The first time we were supposed to meet Anas Hattab, he canceled at the last minute: There was no way to make it from his hometown in Tulkarm, in the northern West Bank, south to Ramallah, where we were meeting, and back before it got dark. That trip, which used to take him an hour, now often takes two to three hours—and some days far longer—because of Israeli military checkpoints on the way. This was one of those days.

This story was produced in partnership with the Palestine Reporting Lab, Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), Lighthouse Reports, and Evident.

At 30, Hattab’s life now revolves around these checkpoints—perhaps more than any other Palestinian in the occupied West Bank. But he has also transformed his community’s approach to them: Nearly 350,000 people follow his traffic Telegram group, which has closed a gap left open by major navigation apps that fail Palestinian users. Local radio stations build their hourly road segments off his dispatches. A routing system used by West Bank companies and a new local app pull his data into their own.

It began in 2019. Hattab was working during the day as a digital designer at a newspaper in Ramallah. When one shift ended, he started another, this time as the paper’s delivery driver. That meant that most nights, Hattab had to drive all around the West Bank. After loading the fresh editions into his car, he would drive north, looping through the cities of Nablus and Jenin, eventually reaching his home in Tulkarm by dawn.

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