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Video National Health Care Systems In Other Countries
03.20 The Death of American Populism
03.18 Pressure Drop: Brave Sir Dennis Ran Away
03.12 Slick Barry and the $100-Billion Medicaid/Medicare Fraud Claim
03.09 Kill Bill: Death to Obamacare!
03.09 Obama’s Rhetoric May Be “Fiery,” But His Health Care Reform Is Still Lukewarm
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03.17 CNN Scrapes Bottom of Right-Wing Barrel With Erickson Hire
03.16 WPost Blames Obama First, on Israel
03.16 Letter to the New York Times' Editor: Stovepiping To Persia
03.12 Cud and Complicity: Burying the Alternatives to Empire's Dominion
03.11 NYT and the ACORN Hoax
03.05 Sorry, Rove, Bush Did Lie About Iraq
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03.03 The Woeful Washington Post
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02.26 America's Supremes: Court Over Constitution
US Politics, Policy & Culture
03.11 Power Rangers: Policing the System With the "Fightin' Progressives"
03.09 Thinking About Countings
03.07 Unnatural Acts: Breaking the Fever of Militarism
02.25 Future Shock: A Better World Beyond the Imperium
“High Crimes?”
03.19 Israel's Troubling Tilt Toward Apartheid
03.18 The Lawfare Project's Anti-Democratic Agenda
03.16 America's Secret Prisons
03.13 Palestinian Dispossession in East Jerusalem
03.12 Israeli Settlement Expansions Continue
03.11 Brutalizing Palestinian Children
03.08 The Russell Tribunal on Palestine: Barcelona Session
03.05 Targeting Israeli Apartheid
03.01 America's Permanent War Agenda
02.25 Global Sweatshop Wage Slavery
Economics & Business Non/Mis/Malfeasance
03.19 The Growing Movement For Publicly-Owned Banks
03.19 America's "Houdini Recovery" under IMF-Type Austerity
03.14 The Crisis in America's Telecommunications Network
03.09 The Business of Water: Privatizing An Essential Resource
03.05 Is the Recovery Real?
03.04 IMF-Style Austerity Measures come to America: What “Fiscal Responsibility” Means To You
03.04 Barry C. Lynn's "Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and Economics of Destruction"
03.01 Thinking About Fees
International
03.15 Peace Process Hypocrisy: Stillborn from Inception
03.03 Muslim Disunity
03.02 Funding Israeli Militarism, Belligerence and Occupation
02.26 Iran Captures a 'Good' Terrorist
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SLOW GENOCIDE:
Territorial fragmentation of the West Bank
Restrictions on movement are at the heart of the Palestinian economic decline. Poverty rates for Palestinians have soared to 56% and are predicted to rise to 74% by the end of 2006.
A combination of checkpoints, physical obstacles and a permit system has cut the West Bank into
three distinct areas – in addition to East Jerusalem.
Within these areas, sub-enclaves have been created,
isolating many Palestinian communities, restricting
their access to services and stifling commerce.The closure system in the West Bank refers to a series of restrictions placed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to control the movement of more than 2.3 million Palestinians living there. The Israeli government states that these closure measures are required to prevent Palestinian militant attacks on Israeli civilians.
Restrictions on movement are at the heart of the Palestinian economic decline. Poverty rates for Palestinians have soared to 56% and are predicted to rise to 74% by the end of 2006. Commerce and trade depends on the free movement of goods and services. But in the West Bank economic activities have become severely restricted due to the closure system.
Closure is imposed by one or a combination of methods:
- Manned checkpoints and a series of physical obstacles such as road blocks, road gates, earth mounds and trenches. The total number of these has steadily risen since last year, from 376 in August 2005 to 535 in June 2006 – a 25% increase.
- The Barrier that Israel has constructed loops inside the West Bank and has created a number of enclaves between the Barrier and the Green Line that are difficult to access.
- There are increasing numbers of ‘flying’ or random checkpoints – averaging more than 160 a week – throughout the West Bank that create unpredictable closure and often extensive delays for Palestinian movement.
- The IDF have implemented a range of different permits to restrict the use of many routes within the West Bank. Getting into the enclave areas, for example, is increasingly difficult for Palestinians as Israel is narrowing the eligibility criteria for permits that are needed to pass through the Barrier to land on the other side.
The construction of the Barrier has meant that Palestinians can no longer travel through Jerusalem but instead have to take a winding road around the city. Once the Barrier is completed this road will pass under the Barrier through specially constructed tunnels thereby preventing Palestinians from using Israeli roads that go to settlements.
The urban and manufacturing hub of the main towns of Nablus, Ramallah, Hebron and Jericho, that are critical for Palestinian jobs and the economy, are also difficult to access because of tight restrictions. Jericho, for example, is encircled by a ditch on three sides and all traffic is funnelled through two checkpoints that frequently close.
Prior to the start of the second intifada in September 2000 more than 150,000 Palestinians worked in Israel. Nearly 90% of those people have now lost their jobs. Many have turned to farming as one of the few economic alternatives for the increasing number of unemployed. But movement restrictions prevent good returns. Increasingly, vendors of perishable products such as vegetables and fruit have no access to markets.
The Jordan Valley has long been an important Palestinian agricultural area. Today, no Palestinian who is not originally from that area can go there unless they have a permit to work in an Israeli settlement. Jordan Valley farmers cannot rely on moving their goods to markets and often spend hours at checkpoints resulting in substantial losses of highly perishable agricultural crops.
As the closure system becomes more institutionalised it has a myriad of other impacts. Many communities depend on water tankers for domestic water supplies during the summer but the closures can make it impossible for water trucks to reach their destination and meet community needs. Families often find themselves separated by a checkpoint, earth wall or the Barrier from relatives and friends who live close by or from their regular schools or health clinics.
Economy spiralling downwards
The economy is predicted to contract by a further 25% in the coming months if Palestinian Authority (PA) employees continue not to receive salaries. Following the Hamas victory in the January elections, PA revenues dried up. Half of the PA’s income came from taxes on Palestinian goods that entered through Israeli ports. Israel has suspended passing on those revenues, as it is obligated to under the Protocol on Economic Relations between the Government of Israel and the PLO it signed in 19941. Donors have also halted payments to the PA. Instead their attention has focused on the private sector as an alternative to maintain services and economic opportunities for Palestinians. But the private sector relies on the free movement of goods and labour – and both are severely curtailed by the closure system. As the economic crisis deepens, humanitarian aid is increasingly being looked upon as a primary support mechanism for Palestinians. But it is insufficient and aid alone is not capable of maintaining PA institutions. Furthermore, vital access by humanitarian agencies is becoming increasingly difficult. International humanitarian organisations report increased access incidents in the form of delays and denials of access at IDF checkpoints throughout the West Bank. UN staff can no longer be guaranteed to get to their places of work and are being asked to adhere to a variety of unpredictable checking procedures, despite previous agreements with the Israeli authorities.
The Government of Israel states that the closure regime is to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks. But the regime has separated off sections of the West Bank from each other and created tiny enclaves where people struggle to pass through an increasing array of obstacles just to move around their communities.
As the Israeli settlements in the West Bank expand, so to does the sophistication of the restrictions to protect them, all at a cost to Palestinian livelihoods. Increasingly, affluent settlements protected behind walls, fences and an array of obstacles sit side-by-side with impoverished and increasingly embittered Palestinian communities. Just that reality alone is fuel for an ongoing conflict.
Republished with permission of Forced Migration Review, a magazine available online at www.fmreview.org as well as in print. FMR is the in-house journal of the Refugee Studies Centre, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford. FMR is distributed to relief and development NGOs, human rights agencies, Red Cross/Crescent offices, UNHCR, OCHA, UNDP, UNICEF and other UN agencies, bilateral donors, refugee camps, research institutes, foreign and interior ministries and university, national and public libraries. The full text of all English language FMR articles is at Latest & Back Issues. The English edition of FMR is searchable at fmo.qeh.ox.ac.uk/fmo/index.asp.
David Shearer is Head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Jerusalem. OCHA oPt works to coordinate humanitarian response within the UN community in the West Bank and Gaza. Email: ochaopt@un.org. Regularly-updated briefing notes and reports are at: www.humanitarianinfo.org/opt.
David Shearer is Head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Jerusalem. OCHA oPt works to coordinate humanitarian response within the UN community in the West Bank and Gaza. Email: ochaopt@un.org. Regularly-updated briefing notes and reports are at: www.humanitarianinfo.org/opt.
Copyright © 2006 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved.
Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent.
This story was published on November 3, 2006.
Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent.
This story was published on November 3, 2006.
