While Jewish residents of Jerusalem observe the Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur, their Palestinian neighbors are barricaded into their neighborhoods with large cement blocks, immovable except by bulldozers. The cement blocks are set up to prevent Palestinians from entering Jewish areas by car, and border police are dispatched across the city to “maintain public security and order,”1 further restricting Palestinians’ movement on foot.
While setting up the cement blockers in al-‘Isawiyya, Israeli border police fired sound grenades at residents to disperse them from the scene.2
It used to be that police barricades were set up only at the entrance to Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods during Yom Kippur to prevent drivers from incurring the wrath of their residents. Now, however, already-separated Palestinian neighborhoods are completely isolated from one another. Shu‘fat and Beit Hanina in the north are isolated from the rest of Jerusalem. Jabal Mukabbir, Sur Bahir, Ras al-Amud, and Silwan in the south are disconnected from Sheikh Jarrah and Wadi al-Joz in the north.
Yom Kippur closures bring the lives of many Palestinians in Jerusalem to a complete stop, preventing them from reaching their workplaces or other vital locations beyond their own neighborhoods. Stores are closed and workplaces shuttered in mainly Jewish areas of Jerusalem and in Israel, but Palestinians in the city are still unable to travel even though they—Muslims and Christians—are not observing the holiday.
