sustainability Article Impact of the Mobility Restrictions in the Palestinian Territory on the Population and the Environment Hala Aburas and Isam Shahrour *   Citation: Aburas, H.; Shahrour, I. Impact of the Mobility Restrictions in the Palestinian Territory on the Population and the Environment. Sustainability 2021, 13, 13457. https:// doi.org/10.3390/su132313457 Academic Editor: Anders Wretstrand Received: 27 September 2021 Accepted: 2 December 2021 Published: 5 December 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). Civil and Geo-Environmental Engineering Laboratory (LGCgE), Lille University, Rue Paul Duez, 59000 Lille, France; hala.aburas1@gmail.com * Correspondence: Isam.Shahrour@univ-lille.fr Abstract: This paper analyzes the mobility restrictions in the Palestinian territory on the population and the environment. The literature review shows a scientific concern for this issue, with an emphasis on describing mobility barriers and the severe conditions experienced by the population due to these barriers as well as the impact of mobility restrictions on employment opportunities. On the other hand, the literature review also shows a deficit in quantitative analysis of the effects of mobility restrictions on the environment, particularly on energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. This paper aims to fill this gap through a quantitative analysis by including data collection about mobility restrictions, using network analysis to determine the impact of these restrictions on inter- urban mobility, and analysis of the resulting energy consumption and CO 2 emissions. The results show that mobility restrictions induce a general increase in energy consumption and CO 2 emissions. The average value of this increase is about 358% for diesel vehicles and 275% for gasoline vehicles. Keywords: mobility; restriction; checkpoints; separation wall; Palestine; energy; greenhouse; CO 2 ; network analysis; delay 1. Introduction This paper aims to evaluate the impact of inter-urban mobility restrictions on the Palestinian territory’s population and environment. It considers two kinds of mobility restrictions: (i) the construction of the separation wall, which resulted in road closure, and (ii) checkpoints, which cause serious disturbances in inter-urban mobility. These restrictions started around thirty years ago with the installation of permanent or temporary checkpoints [1–7] and the construction of a separation wall [1–5,8]. They caused severe disturbances in the daily life of the population, with such adverse effects as anxiety, in- creased physical risk, time losses, and decreased employment opportunities. They also induced a significant increase in transport route distance and time, resulting in higher energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Evaluating the impact of the mobility restrictions on the population and the environment constitutes the first step of a tentative attempt to find solutions and reduce the adverse effects of these restrictions. This begins with developing awareness on the part of the population, the authorities, and the interna- tional community about the harmful impact of the restrictions. It also includes developing digital tools that provide shared real-time information that could help attenuate the impact on the population and environment. Several scholars and international institutions have described the mobility restrictions in the Palestinian territories and analyzed their impact on the population. The World Bank has published a notebook [9] exploring the historical events and facts of the evolving mobility restrictions in the Palestinian territories, using a narrative approach. The notebook states that the physical mobility barriers have fragmented the West Bank territory into disconnected cantons. Moreover, they stifle economic activity by raising the cost of doing business and increasing uncertainty. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) [10] and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and (UNCTAD) [11] confirmed Sustainability 2021, 13, 13457. https://doi.org/10.3390/su132313457 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability