Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a large military operation across the West Bank on July 25, 2026, after a settler attack in the village of Tal that morning. By that evening, Israel had sealed off much of the territory with road closures and checkpoints — including the cities of Nablus, Ramallah, and towns as far south as Bethlehem. Three days later, Palestinian patients were still trapped behind these checkpoints. Ambulances could not get through without long inspections. At least three people have died since early July because they could not reach medical care in time, according to Al Jazeera's reporting published July 28.

The West Bank is a Palestinian territory that Israel has occupied since 1967. About 700,000 Jewish settlers — Israelis who live in communities built inside the West Bank — also live there, according to Reuters. Checkpoints are military roadblocks where soldiers inspect people and vehicles before letting them pass. Under the current closures, even ambulances with sick patients inside must stop.

Ambulance driver Yousef Diriya, 50, was stuck for four hours at a checkpoint called Awarta on the evening of July 25. He was transporting kidney dialysis patients — people who need a medical machine to clean their blood. Even though he had told Israeli authorities about the trip ahead of time, his ambulance went through the same process as everyone else: inspection, photographing IDs, photographing the vehicle, and long waiting. Nablus, the closest city with enough medical services for nearby villages, has had all its entrances sealed off. Trips that normally take 20 km (12 miles) now stretch to as much as 100 km (60 miles) because of detours.

On the morning of July 28, ambulance driver Bashar al-Qaryuti picked up a woman who was six months pregnant and severely bleeding, from the village of Qaryut southeast of Nablus. The ambulance was stopped at Awarta checkpoint for half an hour. Soldiers made the driver turn off the engine, which shut down the medical equipment in the vehicle. Soldiers searched everyone, including the bleeding woman. Her unborn baby died before the ambulance reached the hospital. Al-Qaryuti told Palestinian state news agency Wafa about what happened.

These are not one-time events. On July 5, a three-month-old baby named Ahmad Zaid from Deir Ammar refugee camp stopped breathing. His family tried to get him past a locked Israeli military gate that had blocked the camp from Ramallah's hospitals since February. Soldiers would not open the gate, even as Ahmad's father carried the infant toward them and pleaded. The family eventually found another route to an ambulance, but the baby was pronounced dead on the way to the hospital. On July 18, a 30-year-old woman named Sujood Fuqahaa from the town of Sinjil died of cardiac arrest after soldiers would not let her through a checkpoint.

The closures Netanyahu ordered on July 25 sped up a trend that had been building for months. Reuters reported on July 27 that the Israeli military made dozens of arrests and blocked roads across the West Bank after the Tal incident. In April, Reuters had already reported that Israel had set up dozens of new checkpoints across the territory. By November 2025, Reuters reported that Israel had sharply limited movement in the West Bank, with some Palestinian communities cut off entirely. The US State Department's travel advisory for the region notes continued checkpoint closures and says the only permitted route into Bethlehem for US government employees is restricted.

OCHA, the United Nations office that tracks humanitarian crises, reported on July 10 that Israeli forces set up a checkpoint with a closed road gate at the southern entrance to Deir in January 2025. A separate OCHA update noted that over 3,200 Palestinians have been forced from their homes across the West Bank in 2026 by settler attacks and by demolitions tied to a lack of Israeli-issued permits — official documents that Palestinians must obtain to build or maintain structures in certain areas.

The pattern of checkpoint-related medical deaths has a long history. According to a UN document, 61 women gave birth at Israeli checkpoints between September 2000 and December 2004. Thirty-six of those babies died.

The broader context here is that these closures have shifted from temporary disruptions to something close to a permanent blockade. Imagine a road network where gates keep closing and almost never reopen — what started as an inconvenience gradually becomes a wall. The July 25 order did not create this system; it made it worse. What makes the current situation different is how many places are sealed at the same time, from Nablus all the way to Bethlehem, and that even ambulances that followed all the rules in advance are being turned back. Whether the Netanyahu government will scale back this operation, and when, is an open question with life-and-death consequences for Palestinian civilians who need medical care.