Prayers through the checkpoints
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 19 December 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Imagine being able to see your place of worship, but not be able to reach it. For many Palestinian Muslims in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, stricter Israeli security measures, rising tensions with settlers, and movement restrictions introduced after the 7 October attacks, have made access to mosques increasingly challenging. Reporting from Hebron and East Jerusalem, Emily Wither explores how these pressures are reshaping the spiritual lives of worshippers living at the heart of one of the world’s most contested religious landscapes.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:08.5 | We are going to the Abrahemi Mosque to pray the Friday prayer, |
| 0:15.2 | and we have a lot of restriction here, Israeli restriction, to reach the Abraham Mosque. |
| 0:23.2 | And you can see the mosque from your house. How many checkpoints have you had to go through |
| 0:28.1 | just to meet me here? |
| 0:29.6 | Three checkpoints between my house and the Abrahamian Mosque. |
| 0:34.1 | How many meters do you live from the mosque? |
| 0:36.4 | Just 100, 100 meters. How long would it take for you to |
| 0:40.2 | travel about 100 meters? Maybe one minute and maybe two hours. It's dependent on the checkpoint and the |
| 0:48.6 | soldier and the mind of the soldier in the checkpoints. |
| 0:58.8 | So it can take you two hours sometimes to go 100 metres. |
| 1:05.2 | Really, it takes more than if the mind of the soldier in the checkpoint is not good. |
| 1:15.3 | Hebron's old city is now a labyrinth of Israeli checkpoints and a complicated network of various barriers. |
| 1:23.6 | Many Palestinians here feel surrounded by razor wire and a dense web of surveillance cameras. |
| 1:26.4 | You can see them on many street corners. You're listening to the documentary on the BBC |
| 1:31.4 | World Service. I'm Emily Wither and for heart and soul, I've come to the occupied West Bank, |
| 1:36.6 | where Palestinian worshippers say visiting their mosques has become harder since increased Israeli |
| 1:42.4 | security following October 7, 2023. |
| 1:46.3 | That day, 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage by Hamas, |
| 1:52.8 | which is regarded as a terrorist group by many countries. |
| 1:56.9 | The Israeli military insists extra security is needed to keep their populations safe. |
| 2:02.7 | But many Palestinians we spoke to argue the measures amount to collective punishment. |
... |
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