COGAT publishes the answer in its own words, and it publishes it as permissions and ceilings rather than as counts. The Israeli Ministry of Defense unit that administers Palestinian movement out of the West Bank records a 68-page Status of Authorizations, current to 8 February 2022, which opens by stating that Judea and Samaria is “a closed military area and not to be entered or exited without a permit issued on behalf of the military commander,” then sets a standing quota of 74,300 for Palestinians working in home construction in Israel, attaches the criterion “Age 22, married” to nearly every standing employment row, caps departures abroad from Gaza through Ben Gurion Airport at a monthly quota of 20, and leaves exactly one category with no quota at all. What the instrument never publishes is a count. Not a permit issued, not a person who crossed, not a person refused, and no total anywhere in its 68 pages.
Key Findings
- COGAT records a standing quota of 74,300 for Palestinians employed in home construction in Israel, the largest single row in its own permit table, in an edition current to 8 February 2022. A quota is a ceiling the unit authorises itself to issue, and the document states no total for the table it sits in.
- The instrument opens on the rule it administers: under the Order Concerning Closed Areas (West Bank Area) (Amendment) (No. 34), 1967, the area of Judea and Samaria is “a closed military area and not to be entered or exited without a permit issued on behalf of the military commander.”
- The Civil Administration reports the issued figure separately: “As of March 1, 2020, the number of valid work permits for Palestinian employees working in Israel stood at 87,000,” with a companion 35,000 for permits to work in Judea and Samaria. Those are permits held on a stated date, not ceilings, and not a count of anyone crossing.
- One category in COGAT’s own instrument carries no ceiling at all: employment in the industrial zones and in the Israeli communities of Judea and Samaria, approved within the Seam Zone “from age 22 and up, with no quota,” and outside it “from age 18 and up, with no quota and with no restriction regarding personal status.”
- No Israeli official body was found publishing a count of obstacles inside the West Bank, on searches of gov.il, idf.il, cogat.mod.gov.il and mevaker.gov.il run on 10 September 2026. The 68-page permit instrument holds no checkpoint count, no obstacle count and no crossing count.
What rule governs a Palestinian leaving the West Bank?
COGAT records the governing rule on page 3 of its own permit instrument, in an edition current to 8 February 2022: under the Order Concerning Closed Areas (West Bank Area) (Amendment) (No. 34), 1967, the area of Judea and Samaria is “a closed military area and not to be entered or exited without a permit issued on behalf of the military commander.”
That sentence is the frame every later row sits inside. It is not a description of conditions on the ground and not an independently verified account of anything: COGAT states the rule it administers, under its own name, on a government host.
The document is titled Status of Authorizations for entry of Palestinians into Israel; for their passage from Judea and Samaria into the Gaza Strip; and for their departure abroad. The title names three classes of authorisation, and COGAT builds the instrument in matching parts: a section on the population of Judea and Samaria, a section on the Gaza Strip, a section on transit between the two, and permit tables running to the end of its 68 pages.
The tables have a fixed shape. Each row records the purpose of the permit, who it applies to, the quota, the term, the age restriction and the issuing authority. A row is not a report of what happened. It is a standing authorisation: this many permits, for this purpose, to people meeting these criteria, from this office.
The instrument is also narrower than the question usually asked of it. By its own construction it governs movement out of the West Bank into Israel, into the Gaza Strip and abroad, and states that it is not a document about movement inside the West Bank. Bypass roads, road gates and internal closure therefore appear nowhere in this reading.
How many Palestinians may work in Israel under the standing quotas?
74,300 is the largest single row in COGAT’s own standing employment table: the quota for Palestinians working in home construction in Israel, in the edition current to 8 February 2022. A quota is a ceiling the unit authorises itself to issue, never a person who worked and never a person who crossed.
COGAT records the rest of the table on page 32, running from thousands to tens. Industry and services stands at 8,550; agriculture at 6,650; the hotel industry and the restaurant industry at 2,000 each; healthcare institutions at 1,000; arrangement of previous allotments at 875; health, in Israel, at 270; hi-tech at 200; and a Government Press Office journalist permit at 25.
Three further rows sit outside that table for particular places: the Atarot Industrial Zone at 3,600, physicians at hospitals in East Jerusalem at 2,680, and the East Jerusalem hotel industry at 300. Seasonal agriculture carries a quota of 12,500, which COGAT is authorised to administer and to change on a request from the Ministry of Agriculture, each change requiring separate approval from the head of the unit.
No sum of any of this may be presented as published, because COGAT states no total anywhere in its 68 pages. Two rows defeat simple addition in any case. The seasonal sub-quotas of 9,500 for fruit and vegetables and 3,000 for the almond or olive harvest sit inside the 12,500 rather than beside it, and the hi-tech row of 200 sits inside an allotment of 500. A column added down the page is wrong twice over before it reaches the bottom.
Does a quota mean a permit was issued?
87,000 is the issued figure, and it comes from a different page and a different office. The Civil Administration reports that “As of March 1, 2020, the number of valid work permits for Palestinian employees working in Israel stood at 87,000,” with a companion figure of 35,000 for permits to work in Judea and Samaria.
Those two numbers are permits held on a stated date. They are not ceilings, not authorisations, and not a count of anyone who crossed a line on any given morning. The Employment Unit publishes them on a page whose own date stamp is null, so the figures date the page rather than the other way round.
Set beside the permit instrument, they answer a different question about a different year. COGAT records its quotas as current to 8 February 2022; the Civil Administration reports valid permits as at 1 March 2020, two years earlier. Both are the Israeli administration’s own account of its own arrangements, and neither has been independently verified.
The distinction matters because it is the most common way this evidence is misread. A sentence reading that 74,300 Palestinians worked in construction in Israel inverts the instrument: COGAT states how many permits it authorised itself to issue for that purpose, not how many people the permits reached, not how many were refused, and not how many travelled. A ceiling can sit unfilled for a year and the row will read the same.
The gap runs the other way too. The 87,000 covers valid permits across every purpose, not construction alone, so it cannot be set against any single row. Comparing an issued total for one date with a purpose-specific ceiling for another produces an arithmetic a reader can falsify, which is why the two figures are stated here separately and never as a ratio.
Which employment category does the instrument leave with no quota?
At page 6, COGAT records an employment category with no ceiling at all: work in the industrial zones and in the Israeli communities of Judea and Samaria, approved within the Seam Zone “from age 22 and up, with no quota,” and outside the Seam Zone “from age 18 and up, with no quota and with no restriction regarding personal status.”
The Civil Administration states the same thing on its own page, in one line: “Employment of Palestinian workers in Judea and Samaria is not limited by quota.” Two Israeli bodies, publishing separately, report the same absence of a ceiling.
The observation is descriptive and stops where the record stops. COGAT caps ten categories of employment inside Israel, itemises three more for particular places, and caps none of this one. The table says nothing about how many people work under it, because it says nothing about how many people work under anything.
Two limits belong beside it. The phrase Seam Zone appears exactly twice in the whole 68-page instrument, both on the page carrying this clause, so the document supports no wider account of that area. And the age rule inverts here: the uncapped category outside the Seam Zone opens at 18 with no personal-status requirement, where the standing rows for work inside Israel start at 22 and mostly require marriage.
This is also where the record runs out on the settlement question. COGAT shows how the Israeli communities of Judea and Samaria enter the permit regime, as an employment category with no quota attached. The instrument holds nothing about roads and nothing about who may drive on them, so the half of the question that concerns settler road networks cannot be answered from this document. The Interim Agreement’s division of the West Bank into areas of separate jurisdiction is where that boundary was drawn.
What does a permit require of the person, beyond the job?
“Age 22, married” is the criterion COGAT attaches to nearly every standing employment row in its own table, unless otherwise noted. Each row records purpose, applicability, quota, term of permit, age restriction and issuing authority, so what the instrument regulates is a person’s age and marital status as much as the work they are going to do.
The variants fix the pattern rather than break it. COGAT reports healthcare institutions and health in Israel at ages 21 and up, physicians at hospitals in East Jerusalem at 21 and up on a quota of 2,680, and the East Jerusalem hotel industry at “ages 25 and up, or 22 if married,” on a quota of 300.
| Category | Age and status criterion | Quota |
|---|---|---|
| Standing employment rows, unless noted | Age 22, married | Per row |
| Healthcare institutions | Ages 21 and up | 1,000 |
| Health, in Israel | Ages 21 and up | 270 |
| Physicians, East Jerusalem hospitals | Ages 21 and up | 2,680 |
| Hotel industry, East Jerusalem | Ages 25 and up, or 22 if married | 300 |
| Industrial zones and Israeli communities, in the Seam Zone | Age 22 and up | No quota |
| The same, outside the Seam Zone | Age 18 and up, no personal-status restriction | No quota |
Source: COGAT, Status of Authorizations, edition current to 8 February 2022, pages 6, 32 and 33. Criteria COGAT publishes for itself; the table records authorisations, not people.
Read down that column, the criteria do something the quota column does not. A ceiling limits how many permits exist; an age and marital threshold limits who may hold one, before any employer, job or quota comes into it. An unmarried man of 21 is outside most of the table whatever the ceiling says.
Business travel is scoped the same way. COGAT puts the permit for senior Palestinian businesspeople at an overall quota of 4,600 with 1,267 vehicular permits inside it, and an assistant permit at three per holder. Again these are permissions, and again the document reports no issuance against them.
How may someone in Gaza leave for another country?
A monthly quota of 20. COGAT records in its Gaza section that departure abroad “shall be through the Allenby Bridge Crossing, solely in escorted groups (shuttles),” and that “As a rule, Palestinians are not granted departure through Ben Gurion Airport, with the exception of BMC permit holders and extremely exceptional unique humanitarian cases (monthly quota of 20).”
Two things travel with that clause. COGAT states it at page 17, inside its own Gaza part, so it is a Gaza clause and may not be moved onto the West Bank, where departure abroad is treated separately. And it is dated February 2022 like everything else in this edition, so it describes an authorisation standing at that date rather than an arrangement in force now.
The clause is unusually explicit about form as well as number. The route, the mode and the exception are all named: departure runs through one land crossing, in escorted groups, and the airport is closed as a rule with two stated exceptions, one a permit class and the other a humanitarian category with a monthly ceiling of twenty people.
What the section never does is report a single departure. COGAT publishes no figure for applications, none for approvals, none for refusals and none for people who travelled. The twenty is the size of the exception the unit wrote for itself, and it would read identically in a month when nobody used it.
The Gaza part of the instrument is one strand of a wider record. Restrictions on the movement of goods and people into and out of the Strip, and what each body publishes about them, are treated in the Institute’s report on the blockade of Gaza, which reaches a different set of sources on the same territory.
What governs travel between the West Bank and Gaza?
Passage from Judea and Samaria into the Gaza Strip is its own authorisation class in COGAT’s own instrument, named in the document’s title and given a four-page section to itself. The one figure this report takes from that section runs the other way: a cap of up to 500 merchants at any given time, which COGAT applies to Israeli Arabs entering Gaza rather than to Palestinians travelling from the West Bank.
That is the shape of the record and its limit in one sentence. Transit between the two territories is administered as a separate class of permission, alongside entry into Israel and departure abroad. COGAT runs that section from page 22 to page 25, and the single quota carried out of it is scoped to a different population moving in a different direction.
Two dated lines sit around it. The Interim Agreement records, at Article XXXI(8), that the two sides “view the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as a single territorial unit”; Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed it at Washington on 28 September 1995, and it is quoted here from the English text published by a party to it. The World Bank reported the same pair of territories differently in September 2023: “Two million Palestinians live in Gaza, which has been under a near-blockade and effectively cut off from the West Bank since 2007.”
The two statements are not in conflict, and neither is a measurement. One is a clause both parties signed about how the territory is to be regarded; the other is an economic institution’s characterisation of the arrangement twenty-eight years later.
Between them sits the instrument, which treats the journey from one territory to the other as a permit class with an issuing authority and a term. Whether anyone made that journey, and how often, is not a quantity the permit class reports.
Gaza’s farming and fishing output fell almost 30% after one restriction
Agriculture, forestry and fishing in Gaza “shrank by almost 30 percent after the GoI restricted the sale of Gazan fish in the West Bank in August 2022,” the World Bank reported in September 2023, giving it as the chief driver of Gaza’s 2.6% year-on-year contraction in the first quarter of 2023 against 4.3% growth in the West Bank.
Two labels travel with that sentence and neither is optional. The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics measured the underlying quarterly national accounts, a national statistical office that is a party to the events, and the Bank relayed them on its own source lines. The attribution of the contraction to the August 2022 restriction is the Bank’s reading, not the Bureau’s.
What makes the figure worth stating plainly is how rare its shape is. It is the only measured consequence of a single named movement restriction anywhere in the record read for this report. Everywhere else the evidence is a permission, a threshold or a ceiling; here one restriction on where a product could be sold is followed, in a published national accounts series, by a fall of almost 30% in the sector that produced it.
The restriction itself is not a permit clause. It concerns the sale of Gazan fish in the West Bank, so it operates on goods rather than on people, and COGAT records nothing about it. That is why the two records sit in one report without being merged: one governs who may move, the other measures what happened to an industry when a market closed.
Who counts the obstacles inside the West Bank?
No Israeli official body was found publishing a count of obstacles inside the West Bank, on searches of gov.il, idf.il, cogat.mod.gov.il and mevaker.gov.il run on 10 September 2026. COGAT’s own 68-page permit instrument holds no checkpoint count, no obstacle count and no crossing count.
The absence is recorded here as a finding rather than a gap, because a search was actually run, on named hosts, on a stated date, and it returned nothing. What the government record holds on this question is the rule, the permit classes and the ceilings set out above. What it does not hold is an inventory.
Underneath the missing number sits a definitional problem that decides most public arguments on the subject, and it is not itself in dispute. Three different objects are counted under words that sound interchangeable. A crossing is a fixed terminal on the barrier between the West Bank and Israel. A checkpoint, in the Israel Defense Forces’ own usage, is a manned position activated in response to a security warning. An obstacle, in the counts that circulate publicly, is any physical impediment inside the West Bank: an earth mound, a road gate, a trench or a roadblock included.
Those three are not the same thing and do not have the same order of magnitude. A figure in the tens and a figure in the hundreds can both be accurate at once, because one counts terminals and the other counts impediments of every kind. A report that sets one against the other, and treats the difference as a contradiction, has manufactured the contradiction it then explains.
So this section prints no obstacle figure, because no Israeli official body was found publishing one, and because a figure lifted from a source counting a different object would answer a question nobody asked.
Which line governs movement inside Gaza now?
The Security Council adopted Resolution 2803 on 17 November 2025 by 13 votes in favour, none against and 2 abstentions, and the resolution and the Comprehensive Plan annexed to it record only that “Israeli forces will withdraw to the agreed upon line to prepare for a hostage release.” The words yellow line appear nowhere in either text.
The Israel Defense Forces page dated 19 February 2026 turns on that line in entry after entry. It describes people who “crossed the yellow line,” and applies the army’s own stated threshold that such activity “constitute[s] a clear violation of the understandings of the ceasefire.” Both labels are required in the same breath: this is one party’s characterisation of another party’s conduct, published by that party, and it applies its own test rather than any threshold in the resolution, which sets none.
Three properties of that page belong with anything taken from it. It publishes no total, so the entries are a list and not a tally. Its dates do not run forward: nineteen of its November entries carry the year 2026 on a page dated before November 2026 existed. And it records only conduct it attributes to the other side, which is what a party’s own log of violations is for.
The finding here is about the record rather than about anyone’s conduct. The line that determines where a person in Gaza may go is an implementation artefact of the parties. One party names it constantly in its published entries; the Security Council did not define it in the text it adopted; the annexed plan does not map it; and no instrument read for this report defines or maps it anywhere.
That is a different situation from the permit regime above, and harder to check. A quota at least states a rule and a ceiling that can be read against a later edition; a line that governs movement while appearing in no adopted text leaves nothing at all to read.
The published permit record stops in February 2022
8 February 2022 is the date of the only current edition of COGAT’s own instrument, and no later one was located on gov.il on 10 September 2026. That edition predates the suspension of Palestinian work permits after 7 October 2023 entirely, so nothing in it can be read in the present tense.
Only one predecessor was found, dated 2 August 2020 and running to 82 pages. The two editions are not one series, and the construction rows prove it. COGAT recorded two rows in 2020, Construction at 26,000 and Home construction at 39,300, and a single row at 74,300 in 2022. Reporting the later figure as a near-doubling of the earlier one compares one row against two, and the earlier document is falsifiable on its own terms in any case, since it puts 39,300 in one column against 39,100 in another and gives seasonal agriculture as 10,500 in its body text against 9,250 in its own table.
That is the first absence: the rule is published, the ceilings are published, and the edition carrying them is more than four years old with no successor located on the government host.
A second and separate absence sits on the other side of the same question, and the two are not to be merged. The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics publishes an annual unemployment series for Gaza from its Labour Force Survey, a household survey counting people aged 15 and above who did not work at all in the reference period, were available for work and had actively sought a job in the previous four weeks, with discouraged jobseekers excluded. That series ends at 45.3% for 2022 and prints a dash in the Gaza column for 2023, 2024 and 2025.
So the two bodies whose records bear most directly on this question both stop within months of each other, one at a permit edition and one at a survey year. Neither publishes anything for the period a reader is most likely to be asking about.
Methodology and limitations
This report reads published instruments and official series, each labelled by type. Party records, cited as each party’s own and never as neutral or independently verified: COGAT records the Status of Authorizations in its editions of 8 February 2022 and 2 August 2020; the Civil Administration reports valid work permits on its Employment Unit page, dated by the figures of 1 March 2020 inside it; the Israel Defense Forces page of 19 February 2026 states that party’s own characterisation of another party’s conduct; and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics publishes the Labour Force Survey and the quarterly national accounts, a national statistical office and a party to the events. Primary instruments: the Interim Agreement of 1995, quoted from the English text published by a party to it, and Security Council Resolution 2803 with the Comprehensive Plan annexed to it, cited for its text and its recorded vote. Compiled statistical reporting: the World Bank reported Racing Against Time in September 2023.
Six limits bear on the reading. A quota is a ceiling an office authorises itself to issue, never a count of permits, crossings or refusals, and COGAT states no total anywhere in its 68 pages, so no sum here is presented as published. The seasonal sub-quotas sit inside the seasonal quota and the hi-tech row inside a larger allotment, so the table does not add down. The 2020 and 2022 editions are separate documents and are never set against each other. The Gaza departure clause belongs to the Gaza section and is not applied to the West Bank. The transit section running from page 22 to page 25 is not read in full here, so only its existence, its scope and the single figure carried out of it are recorded. And the Bureau measured the Gaza economic figures the World Bank relayed, while the attribution of the contraction to the August 2022 restriction is the Bank’s own.
Two absences are part of the finding rather than gaps in the reading. No Israeli official body was found publishing a count of obstacles inside the West Bank, on searches of four named government hosts run on 10 September 2026. And no instrument read here defines or maps the line now governing movement inside Gaza. The permit instrument governs movement out of the West Bank and states so about itself, so movement inside the West Bank is outside this reading entirely.
Conclusion
So how has the occupation affected Palestinian freedom of movement out of the West Bank, and what does the published record actually say? The restricting authority answers in its own voice, in the grammar of permission. Movement runs on a permit, because a 1967 order made the area closed; the permit exists in a numbered class with a ceiling; and the ceiling is a figure the issuing office wrote for itself.
Read across, the instrument is more specific than any summary of it. COGAT puts home construction at 74,300 and a Government Press Office journalist at 25. Nearly every standing row requires a person to be 22 and married before an employer or a quota comes into it, while the one category with no ceiling at all is work in the industrial zones and Israeli communities of Judea and Samaria. Someone in Gaza may leave for another country through one land crossing in escorted groups, with a monthly quota of twenty for the airport exception. The Civil Administration reports 87,000 valid work permits held on a date two years before that edition was written. The World Bank recorded one measured consequence of one named restriction, a fall of almost 30% in Gaza’s agriculture, forestry and fishing, on the Bureau’s own accounts. And the government record holds no count of obstacles inside the West Bank at all.
What the whole record has in common is that it describes what is permitted and never what occurred. Ceilings without issuance, criteria without applicants, a route named without a traveller, a line that decides where a person in Gaza may walk and appears in no adopted text. Anyone asking how many people moved, or were turned back, will find every rule and no arithmetic. If a state publishes the terms of movement in this much detail and publishes no measurement of it, so that the impact on the people living under those terms goes unrecorded on the official side, what would have to change for that number to exist, and which body would be the one to publish it?
Frequently Asked Questions
Who issues a Palestinian work permit for entry into Israel?
COGAT records an issuing authority for every category in its permit tables, alongside the purpose, applicability, quota, term and age restriction. The Civil Administration publishes separately on Palestinian employment through its Employment Unit and reports the figures for valid permits held.
Does the permit instrument say anything about movement inside the West Bank?
No. COGAT states that it governs entry into Israel, passage into the Gaza Strip and departure abroad, which is what its title names, and that it is not a document about movement inside the West Bank. Internal roads, gates and closures are outside it.
What is the Seam Zone in this document?
It is the area COGAT uses to split one employment category into two age rules: inside it, work in the industrial zones and Israeli communities is approved from age 22 with no quota; outside it, from age 18 with no quota and no personal-status restriction. The phrase appears exactly twice in the 68-page instrument.
What is a BMC permit?
It is the permit class for senior Palestinian businesspeople. COGAT records an overall quota of 4,600 with 1,267 vehicular permits inside that, and an assistant permit at three per holder. It is also one of two stated exceptions to the rule closing Ben Gurion Airport to departures from Gaza.
Why do published counts of West Bank checkpoints and obstacles differ so widely?
Because they count different objects. A crossing is a fixed terminal on the barrier, a checkpoint in the Israel Defense Forces’ own usage is a manned position activated on a security warning, and an obstacle is any physical impediment inside the West Bank. A figure in the tens and a figure in the hundreds can both be accurate.
Does the Interim Agreement treat the West Bank and Gaza as one place?
The Interim Agreement records, at Article XXXI(8), that the two sides “view the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as a single territorial unit.” COGAT administers passage between them as a separate class of authorisation with its own section, its own quotas and its own issuing authority.
Sources
- COGAT, 2020. Status of Authorizations for entry of Palestinians into Israel; for their passage from Judea and Samaria into the Gaza Strip; and for their departure abroad, edition of 2 August 2020, 82 pages. Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, Israeli Ministry of Defense, gov.il. Official record (a party’s own published policy).
- COGAT, 2022. Status of Authorizations for entry of Palestinians into Israel; for their passage from Judea and Samaria into the Gaza Strip; and for their departure abroad, updated to 8 February 2022, 68 pages. Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, Israeli Ministry of Defense, gov.il. Official record (a party’s own published policy).
- Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, 1995. The Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (Oslo II), signed at Washington DC, 28 September 1995, Article XXXI(8), in the English text published by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Official record (treaty text, published by a party to it).
- Israel Civil Administration, 2020. Employment Unit, Palestinian employment in Israel and in Judea and Samaria, gov.il, figures stated as of 1 March 2020. Official record (a party’s own reported count).
- Israel Defense Forces, 2026. A broken record on repeat: Major Ceasefire Violations, page dated 19 February 2026, idf.il. Official record (a party’s own published characterisation of another party’s conduct).
- Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 2023. Labour Force Survey annual series and the quarterly national accounts for the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, pcbs.gov.ps. Official record (national statistical office, a party’s own count).
- United Nations Security Council, 2025. Resolution 2803 (2025), adopted 17 November 2025 by 13 votes to none with 2 abstentions, with the Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict annexed as Annex 1. Primary record (the instrument itself and its recorded vote).
- World Bank, 2023. Racing Against Time: World Bank Economic Monitoring Report to the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee, September 2023. Official record (compiled statistical reporting; the Gaza figures relay the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics’ own national accounts).