Checkpoints in the occupied West Bank choking Palestinian life, warns UN expert- – Israel’s expanding system of checkpoints, road gates and other movement restrictions in the occupied West Bank is fragmenting Palestinian territory and aggravating the arbitrary system of control that costs Palestinians time, livelihoods, education and lives, a UN expert warned today.

Fact Sheet Israeli Checkpoints in the West Bank Palestine 2026  https://www.ochaopt.org/sites/default/files/Factsheet_Movement_and_Access_April_2026_1.pdf

 

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https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/10/checkpoints-occupied-west-bank-choking-palestinian-life-warns-un-expert  

 02 October 2026

GENEVA – Israel’s expanding system of checkpoints, road gates and other movement restrictions in the occupied West Bank is fragmenting Palestinian territory and aggravating the arbitrary system of control that costs Palestinians time, livelihoods, education and lives, a UN expert warned today.

“Arbitrariness itself becomes a form of torment when every journey, every appointment and every family visit depends on whether a gate is open or a soldier allows passage,” said Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.

“Numbers alone cannot capture what this system inflicts. It steals hours and days from people’s lives, separates families, deprives students of education and workers of livelihoods and obstructs access to life-saving health care.”

Highlighting one case among hundreds, the Special Rapporteur said that in July 2026, four-month-old Ahmed Zaid died after Israeli soldiers prevented his family from reaching an ambulance waiting beyond a military checkpoint for more than an hour. “Ahmed’s death is a devastating illustration of what this system means in human terms,” Albanese said. “For millions of Palestinians, reaching work, school, university, hospital or family can take hours, involve being rerouted without warning or become altogether impossible.”

As of December 2025, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs documented 925 checkpoints and other obstacles restricting the movement of some 3.4 million Palestinians across the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem – the highest number in 20 years, and 43 per cent above the average of the preceding two decades.

Recent investigations reviewed by the mandate, drawing on on-the-ground reporting, surveys of hundreds of Palestinians, satellite imagery and billions of GPS data points, show that this choking regime has only intensified. Since October 2023, delays around Nablus have surged beyond levels recorded anywhere else in the West Bank. In Beit Furik, a town of nearly 16,000 people with a single gate, a 15-minute drive routinely took more than five hours, and up to 10 hours on the worst days. About half of those surveyed said checkpoints had affected their own or their spouse’s ability to find work.

The Special Rapporteur pointed to an unmistakable link between the proliferation of checkpoints and the rapidly deteriorating situation across the West Bank: settler terror, accelerating settlement expansion, demolitions, forced displacement and the deliberate destruction of Palestinian agricultural life.

“Palestinian communities are increasingly being transformed into isolated enclaves – separate cells of a long-exposed carceral regime, connected or disconnected at the whim of the occupying power,” she said. “The checkpoints are not isolated inconveniences. The checkpoint system is unlawful, as is the occupation from which it emanates.”

In its July 2024 Advisory Opinion, the International Court of Justice found that Israeli policies had fragmented the West Bank, severed East Jerusalem from it and encircled Palestinian communities in enclaves, obstructing the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.

“The international community’s unforgivable delay in giving effect to the Court’s demand that Israel’s unlawful presence end ‘as rapidly as possible’ is a hallmark of complicity.”

“This system of fragmentation and control must end,” Albanese said. “Palestinians must be able to move freely across their own land, live together as a people and exercise their right to self-determination.”

*Francesca Albanese is the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967

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New report shows key indicators of Earth’s health are ‘outside the safe operating space’ as climate disaster looms

Trucks carry wood from a deforested area in Para state, Brazil, during the Cop30 UN climate change conference in November 2025,. Photograph: Mauro Pimentel/AFP/Getty Images

Climate crisis

‘Planetary boundaries’ necessary for flourishing of life have been massively breached, scientists warn

Oliver Milman

Mon 21 Sep 2026

The planetary life support systems relied upon by humans have deteriorated to their worst levels ever recorded amid ongoing pollution and habitat destruction, according to a key yet grim annual update by scientists.

Of the nine “planetary boundaries” that help determine whether life can flourish on Earth, seven are being breached at their highest ever levels of transgression, according to the latest planetary health check, a process that was established in 2009.

The seven key indicators in the danger zone include climate change, change in biosphere integrity, land system change, freshwater change, modification of biogeochemical flows, introduction of novel entities and, for the first time last year, ocean acidification.... READ MORE   https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/sep/21/planetary-boundaries-breached-scientists-warn-climate-crisis

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4.7 Million Dead, $8 Trillion: Counting the Devastating Human & Economic Costs of the Post‑9/11 Wars

 September 10, 2026

Watch Full Show

As part of our weeklong coverage marking the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks and the launch of the United States’ so-called war on terror, we take a look at the human, financial and environmental costs of U.S. military intervention around the world with Neta Crawford, co-founder of Brown University’s Costs of War Project. Researchers at the Costs of War Project estimate that nearly a million people have been killed as a direct result of U.S. military violence in the Middle East since 2001. At least half are estimated to be civilians. An additional 3.8 million deaths can be attributed to the indirect effects of war, including injuries, famine and long-term health conditions. And the wars have also increased the U.S. debt, military footprint, greenhouse gas emissions, destruction and destabilization abroad and unchecked executive power at home. “The consequences are all around us,” says Crawford.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We end today’s show with a look at the human, budgetary and environmental costs of these forever wars. According to the latest numbers from the nonpartisan Costs of War Project at Brown University, close to 1 million people were killed due to war violence in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Syria and beyond. At least half of them are estimated to be civilians. The indirect death toll from these wars is far higher, between 3.6 and 3.8 million people.

AMY GOODMAN: In terms of budget costs, the U.S. federal government has spent more than $8 trillion on the post-9/11 wars through 2021.

For more, we’re joined by Neta Crawford, the co-founder of the Costs of War Project.

In these last few minutes that we have, lay out the costs of war, as we are here today on this 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

NETA CRAWFORD: Well, you’ve already touched on the direct death, the killing that results when bombs and bullets and fire are rained down on people. And the soldiers who were fighting for the United States and its allies died. But there’s the indirect death, the consequences of the destruction of infrastructure, which can be two or three times the number of people who are injured. And this is because there’s no longer hospitals or healthcare available to people, because food has been — production has been disrupted. So, the harm to bodies is substantial.

A second harm, which Spencer Ackerman discussed briefly, was the harm to U.S. democracy. There’s decreased congressional and judicial oversight of the executive, increased executive power. There’s been a decline in the rule of law. The United States waged preventive war in Iraq. That’s a real consequence, which has led to more easily waging war in Iran.

So, there’s the human toll, the political consequences, and the environmental consequences are devastating, because not only did the United States increase its use of force immediately after the attack on Afghanistan began, the United States military has increased its use of force even after those wars ended. The United States has a global military presence, more than 750 bases around the world. And its presence has caused environmental harm because of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the world’s largest petroleum user, which is the Department of Defense.

So, it’s human, political, and now just to conclude with the economic costs, which are increased debt to the United States, increased military spending, but also, because these wars were not paid for through taxes like previous wars — they were paid for by borrowing — the United States’ debt has grown, and the interest to pay the debt will be coming out of the Treasury for many years to come. So, the consequences are all around us.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you so much for being with us, Neta Crawford, co-founder of the Costs of War Project, which we will link to.

https://www.democracynow.org/2026/9/10/9_11_25th_anniversary_costs_of 

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From 400 hives to 35: the Gaza beekeeper refusing to let war end his life’s work - Ibrahim al-Dabba continues to care for his colonies despite losing his home and most of his hives and equipment. Story by Lina Abu Zayed, photographs by Omar Ashtawy

Ibrahim Naji al-Dabba, 49, (in green) working with his sons. He was displaced from the Shuja’iyya area, east of Gaza City to Tel al- to the south

    "Beekeeping... is our life, our livelihood, and our future."  

The Guardian picture essay 

Each morning, Ibrahim Naji al-Dabba climbs to the roof of a damaged residential tower in Gaza City’s Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood, where rows of beehives sit surrounded by shattered concrete and the scars of war. The rooftop is far from an ideal place for beekeeping, but for the 49-year-old father of seven, it is the only place where he can continue the profession that has sustained his family for decades.

Before the war, al-Dabba owned more than 400 beehives spread across eastern Gaza. His apiaries, equipment, storage facilities, and four-wheel-drive vehicle allowed him to manage a thriving beekeeping business that supported his family. Today, almost everything he built over years of work has disappeared.

“Beekeeping is not just a business,” he says. “It is my family’s only source of income. It is our life, our livelihood, and our future.”

Al-Dabba, who also serves as president of the Gaza Beekeepers’ cooperative society, says beekeeping became a passion long before it became a profession. Over the years, he specialised in producing honey, breeding queen bees, and developing bee strains adapted to Gaza’s climate. Before the war, Gaza’s beekeeping sector had continued to grow despite years of blockade, with hundreds of beekeepers producing honey and supporting local agriculture through pollination.

That changed after the war erupted.

Unable to reach his apiaries because of bombardment and displacement, al-Dabba watched his life’s work vanish. He lost his home, more than 400 beehives, honey-processing equipment, storage facilities, and nearly all the tools required for his trade... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/jul/29/gaza-beekeeper-refusing-to-let-war-end-lifes-work

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"Homes can be demolished. Walls can be reduced to rubble. Entire families can be scattered across the world. But roots run deep... And sometimes, from beneath the wreckage, life emerges to remind us that memory, belonging, and hope refuse to die." Mike Hanini Odetalla

Mike Hanini Odetalla

ptonedsroS3 aguh96c1ia5t010t:619lh249ly 33uaM01273uMP 78 g6i  ·

All That Remains...Reflections on a rather sad day

 

5/31/26

 

After the death of my father-in-law (ay), his humble two-room home in the Kadoura Refugee Camp was torn down.

 

His family, like so many Palestinians, had been violently expelled from their homes and lands by Zionist forces in 1948 and forced into a life of exile and displacement.

 

Seven years later, in 2022, I took my grandson—his great-grandson—back to show him where his grandmother had grown up and to visit a place that I myself had always loved.

 

The house was gone.

 

The tiny garden that my father-in-law had tended with such tender loving care was buried beneath rubble. Yet among the destruction, something remarkable remained.

 

A magnificent grapevine once covered his patio, providing shade in the summer and producing the most exquisite grapes. As I stood there looking at the ruins, I noticed a small cluster of grapes protruding defiantly from the debris.

 

I took this photograph.

 

To some, it is merely a bunch of grapes growing from a collapsed structure.

 

To me, it is a symbol of Palestine itself.

 

Homes can be demolished. Walls can be reduced to rubble. Entire families can be scattered across the world. But roots run deep.

 

And sometimes, from beneath the wreckage, life emerges to remind us that memory, belonging, and hope refuse to die.

 

All that remains... and yet, somehow, it is enough to tell the whole story.

That image of grapes emerging from rubble carries a quiet symbolism that is difficult to ignore:

 

the house was destroyed, but the vine still remembered where it belonged. 

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10166091777606977&set=a.10150390714236977

 photo & essay copyright Mike Hanini Odetalla 2026

Asia's oldest living organism, the ancient Abarkuh cypress tree - at least 4500 years old - is rooted in land that was already known as Iran at the time.

Asia's oldest living organism, the ancient Abarkuh cypress tree - at least 4500 years old - is rooted in land that was already known as Iran at the time.

The Cypress of Abarkuh (Persian: سرو ابرکوه Sarv-e Abarkuh), also called the Zoroastrian Sarv,^[1] is a Persian cypress (Cupressus sempervirens) tree in Abarkuh in Yazd Province of Iran. It is protected by the Cultural Heritage Organization of Iran as a national natural monument and is a major tourist attraction with a height of 25 metres (82 ft 0 in) and with a perimeter of 11.5 metres (37 ft 9 in) at its trunk and 18 metres (59 ft 1 in) higher up around its branches. It is estimated to be over four millennia old and is likely the oldest living lifeform in Asia.^[2]

According to legend, the tree was planted by Zoroaster, the founder of the Zoroastrian religion. It is said that Zoroaster left to spread his teachings to an Iranian city towards Balkh and met Shah Vishtaspa. He stopped at Abarkuh and supposedly planted this tree.^[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarv-e_Abarkuh

1940s, Lydda, Palestine

1940s, Lydda, Palestine

Pals

@palsofnations

 

https://x.com/palsofnations/status/2017496148458561681/photo/1

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1940s, Bethlehem, Palestine 🇵🇸 Palestinian Christian newlyweds in Beit Sahour. In Palestine, the tradition of sticking green leaves and yeast dough to the newlyweds’ home is a folk blessing symbolizing life, growth, and abundance.

 Pals

@palsofnations

 

1940s, Bethlehem, Palestine Palestinian Christian newlyweds in Beit Sahour. 

 

In Palestine, the tradition of sticking green leaves and yeast dough to the newlyweds’ home is a folk blessing symbolizing life, growth, and abundance. 

 

Green leaves—often olive or fig leaves and sometimes kneaded directly into the dough—represent fertility, renewal, and baraka (blessing), while the yeast dough signifies prosperity, sustenance, and a household destined to “rise” and flourish.

https://x.com/palsofnations/status/2014681684713578666 

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