page_title: Israeli checkpoint
section_title: Criticism
hierarchical_section_title: Israeli checkpoint / Criticism
caption_attribution_description: Metre square cement roadblocks used to restrict access.
context_page_description: An Israeli checkpoint, is a barrier erected by the Israeli Security Forces, primarily today part of the system of West Bank closures in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
  The checkpoints have the stated aim of enhancing the security of Israel and Israeli settlements and preventing those who wish to do harm from crossing.
  Israeli checkpoints may be staffed by the Israeli Military Police, the Israel Border Police, or other soldiers.
context_section_description: Many Palestinian residents of the West Bank claim that despite the checkpoints' intended use, in practice they violate Palestinians' rights to transportation and other human rights. Palestinian complaints of abuse and humiliation are common: Israel Defense Forces' Judge Advocate General, Maj. Gen. Dr. Menachem Finkelstein, states that "there were many—too many—complaints that soldiers manning checkpoints abuse and humiliate Palestinians and that the large number of complaints 'lit a red light' for him". Hundreds of Israeli women have monitored the checkpoints as part of Machsom (Checkpoint) Watch. The organization circulated daily reports on the checkpoints and published a book of testimonies that co-founder and author Yehudit Kirstein-Keshet says demonstrates "Israel's imprisonment of an entire population in a web of closures and checkpoints." Kirstein-Keshet also reports, "We Watchers … have witnessed the daily humiliation and abuse, the despair and impotence of Palestinians at checkpoints."
  The United Nations, in its February 2009 Humanitarian Monitor report, has stated that it is becoming "apparent" that the checkpoint and obstacles, which Israeli authorities justified from the beginning of the second Intifada (September 2000) as a temporary military response to violent confrontations and attacks on Israeli civilians, is evolving into "a more permanent system of control" that is steadily reducing the space available for Palestinian growth and movement for the benefit of the increasing Israeli settler population.
caption: Unmanned roadblock in the West Bank. July 2006
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