The Palestinians are still living a daily struggle with the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and since 1967 they have been deprived of the most basic requirements of normal life in the practical and humanitarian fields. The human groups that suffer the most in this regard are those that are forcibly destined to live in close proximity to settlements and checkpoints under the full civil and military control of Israel, which constitutes more than 50% of the West Bank, where Palestinians are deprived of bread and dignity. In some areas of the West Bank, there is almost a settlement at every hill that has its own road leading to it, and it is surrounded by walls and checkpoints, which hinders the movement of Palestinians in their quest to earn their living or family communication with relatives and friends. The violence they are subjected to on the part of the settlers deters many of them from going to their lands to plant it, tend their sheep, or reap their harvest, if these settlers keep them what they earn or earn.
The Palestinians also face a major problem in the small number of building permits issued by the occupation authorities, which has prompted many families whose numbers naturally multiply to build without a permit and to risk demolishing what they build after a short time, forcing some of them to leave by force. In this context, the ICRC's coordinator for protection in Israel and the Occupied Territories says: “The violence perpetrated by settlers creates invisible barriers that impede farmers from accessing their lands. Administrative difficulties in obtaining permission to build or develop infrastructure in some rural areas also create invisible barriers. Invisible barriers can take the form of closed military zones and firing zones where it is difficult to graze livestock... These together create invisible barriers for the population living in the rural areas of the occupied territories.”
In the face of this reality, many Palestinian families live in cases of suffering, terror and persecution represented by the settlers’ attack on their homes, properties and farms. Windows and doors are sometimes smashed, fruit trees are cut down at other times, or people are prevented from going to work, hospitals and schools, or cutting off electricity and water. about her. In the midst of this military siege, a comprehensive report by Amnesty International is issued from time to time on the overall situation in the occupied territories, revealing forms of suffering of the oppressed Palestinian people, the most prominent of which are cases of humiliation and oppression at checkpoints throughout the West Bank, which do not exclude doctors, ambulances and journalists. In this context, one of the widespread punishments at checkpoints is to keep Palestinians for long hours without any protection from the sun or rain, and sometimes even expose them to shooting, which may amount to death. Zionist soldiers who kill or injure Palestinian citizens enjoy immunity and legal protection, and in the worst cases are only sentenced to a few days of formal detention, which soon ends with their release and may even congratulate them for their aggressive behavior, while Palestinians who disobey the soldiers' orders or violate the embargo measures are offered They roam the military courts and are sentenced to fines and up to five years in actual imprisonment.
In many cases, the Zionist soldiers inflict immediate punishment on the Palestinians by beating, confiscating vehicle keys or drivers' ID cards, or shooting at the wheels of cars. Amnesty International says that it is impossible for Palestinians to live a normal life with the many checkpoints that cut the parts of the West Bank, and with the apartheid wall that turned Arab villages into ghettos suffering from economic and social suffocation, knowing that the population of these isolated villages reaches 200,000 citizens. . United Nations envoys report that many of these besieged families are suffering from misery, extreme poverty and chronic malnutrition.
Amnesty International stresses that Israel impedes the Palestinians' access to any work, no matter how insignificant, and also prevents them from obtaining clean and sufficient water. These measures have also led to a sharp rise in prices and great difficulties in exporting products, which exposes crops and foods to spoilage. Some families are forced to sell property and borrow from relatives and friends to buy food on credit. At a time when the number of people of working age (15 years) is increasing, job opportunities are declining and unemployment is increasing. Palestinian women also bear the consequences of all this inside and outside the home. In a society in which men used to be the traditional earners of sustenance and women who worked outside the home used to do so in skilled areas, more women were forced to perform menial or irregular work at low pay, which increased tension and problems within families and led to Numerous cases of conflict and divorce.
These dire conditions are exacerbated by the Israeli obstruction measures, especially the security and military checkpoints on the main and secondary roads, which include cement blocks, iron gates, earth mounds, in addition to trenches. In a report issued by the United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs last year, it was found that the total number of these checkpoints and checkpoints has reached more than five hundred, in addition to the separation wall, which is more than 700 kilometers long and 20 kilometers deep inside the West Bank, with the accompanying expulsion of Palestinians. From their lands and appropriating them as an integral part of the Jewish settlement projects throughout the West Bank, especially Jerusalem, which has so far included more than 200 settlements with more than 530,000 Jewish settlers. In addition to the above, what the Palestinians call bypass roads or alternative roads according to the Israeli terminology, which are divided into three sections: a section subject to absolute Israeli use and often used for military purposes; Thus, to blackmail the soldiers and their various methods of obstruction and humiliation, contrary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and what the Israelis are trying to propagate about their army as a “moral” army, which is certainly the exact opposite.