The Verity Courier
Life in PalestineBy Ron Estes6 January 2024Since 7 October, the world has been preoccupied with Gaza and Israel’s military operations which are conducting genocidal disaster on the civilian population. Virtually ignored have been attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian civilians in the Israeli occupied West Bank.
But life for the occupied West Bank population has been a harsh, humiliating experience.
For example, as long ago as 2011, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian (OCHA) said there were 522 roadblocks and checkpoints obstructing Palestinian movement in the West Bank. That number did not include the temporary checkpoints known as "flying checkpoints," of which there were 495 on average per month.
These required the majority of Palestinians to pass through Israeli checkpoints or roadblocks several times a day, every day, just to go to work, to school, to visit family and friends.74 % of the main routes in the West Bank were controlled by checkpoints or blocked entirely.Palestinian travel was, and still is, restricted or entirely prohibited on 41 roads and sections of roads throughout the West Bank, including many of the main arteries, covering a total of over 700 kilometers of roadway. Israelis travel freely on these roads.
According to the World Bank, the recession in the Palestinian economy since 2000 has been “among the worst in modern history.” The restrictions on freedom of movement that Israel imposed on Palestinians was the primary cause of the decline of the Palestinian economy and chronic increases in unemployment and poverty across the occupied territories.
A report by the World Bank stated that economic recovery and sustainable growth within the West Bank would “… require a fundamental reassessment of closure practices, a restoration of the presumption of movement, and review of Israeli control of the population.”
A later World Bank Economic Monitoring Report stressed that it was important to recognize that the prolonged system of closures and restrictions on Palestinian movement in the West Bank causes lasting damage to the Palestinian economy.
More than half the land in the West Bank, much of it agricultural and resource rich, was, and still is, inaccessible to Palestinians. A World Bank comprehensive study of the potential impact of this “restricted land,” set the loss to the Palestinian economy at about US $3.4 billion.
Restrictions on Palestinian freedom of movement also seriously affect Palestinian access to medical care, including emergency medical treatment.
Soldiers at checkpoints consistently stop ambulances and patients. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society, have reported as many as 112 deaths and 35 stillbirths in one year as a result of the prevention of medical personnel and patients from crossing checkpoints. The World Health Organization (WHO) strongly criticized “the incidents involving lack of respect and protection for Palestinian ambulances and medical personnel, as well as the restrictions on movement imposed on them by Israel .. in violation of international humanitarian law.”
According to the WHO, at least 69 women gave birth at check-points since the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000 to 2006. These women endured labor in some of the most unsanitary and inhumane conditions possible.
The risk to themselves and their babies was grave. Out of these 69 cases recorded by WHO, 35 of the newborns died and five mothers also perished.
And the restrictions still exist.
“You can’t get there from here” is a common refrain. A trip from home in Bethlehem to work in Ramallah used to take 30 minutes. Now it’s 2 hours. Israeli settlement expansion has continued and the resultant unemployment among the young on the West Bank is over20%.
Even though Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have not initiated attacks on Israelis, violence has flared on the West Bank. Since 7 October, Israeli settlers and the IDF, have destroyed Palestinian olive tree groves, the main source of income in the territory, destroyed homes, burned car and killed over 300 Palestinians, wounding 5,200. If the world knew.
Ron Estes served 25 years as an Operations Officer in the CIA Clandestine Service.
