IDF halts Palestinian workers’ entry into Judea and Samaria communities

A survey taken last year in Eli, a town of some 4,500 inhabitants in the Binyamin region of southern Samaria, showed that 82% of residents were opposed to readmitting Palestinian workers, regardless of added security measures.

By Akiva Van Koningsveld, JNS

The Israeli military has suspended the entry of Palestinian workers into Jewish communities throughout Judea and Samaria following Monday morning’s deadly shooting near Kedumim, the Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson’s Unit told JNS on Thursday.

The suspension, which the army said came following a “situational assessment,” will remain in place for an unspecified period.

In a message to residents on Wednesday, the Samaria city of Ariel said that a military directive issued after the shooting in al-Funduq that left three Israelis dead, the military had prohibited “the entry of Palestinian workers into all communities in Samaria, with the exception of industrial areas.”

On Thursday, Mayor Yair Chetboun updated residents that following discussions with the commander of the IDF’s Ephraim Regional Brigade, it had been agreed that P.A. workers would be allowed to enter Ariel’s southern neighborhood only, “starting today.”

“The entry will be allowed while adhering to security procedures,” said Chetboun, whose central Samaria city counts some 21,500 residents.

The terrorists who carried out Monday’s shooting, killing Rachel Cohen, 73, Aliza Rice, 70, and Israel Police Master Sgt. Elad Yaakov Winkelstein, 35, remain at large. Seven more people were wounded in the attack.

In the wake of the murders, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced on Monday that the premier had approved “a series of additional offensive and defensive actions in Judea and Samaria.”

The shooting took place some six miles northwest of Ariel, the region’s capital, near the northern Samaria Jewish community of Kedumim.

While the military banned Palestinians from working in Jewish towns throughout Judea and Samaria in the initial months following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fox, the then head of IDF Central Command, in late 2023 lifted most of the access restrictions.

Before the war, some 200,000 Palestinian workers were employed throughout the Jewish state, including 30,000 in Judea and Samaria.

Proposals to readmit P.A. workers to Jewish communities were met with dismay by many. A survey taken last year in Eli, a town of some 4,500 inhabitants in the Binyamin region of southern Samaria, showed that 82% of residents were opposed, regardless of added security measures.

However, Israeli courts confirmed in a series of cases that elected local officials do not have the legal right to block Palestinian laborers from entering their communities if the military allows their employment.

Two polls last year found that some two-thirds of Palestinians in Judea and Samaria support the Oct. 7 attacks, in which around 6,000 Hamas-led terrorists broke through the Gaza border, murdered some 1,200 people, wounded thousands more and took more than 250 captive.