To be at work by 9 a.m., Joseph Handal gets up at 4:30 a.m., even though his workplace, a Franciscan church in the Old City of Jerusalem, is only a few miles from his home in Bethlehem.
The journey should take 25 minutes by road. But this is the occupied West Bank. Nothing is ever simple here.
“We wait for the bus and see if it comes. If it doesn’t come, the checkpoint is closed. Right now, it’s closed. But it may open later. Or maybe it won’t,” Handal told CNN, standing on the side of the road with a group of other workers.
As a Palestinian resident of the West Bank, Handal needs a permit to enter Jerusalem. He does have one – but whether he can make it to work depends on his ability to get through at least two Israeli checkpoints.
With Israel at war, he says this process has become a nightmare.
After Hamas launched its terror attack on Israel on October 7, killing more than 1,400 people and kidnapping some 240 others, Israel stepped up its security measures and began severely restricting the freedom of movement of Palestinian residents of the West Bank.
CNN has asked Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) for comment on the increased restrictions, but has not received a response.
Israel controls all entry and exit points to the West Bank through roadblocks and checkpoints which are staffed by soldiers and armed police. The security forces have always had the ability to close these checkpoints without warning but, since October 7, the closures have been more frequent and have lasted longer, residents and human rights watchdogs say.
For Handal and the tens of thousands of West Bank Palestinians who need to get to Jerusalem for work, school, to go to a doctor or to visit family, this means daily uncertainty.
“It puts you in a position where you can’t even tell someone ‘I’ll meet you tomorrow,’ because you don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Mohammad Jamil, an Arabic teacher from a village near Hebron.
Jamil told CNN his son Ibrahim had missed two days of school in the past two weeks because the so-called Tunnels Checkpoint near Bethlehem was closed. Ibrahim, who is attending an elementary school in Jerusalem, said he didn’t mind. School is boring, he said, laughing.
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