With that said, moving around the West Bank/Palestinian Territories and Israel can be easy for some people and quite tough for others, and in general, it often takes longer than it should.
Most Palestinians get around via car or public transportation. While apps like Uber and Lyft are not available here, public transportation in the West Bank is widely available in the form of taxi or service (pronounced seer-vee-sus). There aren’t really large buses in the West Bank. Large public buses are only in areas surrounding Jerusalem and go back and forth along the separation wall between the West Bank and Jerusalem. There are no trains within the West Bank, but there is a light-rail train that goes through parts of Jerusalem which many people use to get around. I was surprised to see that people hitchhike as well, mostly to get across checkpoints if they have a blue Jerusalem ID, which says that you are a Palestinian resident of Jerusalem and lets you pass checkpoints via car. This is different from people with green West Bank IDs, which requires that you walk across certain checkpoints that lead to Jerusalem and Israel only if you have a special travel permit. When it comes to moving between cities in the West Bank, people either catch rides with friends or family members or take a service vehicle.
When it comes to traveling via personal car in the West Bank, there are two different experiences determined by which license plate color you have, which is also connected to your ID card. If you have a yellow Israeli license plate as I do, you can drive within Israel and the West Bank, can travel across checkpoints in your car and take all roads throughout the West Bank.
