In the West Bank, Palestinians are struggling to adapt to a new reality
At one of the main checkpoints between the West Bank and Jerusalem, only two of four lanes were recently open and operating hours were reduced to 12 hours a day.
Haneen Faroukh, 26, said she now had to wait hours to do simple shopping. Israeli soldiers had sown panic among ordinary Palestinians who regularly cross to reach jobs, doctors, relatives or simply their homes.
“They shout at us all the time,” Ms Faroukh said. “We're too scared to say anything.”
For many Palestinians, life in the West Bank, already difficult under years of Israeli occupation, is now subject to increasingly severe restrictions and an increased military presence since Hamas's October 7 attack on southern Israel, killing an estimated 1,200 people died.
Israeli authorities have created new bottlenecks for travel, slowing down traffic. They no longer allow many Palestinians to work in Israel, which is a lifeline for the local economy. And they have increased the intensity of raids and arrests in West Bank neighborhoods.
The Israeli military says there has been a “significant increase in terrorist attacks” in the West Bank since October 7, necessitating the need for additional security measures and raids.
Many Palestinians who spoke to The New York Times say these sometimes humiliating measures have provoked frustration and anger. They have watched in horror as an estimated 26,000 people, including friends and relatives, have died under heavy Israeli bombardment in Gaza, while at home they faced deteriorating conditions under Israeli rule and attacks by Jewish settlers.
In extreme cases, this has translated into violence by Palestinian factions. Last month, two Palestinian men stole cars and ran over Israelis in a Tel Aviv suburb, Israeli police said. According to emergency services, one person was killed and seventeen others were injured. Both men were residents of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in the West Bank – which includes a number of Palestinian towns interspersed with Israeli settlements – have long faced an Israeli occupation that largely dictates their lives.
Israel controls access to most of the West Bank's water, restricts Palestinian access to several roads and decides who can enter Israel for work. Israel has continued to allow the construction of thousands of new buildings in Jewish settlements while making it extremely difficult for Palestinians to obtain construction permits in the West Bank areas that Israel directly administers, a fact that has hampered most Palestinian development blocks in those areas.
More than 100,000 Palestinians in the West Bank worked in Israel and in Jewish settlements in the West Bank before the war, according to Raja Khalidi, head of the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute.
Since October 7, Israel has revoked the majority of these work permits. And the steady stream of West Bank workers who usually cross the border has been reduced to a trickle.
For a few weeks after the Hamas-led attack, buses from Jerusalem to Ramallah in the West Bank were only allowed to drop off passengers as far as the checkpoint, forcing passengers to take different forms of transportation.
Charlie Gabajee, 47, said he worked as a delivery driver between Israel and the West Bank until his license was revoked.
“Life is so limited now,” he said in his car as he made his way through the checkpoint to take his 85-year-old mother, Claire, to the hospital.
He explained how Israeli soldiers regularly check cars while pointing their weapons at the passengers. He fears things could get worse in the West Bank.
“I think there is a plan for the Israeli government that after they are done in Gaza, they will come here to the West Bank and try to close it down even further,” he said.
The number of “entry and movement restrictions” Israeli forces had established in the West Bank, including checkpoints and roadblocks, rose from 645 to 694 in mid-December, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Economic shockwaves have rippled through the West Bank.
Israel collected taxpayer money in Gaza and the West Bank and gave the money to the Palestinian Authority, which has limited self-government in the occupied West Bank. After October 7, Israel withheld funds intended for salary and pension expenses in Gaza. The Palestinian Authority in turn refused to accept the partial transfer, which led to many Palestinian civil servants having their salaries reduced. The Israeli government recently approved a plan to keep the frozen tax funds in Norway.
With funds frozen, Palestinian banks face a greater risk of default on loans to Gaza residents, Palestinian workers in Israel and Palestinian Authority employees under pressure.
The Palestinian Authority was forced to take out a $400 million loan in December to keep itself afloat. This brought the total public debt of the Palestinian banking system to $2.5 billion, Mr Khalidi said.
“I don't want to use the phrase 'perfect storm' because it seemed appropriate for Covid, but it's much worse than that,” Mr Khalidi said. “The overall blow to overall demand and consumption in the economy is being felt through the West Bank, while the collapse of Gaza is seen as the worst case that could yet happen to the West Bank.”
Some public schools in the West Bank have closed because teachers no longer receive salaries from the Palestinian Authority. Even when schools are open, some parents are too scared to send their children away, fearing they could be caught in an Israeli raid.
“I send my daughter to school, but I feel like she could die at any moment. I get on my nerves,” said Manal Hamade, 42, who runs a women's salon in the Balata district on the outskirts of Nablus.
“The Israelis used to conduct raids at night, but now they can come in at any time,” she said.
Her anxiety and wariness reflected the atmosphere in the neighborhood, where residents remain alert for signs of outsiders that could indicate an Israeli attack on the camp.
At least 380 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank and Jerusalem since October 7, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah.
The Israeli military said in a statement that it is “conducting nightly counter-terrorism operations to arrest suspects, many of whom are part of the terrorist organization Hamas. Moreover, as part of security operations in the area, dynamic check posts have been established at various places.”
Even before the Hamas attacks Colonist violence reached its highest level since the UN started tracking it in the mid-2000s. According to UN figures in November 2023, there was an average of one incident of settler violence per day in 2021. Since October 7, the average has been seven incidents per day. Extremist settlers have attacked Palestinian homes and businesses in the West Bank. They have burned down the tents of semi-nomadic Bedouin herders and shot people, witnesses say.
On Thursday, President Biden ordered broad financial and travel sanctions on Israeli settlers accused of violent attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank.
Hadya Sidr, 42, lives in the city of Hebron with her husband Abed and four children and stepchildren. They said they had become accustomed to occasional harassment from settlers living nearby. But since the Oct. 7 attacks, they said, settlers have felt more emboldened.
Most evenings, Ms. Sidr said, settlers throw stones, trash and empty wine bottles to harass them.
“We used to live normally, you could go out, but now that is no longer possible. It's just too scary,” she said.
Her husband added that the settlers also shouted profanities at them: “Muhammad is a pig,” referring to the Prophet Mohammed.
“We don't leave our houses after 4 or 5 p.m. Why? Because we are afraid that a settler will see us and shoot us,” he said.
The Sidrs, like many Palestinian families living in the West Bank's numerous refugee camps — many of which are built-up areas established decades ago — said the slumping economy has hit them particularly hard.
“In normal times, we are hardly able to get enough food,” said Mr. Sidr, who sews Palestinian embroidery on various types of textiles. “People no longer live here. Everyone who had some money hidden spent it.”
“After the war, we will be forced to beg from people,” he added.
Gabby Sobelman, Hiba Yazbek And Johnatan Reiss reporting contributed.