Israeli occupation forces closed the entrance gate of the Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh, in the central occupied West Bank district of Ramallah, yesterday evening, preventing the entry and exit of residents.

According to local sources, a large number of Israeli occupation forces was deployed in the village and completely closed its entrance forcefully preventing residents from entering or exiting.

Locals added that the closed gate forced them to take longer, alternative routes.

With less than a thousand residents, Nabi Saleh is one of the smaller villages in the occupied West Bank.

Since 2009, the village has held weekly Friday demonstrations, along with a dozen other villages in the occupied West Bank in protest against Israeli occupation policies.

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Nabi Saleh’s weekly protests focus on the confiscation of a large portion of village land for the establishment and expansion of the illegal Israeli settlement of Halamish and the seizure of the village’s natural spring, which has historically been its only water source.

The residential area of Nabi Saleh only accounts for 4.4 per cent of the village’s total land, according to the Applied Research Institute Jerusalem.

The vast majority of the village land lies in “Area C” which comes under complete Israeli control.

The renowned Tamimi family hail from Nabi Saleh, a number of members of the family are currently in Israeli occupation jails due to their activism.