I don’t drive (I don’t actually have a driver’s license, but that’s another thread - a leftover from my days in America.) When there were a number of shootings on the road to Jerusalem, I tried to be careful to take the bulletproof bus (which I’m sure my mother thinks I still do, so shhhh…), but the roads have been quiet for the past year, so now I mostly hitchhike (much more common in Israel than America.)
While the checkpoints can cause occasional traffic backup, Israelis aren’t checked as carefully as Palestinians. This makes sense in the idea that the Israelis are Israeli citizens, while the Palestinians are not. Israeli Arabs, for example, don’t have a problem going to and from the territories to Israel. This is on the bypass roads though - Israelis do not travel on the roads that the Palestinians exclusively use - particularly the ones that go through Palestinian cities and refugee camps.
Also, there aren’t really any Palestinian residents of Efrat, but they live in the surrounding villages - Wadi Nis, El Hader, Bethlehem, etc. Before the current intifada there were actually rather friendly relations between Wadi Nis and Efrat - people would go to each others weddings, bar mitzvas, etc. And even now some settlers make an effort to provide food to some of the Wadi Nis residents whose livelihood has been affected by the intifiada - but not all residents of Efrat agree with this.