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Ref. : Local Newsbriefs
Ref. : Letters to the editor
06.24 Mr. Holder, You Must Hold Torturers Accountable
06.29 Thinking about Climate
06.26 False Health-Scare Ad on CNN
06.25 Louella Learns the Limits of Medicare
06.23 The Simple Answer to America’s Health Care Crisis: Medicare for All
06.23 Tell ABC: Include Single-Payer in Healthcare Debate
06.23 Serving the Medical-Industrial Complex
06.22 Thinking about Recoveries
06.20 Obama's Health Care Waterloo
06.15 Obama, Like Clinton Before Him, is Blowing the Chance for Real Health Care Reform
06.11 Two Key Health-Care Numbers
06.10 Big Breakthroughs for Single Payer Health Care
06.10 Readying Americans for Dangerous, Mandatory Vaccinations
06.29 WP's Connolly Back, on Health Reform
06.17 Hypocrisy and Hope: Western Coverage, Iranian Courage
06.15 Excusing Outrages of the Right
06.11 Tying Obama to Bush's Budget Mess
06.30 Obama's Torture Hypocrisy
06.30 Court Circular: Annals of Imperial Continuity
06.29 Obama, They Want You to Fail
06.26 Who to Trust on a Truth Commission?
06.26 Tarnished Shields: The Morally Bankrupt 'Family Values' Republican Leadership
06.25 America's "Bases of Empire"
06.24 Twelve Angry White People: Jury Nullification in a Pennsylvania Coal Town
06.24 Touring Empire's Ruins
06.23 Employers are Undermining the Economic Stimulus Program
06.19 Criminalizing Dissent: Obama Pot Calls Iranian Kettle Black
06.17 Afghanistan's Operation Phoenix
06.16 Are You Ready for War with a Demonized Iran?
06.13 Where's the Anger as the Wheels Come Off Obama's and the Democrats' Recovery Program?
06.10 Waiving the Rules for Old Glory
06.10 Obama's Era of Openness Is Closed
07.03 Reviewing Marjorie Cohn and Kathleen Gilberd's "Rules of Disengagement"
07.01 Iraq: A Bitter Strategic Failure
06.25 It's All Good, Again: 'Uptick' in the American-Made Tides of Violence in Iraq
06.22 Obama Opposes Plame-gate Release
06.21 Dexter's Legions: The "Good" Killers of the "Good" War
06.18 Extending the Tradition: Proudly Taking American Torture Into the Future
06.15 New UN Report Denounces America's Human Rights Record
06.14 Fear Rules
07.01 Michael Hudson's "Super Imperialism:" The Economic Strategy of Imperial America
06.23 Obama's Financial Reform Proposal - A Stealth Scheme for Global Monetary Control
06.10 Cyberscares About Cyberwars Equal Cybermoney
07.01 Pirates of the Mediterranean
06.29 Color Revolutions, Old and New
06.25 Iran Divided & the 'October Suprise'
06.23 Astringent Corrective: AbuKhalil on Iran's Turmoil
06.20 Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated “Color Revolution?”
06.20 Through a Glass Darkly: Sifting Myth and Fact on Iran
06.19 Iran's Election and US - Iranian Elections
06.16 The Ir-Af-Pak War: Obama Looses the Manhunters
06.12 Israeli War Crimes Against Children During Operation Cast Lead
SLOW GENOCIDE:
Territorial fragmentation of the West Bank
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.
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.
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.
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This story was published on November 3, 2006.
