ISRAEL imposed a three-day lockdown on the occupied West Bank yesterday, punishing Palestinians collectively for Wednesday’s gun killings in Tel Aviv.

The Israeli military said the West Bank would be closed off until the Jewish holiday of Shavuot ends at midnight on Sunday, except for “humanitarian” and medical cases and for some worshippers at the Al-Aqsa mosque in east Jerusalem.

Palestinian men over 45 and women of all ages were allowed access to the mosque for the first Friday prayers of Ramadan, but men between 35 and 45 needed permits from Israeli occupation forces and men younger than that were banned.

Around 7,000 crossed through the “300” checkpoint in northern Bethlehem by 10am to pray, but thousands more were blocked elsewhere.

Some said they would not be dissuaded from praying at the mosque, while others vowed to pray at the checkpoints through which they could not pass.

The move was the latest part of a crackdown following Wednesday’s killing of four Israelis and wounding of six others in a Tel Aviv commercial district by two suited Palestinian gunmen.

On Thursday, Israeli occupation authority Cogat revoked more than 83,000 permits granted to Palestinians in the Occupied Territories to visit their relatives in Israel.

In addition, Israel revoked the the work permits of 204 of the shooting suspects’ relatives who have jobs in Israel — potentially robbing them of their livelihoods.

Cogat also suspended all co-ordination with the besieged Gaza Strip during Ramadan, cancelling weekly visits by elderly residents to the Al-Aqsa mosque.

Those visits were part of the ceasefire agreement that ended Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza in 2014. Israeli encroachments on the mosque were the catalyst for months of stabbings, car-rammings and other attacks by West Bank residents that have left more than 200 Palestinians and nearly 30 Israelis dead.

In a further step likely to raise tensions, newly appointed far-right Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman ordered that the return of the bodies of Palestinians killed in the violence to their relatives be halted.

In May, Israel blocked the return of remains on the pretext that funeral protests were an “incitement” to further violence.