RAMALLAH, West Bank, 22 September 2007 — Despite repeated promises to reduce the number of roadblocks and checkpoints in the West Bank, Israel has in fact added dozens of new ones, according to a report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak promised US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this week to remove 24 roadblocks and consider additional alleviations of movement restrictions on the Palestinians. This followed a similar promise to alleviate movement restrictions that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas during their meetings.

However, the number of roadblocks has now reached 572, an increase of 52 percent compared to 376 in August 2005, according to OCHA. In the past two months alone, Israel put up 40 new roadblocks, OCHA said yesterday. Israel did remove a small fence along Road 317, in the Southern Mount Hebron region in the West Bank, doing away with 29 barricades. But OCHA found that 48 new roadblocks, mostly embankments preventing access to various roads, were put up.

Altogether, there are 476 unmanned roadblocks in the West Bank, consisting of concrete cubes, earthen embankments and other barricades blocking roads and exits from villages and towns.

The number of manned roadblocks has also increased, from 86 in July to 96 today, the UN found. Most of them are manned by Israeli soldiers round the clock, but some are manned only a few hours a day.

Meanwhile, Israel stopped thousands of Palestinians from entering Jerusalem for Ramadan prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque yesterday and tightened border security as Jews prepared for the solemn annual rite of Yom Kippur. Israeli police and soldiers at checkpoints near the West Bank cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem turned away several thousand Palestinians who tried to enter Jerusalem for the second weekly prayers of the holy month of Ramadan.

Many of those held up at the checkpoints separating the occupied West Bank from Jerusalem knelt in prayer under the glaring sun. The Israeli Army said that no Palestinians from the West Bank, other than exceptional humanitarian cases, would be allowed into the city due to a “high terror threat” until Saturday evening, when the Yom Kippur fasting day ends.