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| Group of Palestinian children in Bureyc Camp raise the Palestinian flag over the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israeli strikes following announcements of recognition of the State of Palestine by Canada, Australia, the UK, and Portugal, on September 22, 2025, in Gaza City, Gaza. [Moiz Salhi – Anadolu Agency] |
Each time I want to visit my hometown — to see my family, to walk the streets where I grew up, or to tend to my olive groves — I am confronted by gates and checkpoints. What used to be a 30-minute drive can now take hours, or be impossible. Like thousands of other Palestinians, I feel my life narrowing, not by chance but by design.
Checkpoints and gates: Tools of dispossession
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), up until 2024 the Israeli occupation has established a total of 849 checkpoints across the occupied West Bank, with gates blocking roads constituting a third of these obstacles. The number has dramatically increased in 2025. Approximately 1,000 military gates and checkpoints massively fragment the West Bank, which covers an area of no more than 5,000 square kilometers, meaning there is a gate or checkpoint every five kilometers. For Palestinians, these statistics are not abstract. Each gate is a choke point in our daily lives.
Gates mean more than inconvenience, they mean economic collapse, and deprivation of basic services and cutting social life. Villages once connected to markets now see their shops shuttered, their youth unemployed. When access roads are blocked, workers cannot reach cities or Israel for employment. Farmers cannot reach groves or sell their produce.
In Salfit governorate, where Qira is located, the situation is particularly dire. The movement restrictions imposed by these checkpoints and gates severely disrupt the access of nearly 90,000 people to their lands, healthcare, education, and livelihoods. Gates have severed rural communities from Salfit city, where hospitals, administrative offices, and markets are located. The entrance to my hometown has been closed for months due to locked gates, forcing residents to take long, unpaved, and rough roads to reach the village.
Perhaps worst of all, gates break families apart. Weddings, funerals, and daily visits that once required a short drive now become logistical nightmares or impossible journeys. The feeling of unpredictability — never knowing if a road will be open or closed — has seeped into the fabric of Palestinian life, a constant reminder of powerlessness.
Settler violence: A growing threat
The challenges posed by checkpoints and gates are compounded by the escalating violence from Israeli settlers. These incidents include physical assaults, threats, and the destruction of olive trees.
OCHA documented over 200 settler-related incidents during the 2024 harvest season, in which more than 1,600 olive trees were vandalised, burned, or cut. Tools and harvests were stolen; farmers were assaulted.
Between January and March 2025, settler violence increased by an estimated 30 per cent compared to the same period in 2024. This surge in aggression is often carried out with impunity, as Israeli security forces frequently fail to intervene or even provide protection to Palestinian communities under attack.
My village has witnessed numerous settler crimes, the most recent of which occurred last March when a number of settlers sneaked in under the cover of darkness, attacked a house on the outskirts of the village, and set fire to a farmer’s vehicle. The occupation authorities did not bring any settlers to justice and the incident was recorded—as usual—as an unknown person.
The olive season is approaching, and it is unclear to me and my family – like many Palestinians – whether we will be able to reach our olive groves.
The olive grove: A symbol of resilience
For Palestinians, olive season is part of our heritage, identity, and resilience. The harvest season is a time of family gatherings and collective labour, a ritual passed down for generations. These trees have witnessed centuries of history, bearing witness to our ancestors’ toil and perseverance.
The olive tree, a symbol of Palestinian identity and resilience, has become a target in the broader strategy of displacement and dispossession. A report issued by the Palestinian Land Research Center revealed that the Israeli army and settlers uprooted more than 59,000 trees and confiscated approximatel 50,000 dunams of land in the occupied West Bank during 2024.
The numbers are staggering: between 1967 and 2011, over 800,000 trees were uprooted. From 2010 to 2023, another 278,000 were destroyed. Each tree takes years to grow; each uprooted grove... READ MORE https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250927-between-olive-groves-and-gates-a-palestinians-struggle-for-land-and-livelihood/