A marathon race staged by Jewish settlers on Friday morning led to road closures and obstructed the movement of Palestinians between the north and south of the West Bank.
According to local sources the Israeli occupation forces closed most of the main roads connecting the northern and central towns of the West Bank with the province of Ramallah and al-Bireh as a security measure to protect the participating settlers.
As a result these closures forced many West Bankers to use longer bypass roads to reach their destinations.
Earlier the Israeli army announced that these road closures would start at 6:30 am and end at 11:30 am in order to secure Road 60 (Ramallah-Nablus road) where the race took place.
A large number of Israeli troops had been deployed during the race along this arterial road and other nearby main roads.
Later in the afternoon the Israeli army closed with no known reason the entrance to Sebastia town north of Nablus and embarked on intercepting Palestinian cars and photographing their license plates.
