HCJ 54788-11-25, Amin Muhammad Zaghlul Abu ‘Alia, Head of the Al-Mughayir Village Council v. Military Commander in the West Bank

The Israeli military has been imposing severe, ongoing movement restrictions on the village of Al-Mughayir in the Ramallah district ever since the war in Gaza broke out in October 2023. The village’s two main access roads, eastward to the Alon Road and westward to Route 60, have been blocked with dirt mounds and checkpoints, and many agricultural roads leading to the village have been blocked with dirt mounds and ditches. The village council and residents were not informed of these blockages, nor were they presented with the reasons for them, a document authorizing them or an opportunity to challenge them.

These closures isolate the village and almost entirely cut it off from its main access roads. They disrupt the daily lives of thousands of residents, force them to use long, irregular detours, and at times prevent them from leaving the village altogether. As a result, residents’ access to health, education, employment, agriculture, commerce, and emergency services is severely impeded on a daily basis. Village residents who own agricultural land are denied any access to their lands, both due to physical obstructions and because soldiers drive them away from lands that are not blocked daily, resulting in loss of crops and ongoing harm to their livelihoods and property rights.

While residents have been unable to reach their lands, over this time, Israeli settlers have established at least four illegal outposts around the village and on its lands. Their occupants have been taking over lands belonging to nearby Palestinian villages, where they have put up structures, grazed their flocks, damaged trees and crops, vandalized property and carried out severe violence against local Palestinians. In a particularly severe incident that occurred in April 2024, hundreds of Israelis, some of them armed, raided al-Mughayir and attacked the residents, while the village itself was surrounded by the military.

The petition argues that the military has not presented any concrete, specific security justification for these prolonged closures, and that the use of the injurious measure of closing off an entire village has become routine, with no periodic review of whether it remains necessary in the particular case. Therefore, the petition asserts that the closures are disproportionate and constitute prohibited collective punishment.

The petition asks the Court to order the military to remove the closures and lift movement restrictions at the village’s main entrances, to stop removing residents from any agricultural lands that are not physically blocked, and to allow them to cultivate those lands.

Petition status: pending