Roadblock Strangulation Chokes West Bank Economy: 925 Checkpoints Swallow Nearly 200,000 Work Hours Daily, Palestinian Dairy Forced to Lay Off Workers

In the village of Rujeib in the southeast of the West Bank's Nablus governorate, two delivery trucks at the Al-Kamel dairy factory now sit parked in the factory yard for long stretches. The Palestinian-owned dairy was established only in 2022, but Al Jazeera reported that a sudden collapse in market demand and transport disruptions have forced it to lay off at least 12 workers, with sales down 30 to 40 percent.

The factory is only a few kilometers from Nablus, but a truck carrying fresh milk leaving the city often has to wait two to three hours at Israeli military checkpoints; at the Awarta checkpoint about two kilometers from the plant, waits have stretched to four hours. Ten tons of milk have been spoiled as a result.

"Since the company was established, we have faced many challenges, the most prominent of which are the checkpoints and gates scattered across the West Bank, especially in the city of Nablus," Al-Kamel head Dweikat told Al Jazeera. "The city suffers a tight siege; you can hardly find an entrance that does not have a permanent or semi-permanent checkpoint. These checkpoints obstruct the movement of people, increase transportation costs, and are inevitably reflected in product prices and production costs."

Nablus is no isolated case. According to data from the Palestinian Colonization and Resistance Committee, there are currently some 925 military checkpoints and gates across the West Bank, with 147 of them concentrated in Nablus governorate alone. Al Jazeera noted in its report that since Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, transport movement across the entire West Bank has dropped by more than 50 percent. The outlet said these checkpoints were originally set up to maintain Israel's ongoing occupation of the West Bank and to protect Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law; at the same time, a wave of settler massacres against Palestinian towns and villages has been intensifying.

The economic cost of systematic suffocation

In March 2025, a monitoring study of 14 checkpoints by the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS) produced a quantified picture: average vehicle waiting times ranged from 15 to 50 minutes, trips leaving Nablus governorate were delayed by an average of 42 minutes, and original travel times increased by 77.9 percent.

The study estimated that these delays swallow roughly 191,146 work hours per day, equivalent to economic losses of about 2.8 million new shekels (roughly US$764,600), or about 62.2 million new shekels per month (roughly US$16.8 million). Drivers forced to detour around closed checkpoints burn through an additional 71,000 new shekels (roughly US$19,200) in fuel every day.

Dweikat said: "Frankly, because of these obstacles, we have been forced to sacrifice many customers outside the city of Nablus. We are in the dairy business, which is a very sensitive industry that requires refrigerated transport, so the challenges for us are extremely great."

Al Jazeera's report noted that since the start of the Gaza war, the high unemployment rate in the West Bank (especially after work permits for Palestinians employed in Israel were suspended), combined with falling wages, has severely suppressed local economic activity. Dweikat acknowledged: "Unfortunately, given the poor economic conditions brought by the recession and contraction, the factory sometimes cannot pass on the increased costs to consumers, because economic conditions are already worsening."

Nablus local spice trader Mansour Aliwi described the city as a "ghost town." He told Al Jazeera: "The crisis deepens month after month, because Israel closes crossings and checkpoints and bars Israeli Arabs from entering the West Bank. We rely heavily on shoppers from the countryside and the villages, but the checkpoints prevent them from coming."

A fractured economic map

According to the Colonization and Resistance Committee, the separation wall Israel has been building since 2002 has already isolated more than 295 square kilometers of Palestinian land; if completed as planned, it will isolate 560 square kilometers, nearly 9 percent of the total area of the West Bank.

Palestinian business journalist Jafar Sadaqa told Al Jazeera that the densification of checkpoints over the past three years has brought far-reaching consequences: business bankruptcies, closures, thousands of workers unemployed, and unemployment pushed to unprecedented levels.

"An economy cut off from its connections cannot be built," Sadaqa said. "The West Bank is completely separated from the Gaza Strip; each is besieged and isolated, not only from one another but from the outside world." He added that the total damage these measures have inflicted on the Palestinian economy is incalculable—not limited to the direct economic losses from blocking the movement of people and goods and the destruction of farmland and facilities, but also including the opportunities the Palestinian economy has missed to use its natural and commercial resources, and the complete foreclosure of any possibility of developing regional and global economic ties.