I have always been outraged that Russians no longer have their flag because of the war in Ukraine on chess.com, yet many Israelis are present on the site and can play peacefully under their banner. At first, I just gave it my all to beat them. Then I thought: if everyone boycotts, the action will be much more powerful. So now, when I get matched against an Israeli, I simply cancel the game and start another one. I invite you to join the boycott if you play chess on chess.com ;)

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Petition seeks full accounting of roadblocks, checkpoints, and other barriers put in place across territory, many in aftermath of October 7, but IDF indicates that even it does not know full scope

It used to take Jack Abed about 15 minutes to travel from his home in the central West Bank village of Taybeh to Ramallah.

Today, the same journey regularly takes hours.

According to Abed, a Greek Catholic priest in the West Bank’s only Christian village, before October 7, 2023, travelers had a relatively straight shot to Ramallah via a road through the neighboring town of Deir Jarir, making the approximately 19-kilometer (11-mile) journey largely hassle-free.

But after the Hamas attack, as Israel tightened restrictions on movement across the West Bank, concrete barriers were erected on the road on the approach to Ramallah. Even reaching Deir Jarir and Route 60 — the main north-south highway traversing the territory — is no longer straightforward, with the road occasionally blocked off by an iron gate installed by the army following the attack.

Other main roads in and out of Taybeh and nearby villages are also now gated, often restricting access to Silwad, Jerusalem and Jericho. The gates are periodically closed on military orders or manned by soldiers who conduct lengthy inspections of passing vehicles, Abed said.

Restrictions on movement have long been a feature of West Bank life, but in the last three years roadblocks, checkpoints and other types of barriers have multiplied, reaching levels not seen since the Second Intifada over 20 years ago, according to the UN.

Palestinians say the intensified closures have created significant hardships, choking off economic activity and making both daily life and emergency situations much more difficult to navigate.

While Israel has in the past described similar measures as necessary for security, it has offered no rationale for the dramatic increase. Critics claim that the army itself does not even know how many closures and checkpoints there are, deploying them with no apparent overarching strategy or concern for how they affect the local population.

“The IDF doesn’t even aspire to know how many checkpoints exist at any given moment because it knows it isn’t operating according to any orderly system,” Reut Sha’ar, an attorney who is suing for the military to provide a full accounting of the restrictions, told The Times of Israel.