, 2025, Israel officially relocated the checkpoint to the Palestinian village of al-Walaja, southwest of Jerusalem.1 Now a mile closer to the village’s center, the checkpoint’s relocation solidifies the village's ghettoization, cutting al-Walaja residents off from their lands and resources while transferring a chunk of Palestinian agricultural area to Israel, in a move that critics say is part of Israel’s larger plans to annex the occupied West Bank.

The pevious checkpoint was located before ‘Ayn Hinya spring and before the Green 1949 Armistice Agreement Line. Now, the checkpoint is situated past the Green Line on Jerusalem’s municipal boundary, transferring 1,200 dunams (approximately 300 acres) of land, including the ‘Ayn Hinya spring, over to the Israeli side of the checkpoint.

Israelis call the spring Ein Yael, and the checkpoint by the same name.2

“The closer the checkpoint is to al-Walaja, the more land it takes,” Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at Ir Amim, a Jerusalem-focused Israeli NGO, told Jerusalem Story.3

Al-Walaja residents petitioned the court against the planned relocation of the checkpoint in 2018, when the Jerusalem Municipality first approved the move. Yet, the Jerusalem District Court rejected the residents’ petition after the state told the court the relocation was necessary for “security needs.”4 Residents appealed to Israel’s Supreme Court, which ruled against them in 2024, thus paving the way for the checkpoint’s relocation this year.

The ancient agricultural village of al-Walaja is located south of Jerusalem and north of Bethlehem. Israel captured the village in the 1967 War, with its northern half incorporated into Israel’s municipal boundaries of East Jerusalem, and the southern end becoming part of Israeli military-controlled Area C of the West Bank.

In 2007, Israel began building the Separation Wall around al-Walaja. The wall’s completion in 2010 besieged the community, severing it from its neighboring villages and shrinking al-Walaja’s boundaries. The construction of the wall and later the inauguration of the Refaim Stream National Park in 2018 led to the confiscation of the majority of al-Walaja farmland.

Although the wall separated al-Walaja residents from the ‘Ayn Hinya spring, a significant water resource for the village, residents could still go around the wall by foot or car to access the spring, because the checkpoint was about 1.5 kilometers (nearly a mile) away from it. Therefore, while the spring and its surroundings were within the area that Israel declared as its sovereign territory in 1967, Tatarsky explained that, for decades, it was still a Palestinian space that Israelis didn’t generally enter.

“There was relatively very little Israeli presence. The [nearby] settlements are not so close to that area,” Tatarsky said. “So, the annexation very much remained on paper.”

The actual opening of the park was delayed for two more years, largely because Palestinians from al-Walaja could still access it. Moving the checkpoint was meant to fix that, but funding for its relocation (which entailed building a new checkpoint) took a long time to secure.5 Finally on October 24, 2022, the Jerusalem Municipality’s Finance Committee approved NIS 3 million for the checkpoint at the request of the Jerusalem Municipality, Ministry of Jerusalem Affairs, and the Israel Police.6

Now, with the checkpoint’s new location, residents are completely blocked from the spring.

“There is zero access for people who don’t have the Jerusalem [Israeli permanent-resident] ID,” Hassan Nasr Abu al-Tayn, who is part of al-Walaja’s village council, told Jerusalem Story.7

The pastoral village is famous for preserving the ancient Palestinian farming practice of stone terracing, but losing the spring and their land threatens this way of life.

“Al-Walaja is the only place in Jerusalem that still preserves traditional agriculture,” Tatarsky said. “So, this is also a very huge blow to Palestinian heritage in Jerusalem.”

More than just part of their livelihood, the spring and its surroundings were a source for recreation for al-Walaja, Abu al-Tayn said, explaining how residents used to picnic in the area but now can no longer enjoy the site’s pristine nature. For Israelis, the checkpoint’s relocation improves their leisure time.

“The ‘Ayn Hinya spring is a very major site [in the Refaim Stream National Park],” Sari Kronish, an architect at Israeli planning rights organization Bimkom, told Jerusalem Story.8 “Israeli tourists who want to go to a water spring on stolen land have to pass a checkpoint to do it [which] puts a damper on the experience. It’s a way to enlarge the Jewish Israeli space, what we call green settlement.”

As Tatarsky noted, moving the checkpoint strips the al-Walaja community of their land, absorbing it into Israel’s Refaim Stream National Park. In this regard, Israel’s past annexation of al-Walaja is expanded and consolidated.

“They are turning these lands from a Palestinian space to an Israeli space through moving the checkpoint, displacing the farmers, not allowing the farmers to be in their land, and making it very convenient for Israelis to arrive without a checkpoint,” Tatarsky said.

“They’ll very quickly imagine that al-Walaja has always been part of Israel,” Tatarsky added.