The West Bank has, for the nearly 3.5 million Palestinians who live there, ceased to exist as a contiguous territory. According to the most recent UN data from December 2025, at least 925 fixed and temporary checkpoints, metal gates, roadblocks, and earth mounds divide the West Bank. (A Palestinian governmental commission reported this month that the number is now 942.) This fracturing has torn families apart, stifled the economy, and obstructed access to essential services such as hospitals and schools.
Israel has never publicly listed the checkpoints it operates, their staffing hours, or their closure times. On the ground, Google Maps is practically useless for Palestinians; it is blind to the checkpoints and tries to route drivers onto roads reserved for Israeli-plated cars. Instead, citizens have developed their own ad hoc networks to inform each other of closures.
As far as we know, no organization has used that network—combined with new datasets and on-the-ground reporting—to measure what this does to daily life. Here are the checkpoints and obstacles mapped together.
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