In 1917, Lord Balfour, the UK's Foreign Secretary at the time, sent a letter to Lord Rothschild - a prominent Jewish leader and the first Jewish Peer in England. The letter committed the British government to support the establishment of a "national home" for the Jewish people in Palestine. This was despite the fact that Jews only made up a tiny part of the population at the time. In fact, when political Zionism began in the late nineteenth century, there were only 15,000 Jews in Palestine. In 1893, for example, Arabs comprised more than 95% of Palestine's population, and even though they were ruled by the Ottoman Empire, they had been in continuous possession of the land for 1300 years. 

The Balfour Declaration was followed by a massive and organised influx of Jews into Palestine - more than 350,000 between 1919 and 1939. Inevitably, this was accompanied by increasing unease among the country’s Palestinian population, culminating in the outbreak of a full-scale and sustained revolt against the British Mandate Government. The revolt was met with brutal repression by the British, including press censorship, collective punishments such as collective fines on whole towns and villages, arrest and detention without the need for a warrant, and house demolitions. Between 1936 and 1940, for example, the British Mandate Government destroyed no less than 2000 Palestinian homes. By 1939, the Palestinian rebellion had been defeated, and the Jewish influx into Mandate Palestine continued unabated. By now, the mainstream Zionist leadership was already preparing for statehood, and in November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly approved a plan to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab States with Jerusalem to be an international city. Under the plan, the Jewish State would be established on 56% of Mandate Palestine and an Arab State on the remaining 44%. Jewish leaders such as David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, were willing to accept the Plan but only as a first step to establishing their state over the whole of Palestine. As Ben-Gurion himself put it in the late 1930s: "After the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of the state, we shall abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine". Ben-Gurion also told his son: "I am certain we will be able to settle in all the other parts of the country, whether through an agreement with our Arab neighbours or in another way….Erect a Jewish State at once, even if it is not in the whole of the land. The rest will come in the course of time. It must come".

The only way to achieve this objective, however, was for large numbers of Palestinians to be forcibly expelled from territory that would eventually become Israel. This was acknowledged by Ben Gurion himself. Writing in 1941, he notes that “it is impossible to imagine general evacuation [of the Palestinian population] without compulsion, and brutal compulsion”. This brutal compulsion came following Israel’s establishment on 14th May 1948 when 800,000 Palestinians were driven into exile by Jewish forces. Many thousands more were murdered in a campaign which also involved the destruction of hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages. They also committed explicit acts of ethnic cleansing against Palestinians, including executions, rapes, and more than twenty-four massacres in which thousands of Palestinians perished. Palestinians refer to the circumstances surrounding Israel's creation as Nakba, or 'Catastrophe'.

In their quest to establish their state in historic Palestine, Jewish forces also waged a terrorist campaign against the British Mandate Government in the years preceding the establishment of the State of Israel. Between 1944 and 1947, for example, several Zionist organisations used terrorist bombings to drive the British from Palestine and killed many civilians in the process, including women and children. Furthermore, it was ‘Irgun’, the militant Zionist group headed by Menachem Begin, another future Israeli Prime Minister, which introduced the practice of placing bombs in buses and large crowds. Indeed, according to Benny Morris, a prominent Zionist Historian: “The Arabs may well have learnt the value of terrorist bombings from the Jews”. Morris also notes that during the 1948 war, Jewish terrorist groups “knowingly planted bombs in bus stops with the aim of killing non-combatants, including women and children”. It is worth noting that Irgun was also behind the bombing of King David Hotel, the Headquarters of British rule in July 1946, which resulted in the killing of ninety-two people. In July 2006, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s current Prime Minister, was among those who attended a two-day celebration of the bombing. Finally, Jewish terrorists also murdered UN Mediator Count Folke Bernadotte in 1948 because they opposed his proposal to internationalise Jerusalem. A prominent terrorist leader who approved the murder was Yitzhak Shamir, another future Israeli Prime Minister. Shamir talked unambiguously about what he regarded as the need for Jewish groups to resort to terrorism as a way of achieving their objectives by claiming that "Neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat....[terrorism has a] great part to play….in our war against the occupier [Britain]."

Following the six-day war in 1967, Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza from Jordan and Egypt and placed both territories under Israeli Civil Administration. In the process, it forcibly expelled a further 200,000 to 300,000 Palestinians from their homes and assumed direct responsibility for the residents of the occupied Palestinian territories whilst exploiting the territories' natural resources. Since 1967, Israel has also pursued a policy of separating Palestinians from their land, stealing that land, and building Jewish settlements on it. By the time the first Palestinian uprising erupted in 1987, Israel had managed to expropriate no less than 40% of the West Bank and Gaza. During the same period, it had established 125 Jewish settlements on much of that land. And during Israel’s military rule of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestinians were not allowed to establish their own industries for fear that they might provide unwelcome competition to Israeli producers. Today, Israel is continuing to dispossess Palestinians of key economic resources through outright confiscation of land and water and restrictions on the planning and use of resources, as well as a deliberate policy of restricting the development of effective Palestinian institutions. Israel also adopted a deliberate policy of undermining the Palestinian education sector by censoring many textbooks it considered to be against its interests. It also banned thousands of books. The strategy was to reduce the strength of the Palestinian people's national belonging and to loosen any link they had with their land. 

Israel’s repressive policies in the occupied Palestinian territories were not restricted to monitoring what was taught at schools and universities. Their policies were also reflected in the fact that spending on essential public services such as health and education was negligible. In the case of the education sector, for example, no new schools were built in the first ten years of the occupation, and those that were built afterwards did not keep pace with Palestinian population increases, which resulted in overcrowded classrooms and poor facilities. It also deprived schools and universities of basic educational facilities and equipment. The Palestinian health sector was also badly neglected. for example, the health budget for the entire West Bank in 1975 came to 60% of the budget for a 260-bed Israeli hospital in the same year. And in 1985, the budgetary allocation for one Israeli hospital was six times more than the budgetary allocation to all nine hospitals in the West Bank.

By 1987, the Palestinians had had enough. Exactly twenty years after the West Bank and Gaza Strip were seized from Jordan and Egypt, both territories erupted against Israeli occupation in what is now famously referred to as the first Palestinian Intifada – or popular uprising. This entailed a sustained campaign of social disobedience, mass demonstrations, stone-throwing and economic non-cooperation. Local Popular Committees were established which, as well as participating directly in the uprising, provided the Palestinian population with essential services such as health and education. As such, they were considered by the Palestinian population as the government of the people in place of the Israeli Civil Administration. The response of the Israeli Occupation Authorities was brutal. The Israeli army distributed truncheons and adopted a ‘break-the-bones’ strategy – beating Palestinian protestors severely until their bones were broken in a futile attempt to put an end to the uprising by force. In all, more than 1,100 Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli forces during the Intifada – 241 of them children under the age of seventeen. The injuries ran into the thousands. For example, according to the Swedish ‘Save the Children’ Organisation, “23,600 to 29,900 children required medical treatment for their beating injuries in the first two years of the Intifada”, with nearly one-third sustaining broken bones. Furthermore, it noted that nearly one third of the beaten children were aged ten and under.

In a sense, the Palestinian uprising of 1987 pushed the international community to make a serious attempt at ending the Israeli occupation and helping the Palestinians establish their own independent state. On 15th November 1988, the late PLO Leader, Yasser Arafat, who was, at the time living in exile in Algeria, declared an independent State of Palestine on the West Bank and Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital. By doing so, Arafat had explicitly accepted the UN General Assembly’s Partition Plan of 1947. The Plan represented a heavy blow to the Palestinians because it gave the Jews 56% of historic Palestine even though, as mentioned earlier, they controlled no more than 7% of the land. Furthermore, by calling for the convening of an international peace conference on the Middle East on the basis of United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, Arafat had explicitly recognized Israel’s right to exist on more than 78% of historic Palestine. The prospects of a Palestinian State being established on the remaining 22% only represented a “best case scenario”.

Arafat’s declaration of independence in 1988 paved the way for the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference between Israel and its Arab neighbours, including the PLO. It was the first time in forty-three years that representatives of Arab countries bordering historic Palestine sat down to discuss peace with their Israeli enemies. The Madrid Conference was followed by secret “back-channel” negotiations between Israel and the PLO in Oslo, which culminated in 1993 in the Declaration of Principles on Self-Government for the Palestinians – otherwise known as the ‘Oslo Accords’. The key provisions of the Accords include ‘Article I’, which envisaged an interim period – not exceeding five years – after which ‘permanent status’ negotiations would lead to full implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, and ‘Article XIII’, which stipulated that Israel would withdraw from the Gaza Strip and Jericho in order to pave the way for the creation of the Palestinian Authority. The Accords, which represented the first direct face-to-face agreement between Israel and the PLO, were officially signed by Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, the Israeli and Palestinian leaders, respectively, at a public ceremony on the White House Lawn. However, rather than leading to the end of Israel’s occupation and the establishment of an independent Palestinian State, the post-Oslo period witnessed an intensification of Israel’s colonization of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza Strip, and, effectively, the ‘demise’ of the two-state solution.

The signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO in September 1993 signalled the beginning of peace negotiations that would, less than a year later, lead to the establishment of a Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for a transitional period “not exceeding” five years, leading to a permanent settlement based on UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. During the interim period, responsibility for the provision of essential public services such as health, education, direct taxation and social welfare were transferred from the Israeli military government and its Civil Administration to the newly-established Palestinian Authority (PA). Crucially, according to paragraphs 2 and 3 of Article ‘V’ of the Agreement, permanent status negotiations involving, among other things, the status of Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees and Jewish settlements were to take place “no later than the beginning of the third year of the interim period”. Furthermore, as well as laying the framework for future negotiations between the two sides, the Accords stipulated that “neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations”. However, the fact that Arafat did not set any preconditions for the negotiations represented a major flaw in the agreement, as did his failure to get a specific timetable for the withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces from the occupied Palestinian territories. Instead, all he managed to extract from Israel was recognition that the PLO was the representative of the Palestinian people, as well as an agreement on the formation of a ‘Palestinian Authority’ to administer the day-to-day affairs of Palestinians. This suited the Israelis as it meant that they no longer had formal responsibility for the welfare of Palestinians living in the occupied territories. Despite the PLO’s recognition of Israel’s ‘right’ to exist' on more than 78% of historic Palestine, the Oslo Agreement did not place any requirement on Israel to recognize the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.

The Oslo Accords also signalled the start of a long and sustained engagement by the international donor community in the ‘state-building’ process in the oPt, which kicked off in September that year with the publication by the World Bank of a six-volume series entitled “Developing the Occupied Territories: An Investment in Peace”. The Bank affirmed its readiness to assist the newly-formed PA by outlining a “priority agenda of policy reforms, institutional development and investments needed to promote growth”. The Bank highlighted the importance of a political settlement and the need for an effective public sector for future development prospects:

"Political settlement and peace is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for economic development in the OT [occupied Palestinian territories]. Much will also depend on the quality of economic management in the post-peace period and the strategic choices".

The Bank also noted the important role that a future Palestinian Authority would play in economic development, including the “upgrading of physical and social infrastructure….[as well as providing] a supportive business environment within which the private sector would flourish while, at the same time, protecting public interests in areas such as health, safety and the environment”.

The Oslo Accords were followed by the so-called ‘Paris Protocol’ in April 1994. Amounting to what was effectively a ‘customs union’ between Israel and the PLO, the agreement represented the economic arm of the Accords as it defined the formalized policies of economic cooperation and integration with Israel relating to the exchange of goods, fiscal policy, currency arrangements, and labour services. It enabled the Palestinians to conduct limited direct trade with neighbouring Arab countries. It also stipulated that Israel would collect import taxes on goods that were destined for the Palestinian market. Finally, the Paris Protocol transferred to the future Palestinian Authority some powers relating to economic policy, including the authority to impose direct and indirect taxes, set industrial policy, establish a monetary authority, and employ public sector workers. This customs union arrangement was preferable to Israel which did not want to establish an economic border with the Palestinians for fear that such an arrangement would give “a clear flavour of sovereignty and create a binding precedent on the eve of the final status stage”. As such, its main effect was to deepen Palestinian dependency and vulnerability vis-à-vis the Israeli economy by institutionalizing the asymmetrical economic relations which had prevailed in the late 1960s and created an ‘attenuated’ one-sided customs union which continued to favour Israel in many aspects. For one thing, Palestinian trade with neighbouring countries was handled through Israeli sea and air ports or through border crossings with Jordan and Egypt which Israel controlled. This was disadvantageous to the Palestinians in three ways. First, the fact that Israel charged an administration fee resulted in higher costs for Palestinian traders and a loss of part of the tax and VAT revenue to the PA. Also, the disruption and unpredictability brought about by Israel’s control of the borders meant that Palestinian trade was extremely vulnerable to its closure policy which it pursues on a regular basis to this day. Furthermore, the vulnerability of the Palestinians to the actions of the Israeli government as reinforced by the Paris Protocol became all too evident less than four years after the signing of the Oslo Accords when Israel decided to withhold tax revenues to the PA as punishment for Palestinian attempts at resisting the occupation. This policy was also pursued to devastating effect on the PA budget following the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000, and also following the Palestinian parliamentary elections in January 2006 which Hamas – the Islamic Resistance Movement – won by a landslide. Amounting to more than $740 million annually, Israel’s withholding of tax revenues left a gaping hole in PA public finances, which forced the international donor community to step in and provide the PA with millions in budget support in order to make up for the shortfall and prevent PA institutions from collapsing.

The Oslo Accords of September 1993 and the Paris Protocol of April 1994 were followed, in May of that year, by the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA). At its helm was Yasser Arafat – long-time leader of the PLO and a man who had come to embody the Palestinian peoples’ struggle for self-determination. It is important to note, however, that the PA that was established as a result of the Oslo Accords did not possess any attributes of sovereignty that are normally associated with a national government. For example, it lacked control over its internal and external borders, its airspace and access to the sea. It also lacked territorial contiguity as well as any control over the occupied territories' natural resources such as land and water. This proved to be significant as it had far-reaching implications for the PA’s ability to implement much-needed public sector reforms.

September 1995 witnessed the signing of the ‘Taba Agreement’ between Israel and the newly-established PA. Also known as ‘Oslo II’, The Taba Agreement divided the West Bank and Gaza into three separate areas: Area ‘A’, which includes most Palestinian population centres apart from East Jerusalem and some parts of Hebron, was transferred from Israeli military administration to the Palestinian Authority. Civilian control for Area ‘B’, which includes the remaining population centres such as villages and refugee camps, was also transferred to the PA, although Israel retained overall security control over these areas. Between them, areas A an B constitute 36% of the West Bank. The remaining 64% constitutes Area ‘C’ which has remained under total Israeli control to this day. This includes the Jordan Valley’s most fertile, arable land as well as all Jewish settlements and their associated infrastructure, including a web of bypass roads which Palestinians are forbidden from using.

Despite the initial euphoria brought about by the signing of the Oslo Accords, the situation on the ground in the occupied Palestinian territories has not transpired as the World Bank, or, for that matter, the Palestinians who had endured decades of Israeli occupation and repression, had envisaged. In fact, the Bank’s characterization of the period following the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 as a ‘post-peace’ period has proved mistaken. Rather than signalling the end of Israeli occupation, the post-Oslo period has been characterized by an intensification of Israel’s colonisation of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip. After locking Arafat and his negotiating team into the three agreements cited above, Israel set out to systematically separate both peoples without having to end the occupation and withdraw from the oPt – “to keep the land but not the indigenous population”. In the words of Anne Le More:

"The reality of the whole period has been one of increasing territorial, socio-economic and political fragmentation, which intensified with the onset of the intifada. This has in large part been caused by a number of mutually reinforcing Israeli measures of control and territorial expansion. In turn, this process of ‘bantustanisation’, whereby the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip have become a collection of isolated areas and enclaves separated from one another, stands in sharp contradiction to the sine qua non of territorial contiguity as the basis for an economically and politically viable Palestinian State".   

This brings chilling echoes of the ‘homeland system’ established in the days of Apartheid South Africa which effectively penned black South Africans into ‘self-governing Bantu units’ with the promise of devolved administrative powers, autonomy and self-government.  This point is also made forcefully by Neve Gordon, who argues that, while the period prior to 1993 was characterized by the “colonization principle” in which Israel sought to manage the lives of the colonized Palestinians while exploiting the occupied Palestinian territorries' resources, in the years following the Oslo Accords a new Israeli policy took shape. Instead of reaching a settlement about the withdrawal of Israeli power, the Oslo Accords gave rise to what Neve Gordon rightly calls the “Separation Principle” which involved:

"Reorganizing Israel’s power in the territories in order to continue its control over their resources. Thus the Oslo Accords….signified the reorganization of power rather than its withdrawal and should be understood as the continuation of the occupation by other means".

However, as previously argued, it is important to note that the ultimate aim of separation is colonization as it involves separating Palestinians from their land for the purpose of expanding Jewish settlements on it. Gordon further argues that, during this phase, Israel offered the PA “some sort of truncated sovereignty” over the occupied people while it set out to gain complete control over most of the land of the occupied territories:

"The overarching logic informing the different agreements is straightforward: transfer all responsibilities relating to the management of the population to the Palestinians themselves while preserving control over Palestinian space".

It is possible to illustrate this point by considering the Taba Agreement of 1995 which divided the West Bank into areas A, B and C. As noted above, Areas A and B comprised 36% of the West Bank, while area C made up the remaining 64%. Under the terms of the Taba Agreement, responsibility for administrative and security issues for area A, which, at the time represented 3% of the West Bank and 26% of its population, was handed over to the PA. The PA was also given administrative responsibility for area B, which, at the time, comprised 24% of the West Bank and 70% of its population, while Israel maintained its control over security issues. However, under the terms of the agreement, Israel maintained full control over area C, which at the time comprised 73% of the West Bank’s land and only 3% of its population. This reinforces the argument that, rather than representing the beginning of the end of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the Oslo Accords of 1993 and all the agreements that followed, acted to reinforce and, indeed, intensify, Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Gordon’s ‘truncated sovereignty’ argument effectively implies that Israel used the PA as a tool for extending its control over the Palestinian territories. This argument is reinforced by Sara Roy, who asserts that the hegemonic system imposed by Israel during its direct rule of the Palestinian territories “did not disappear with the implementation of the peace process but was maintained, with certain modifications, via the new Palestinian Authority (PA) set up under Oslo. The Israeli government remained the final arbiter of Palestinian life, though its rule was largely mediated by the PA”. In other words, instead of being a symbol of national liberation that would, with the passage of time, govern a fully independent and sovereign Palestinian State, the PA was turned into a mechanism which aided Israel’s colonization project. 

This intensification of Israel’s colonization of the West Bank and Gaza Strip has, since 1993, manifested itself in Israel’s relentless pursuit of a policy of severely restricting Palestinian movement and access, land expropriation and Jewish settlement expansion – all aimed at trapping millions of Palestinians into ‘pockets’ of territory surrounded by Jewish settlements and a web of roads and by-pass roads which they were prohibited from using. In addition to this, Israel retained control over key factors of production, such as land, water, labour and capital, while access to natural resources remained highly restricted to Palestinians. For example, under the ‘Oslo II’ Agreement which was signed in September 1995, 82% of the West Bank’s ground water was allocated to Israel. This effectively made official Israel’s control over Palestinian aquifers which had existed before the 1990s. In other words, the process of ‘de-development’ and ‘resource-expropriation’ which characterized the pre-Oslo period, was accelerated during the post-Oslo period, as Sara Roy rightly argues:

"The characteristic features of the de-development process – expropriation, integration and de-institutionalization – not only have continued but have accelerated since Oslo, their detrimental impact heightened by new economic realities, particularly closure".

In its simplest definition, ‘closure’ is a policy aimed at depriving Palestinians who live in the oPt, as well as commercial goods and vehicular traffic, the right of free movement. The policy has three main aspects: First, internal closure of Palestinian towns and villages in the oPt through a network of military checkpoints, roadblocks, ditches, and earth mounds. Second, external closure between Israel, on the one hand, and between both the West Bank and Gaza Strip, on the other, as well as between the West Bank and Gaza. Third, external closure between the West Bank and Jordan and the Gaza Strip and Egypt. This policy was first put into practice following the outbreak of the first Palestinian Intifada when Israel introduced a ‘green card’ system aimed at denying free movement to Palestinians who were seen as a ‘security threat’ to Israel. After the outbreak of the first Gulf War in 1991, the policy was modified to include a blanket ban on all Palestinians, with exceptions being made for certain categories, including collaborators and Palestinian merchants. Between March 1993 and June 1997, Israel imposed its closure regime on the Palestinian territories for a total of 353 days. And since the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000, towns and villages all over the West Bank and Gaza Strip were gradually and systematically sealed off.

In sum, although these policies of closure and restrictions on access and movement were already pursued in one form or another during Israel’s direct occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War, they were intensified in the years following the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, and particularly after the Taba Agreement of 1995. 

Restrictions on Palestinian movement and access were further compounded by Israel’s decision, in June 2002, to construct the West Bank ‘Separation Barrier’ – a physical barrier aimed at separating Israel from much of the West Bank.  In most areas, the Barrier is comprised of an electronic fence with dirt paths, barbed-wire fences, and trenches on both sides, at an average width of 60 meters. In some areas, a wall six to eight meters high has been erected in place of the barrier system. Israel calls it a “Security Barrier” and claims that its construction is aimed first and foremost at preventing Palestinian suicide bombers from entering its territory from the West Bank. In truth, however, most of the Barrier runs deep into West Bank territory and not along the green line, which casts doubt on Israel’s argument that the Separation Barrier is a security response to Palestinian “terrorism”. Furthermore, the Barrier has imposed additional restrictions on Palestinian movement and access in addition to those that were already in place before its construction. It has, for example, prevented thousands of Palestinian farmers from having access to their land, thereby preventing them from pursuing their livelihoods. It has also prevented thousands of Palestinians from attending university, or even having access to much-needed healthcare facilities. In the words of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs:

"The Barrier continues to be the single largest obstacle to Palestinian movement…. In East Jerusalem, the Barrier and its associated permit regime continued to severely limit the access of Palestinians to specialized medical care, university education, work, social and family activities, and events and places of worship".

In addition to advancing Israel’s policy of restricting Palestinian movement and access, the Barrier has proved a useful tool for expropriating yet more Palestinian land. In fact, according to the United Nations, the Barrier’s construction has involved the confiscation of “almost one-fifth of the West Bank’s most fertile land”.

In July 2004, the International Court of Justice passed a non-binding ruling declaring the Barrier illegal under international law as its construction created a “fait accompli which could become permanent”. This, the Court declared, would be “tantamount to de facto annexation”. The ruling called on Israel to cease construction of the Barrier and to dismantle it immediately. Israel, for its part, refused to accept the Court’s judgment, calling it “unjust”. It has continued construction work on the wall ever since. 

According to UN figures, as of the end of October 2009, there were a total of 578 closure obstacles inside the West Bank, including 69 permanently staffed checkpoints, 21 “partial checkpoints”, and 488 unstaffed obstacles (roadblocks, earth-mounds, earth walls, road barriers, road gates and trenches). Of the 69 permanently staffed checkpoints, 37 are located along the Barrier.

In sum, due to Israel’s expansionist agenda, the occupied Palestinian territories are today both besieged and internally fragmented. The 40% of the West Bank which is not under direct Israeli control consists of Palestinian ‘cantons’, separated from one another by the Separation Barrier, Israeli checkpoints and other physical barriers, Jewish settlements, and a segregated road network which is limited or totally prohibited to Palestinian use. In the words of Hanan Ashrawi:

"A state of siege has been imposed not only on the West Bank and Gaza, but also within these territories, to transform each village, town, and city into an isolated prison, thereby destroying every aspect of human life, including economic, educational, health, and social cohesiveness in an attempt to sever every fibre of the fabric of normal life… the peace process became a punitive process manipulated by Israel to pursue its policies of expansion, ethnic cleansing, colonialism and subjugation of the weaker side by force".

According to the World Bank, this ‘cantonisation’ of the occupied Palestinian territories has led to the disintegration of the economic links between the different parts of the territories and the creation of disconnected Palestinian ‘clusters’ with increasingly less access to one another. Consequently, Israel’s closure policy has also had a devastating impact on the Palestinian economy. Restrictions on movement and access have made it extremely hard for Palestinians to get to their jobs and to transport goods from one area to the other – a problem made worse by Israel’s formalization of the ‘back-to-back’ system in 2003, whereby, under the supervision of Israeli soldiers, Palestinians must unload merchandise from one truck on one side of the checkpoint and reload it onto another truck on the other side. As well as increasing transportation costs, it has also resulted in the increasingly frequent occurrence that goods, particularly agricultural products, are damaged or spoilt before they reach their destination. In the words of the World Bank:

"The precipitator of this crisis has been ‘closure’ - a multi-faceted system of restrictions on the movement of goods and people….. Closures have cut through the web of Palestinian economic transactions, raising the costs of doing business and disrupting the predictability needed for orderly economic life". 

The devastating effects of Israel’s policies on the Palestinian economy are further highlighted by Sara Roy. Writing in 2001, Roy notes:

"Arguably, at no time since the beginning of the occupation in 1967 had the Palestinian economy been so weak and its people as vulnerable as during the seven Oslo years, a tragic irony given the enormous expectations that accompanied the early years of the process".

Israel’s policy of ‘cantonisation’ has also prevented Palestinians from the West Bank from having access to hospitals and other health facilities in East Jerusalem. Because of this, many patients had to be referred to neighbouring countries for treatment, which increased the financial burden on an already stretched PA budget. According to Ministry of Health statistics, for example, there were 32,000 such cases in 2005 alone, with a cost to the PA of just over $47 million. Israel’s policies also put Palestinian lives at risk. In July 2007 alone, for example, there were forty reported cases of ambulances being denied access to patients in the West Bank. Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet Magazine, describes the effects of Israel’s policies on Palestinian health and well-being as follows:

"The lessons I have learned personally in the two years of discussion and debates about Palestinian health is that peace without justice is no peace at all. The prison-like cage built around Gaza, the daily humiliations of women, children and workers passing through checkpoints, the paralysis of the West Bank caused by occupation, the obstacles imposed on communities trying to build schools, clinics and homes for their children is a daily reality that any visitor will witness and goes largely unreported in the Western media".

In addition to movement restrictions and land confiscation, Israel’s continued expansion of Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land has also been moving at full speed since the onset of the ‘peace process’ in 1993. In 1992, for example, just one year before the Oslo Accords were signed, there were a total of 130,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank. By the end of 2008, the number of settlements in the West Bank stood at 121, housing 303,800 Jewish settlers, (with another 193,700 in East Jerusalem). This implies that the Jewish settler population in the West Bank alone increased by 173,800 after the signing of the Oslo Accords in September 1993, an increase of over 133%. Furthermore, in addition to the large settlement blocks which are officially recognized as ‘legal’ by the Israeli government, there are also around 100 unrecognized smaller settlements, or what the Israelis prefer to call “outposts” scattered throughout the West Bank. According to latest estimates, these consist of between 4,000 and 5,000 Israeli settlers who between them control a further 3,009 square kilometres of Palestinian land. These figures imply that, despite signing a peace agreement with the PLO in September 1993, Israel’s intentions all along have been to intensify its colonization of the occupied Palestinian territories, and not end it.

Through all these measures, Israel aims to separate the Palestinians from their land, seize as much of that land as possible in order to advance its policy of settlement expansion, as well as to exploit it for agricultural purposes. By pursuing such a policy, Israel hopes to create new facts on the ground which would be extremely hard, if not impossible, to reverse in the event of a final agreement being reached with the PA. In short, Israel’s actions on the ground since 1993 have been aimed at preventing the establishment of a Palestinian State. Such policies have incurred the wrath of Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapparteur on the oPt. In a recent Report to the UN General Assembly, Falk notes that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories “exhibits features of colonialism and Apartheid”, and argues that Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) has become so extensive that it accounted to a de-facto annexation of Palestinian land, and undercuts assumptions behind UN Security Council Resolutions implying that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories was temporary and reversible.