A new Israeli wire fence is being rapidly erected on the outskirts of Sinjil, a Palestinian town north of Ramallah in the central occupied West Bank.
The barrier —1,500 metres (4,921 feet) long and six metres (20 feet) high — Palestinians say, is turning their hometown, home to nearly 6,000 people, into a walled prison controlled by a single Israeli soldier stationed at a locked gate.
The structure runs along Route 60, a highway linking Ramallah and Nablus frequented by illegal Israeli settlers travelling between illegal settlements built on Palestinian land.
Partnership of occupation, illegal settlers
“This is a coordinated operation between the Israeli army and illegal settlers,” said Ayed Ghafri, a local activist against settlement expansion.
“The occupation is suffocating the town by fencing it in, cutting off farmland, and allowing illegal settlers to terrorise residents.”
Ghafri said the fence has already blocked side entrances to the town, destroyed about 30 dunams (7.4 acres) of Palestinian agricultural land, and effectively severed 70 percent of Sinjil’s land from its inhabitants. Some homes now lie outside the barrier, isolated from the rest of the town.
“Sinjil used to be a commercial hub,” he added. “Now it’s a ghost town.”
‘Life has become a prison’
For Walid Fuqaha, a 33-year-old farmer and herder, the wall has upended his daily routine. What used to be a few minutes of walk to his fields now takes more than half an hour, if he is even allowed to leave.
“Sometimes a soldier simply refuses to open the gate,” he said. “We’re prisoners in our own land.”
Fuqaha says the fence is part of a broader settler strategy to drive Palestinians from their land.
“They let their cows destroy our crops. They want us to give up, to leave the fields for their expansion,” he said.
‘Security’ or seizure?
For residents like Umm Muhammad Fuqaha, the message behind the wall is clear.
“They say it’s for security. But it’s to strangle us,” she said. “They’ve shut down all the small roads and left us with one entrance controlled by the army.”
The land, she emphasised, is everything. “We survive by raising goats and farming. We can’t just walk away from it.”
Weeks ago, Umm Muhammad narrowly escaped being run over by an illegal settler’s car.
“They don’t want us here,” she said flatly.
Pattern of escalation
Sinjil has faced increasing settler violence. In April, illegal settlers burned rural homes, torched vehicles, attacked residents, and killed a man by beating him.
According to the Palestinian Authority’s Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, these “buffer zones” around illegal settlements are becoming a new tool for land grabs masked as security measures.
In April alone, Israeli forces and illegal settlers carried out 1,693 violations against Palestinians and their property across the occupied West Bank, including 341 attacks by illegal settlers.
These attacks range from armed raids and land confiscation to tree uprooting, home demolitions, and road closures that fragment Palestinian geography.
At least 961 Palestinians have been killed and over 7,000 others injured in attacks by the Israeli army and illegal settlers in the occupied West Bank since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, according to Palestinian figures.
In July 2024, the International Court of Justice declared Israel's decades-long occupation of Palestinian land illegal and demanded the evacuation of all existing settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
