Abir Dandis, the mother of the two girls who were murdered in the Negev town of Al-Fura’a last week, couldn't find a police officer to listen to her warnings, neither in Arad nor in Ma’ale Adumim. Both police stations operate in areas where Israel wants to gather the Bedouin into permanent communities, against their will, in order to clear more land for Jewish communities. The dismissive treatment Dandis received shows how the Bedouin are considered simply to be lawbreakers by their very nature. But as a resident of the West Bank asking for help for her daughters, whose father was Israeli, Dandis faced the legal-bureaucratic maze created by the Oslo Accords.

The Palestinian police is not allowed to arrest Israeli civilians. It must hand suspects over to the Israel Police. The Palestinian police complain that in cases of Israelis suspected of committing crimes against Palestinian residents, the Israel Police tend not to investigate or prosecute them.

In addition, the town of Al-Azaria, where Dandis lives, is in Area B, under Palestinian civilian authority and Israeli security authority. According to the testimony of Palestinian residents, neither the IDF nor the Israel Police has any interest in internal Palestinian crime even though they have both the authority and the obligation to act in Area B.

The Palestinian police are limited in what it can do in Area B. Bringing in reinforcements or carrying weapons in emergency situations requires coordination with, and obtaining permission from, the IDF. If Dandis fears that the man who murdered her daughters is going to attack her as well, she has plenty of reason to fear that she will not receive appropriate, immediate police protection from either the Israelis or the Palestinians.

Dandis told Jack Khoury of Haaretz that the Ma’ale Adumim police referred her to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Coordination and Liaison Committee. Theoretically, this committee (which is subordinate to the Civil Affairs Ministry) is the logical place to go for such matters. Its parallel agency in Israel is the Civilian Liaison Committee (which is part of the Coordination and Liaison Administration - a part of the Civil Administration under the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories).

In their meetings, they are supposed to discuss matters such as settlers’ complaints about the high volume of the loudspeakers at mosques or Palestinians’ complaints about attacks by settlers. But the Palestinians see the Liaison Committee as a place to submit requests for permission to travel to Israel, and get the impression that its clerks do not have much power when faced with their Israeli counterparts. In any case, the coordination process is cumbersome and long.

The Palestinian police has a family welfare unit, and activists in Palestinian women’s organizations say that in recent years, its performance has improved. But, as stated, it has no authority over Israeli civilians and residents. Several non-governmental women’s groups also operate in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and women in similar situations approach them for help. The manager of one such organization told Haaretz that Dandis also fell victim to this confusing duplication of procedures and laws. Had Dandis approached her, she said, she would have referred her to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which has expertise in navigating Israel’s laws and authorities.

John Kerry revealed his long-awaited plan for peace in the Middle East on Sunday, hinging on a $4bn (£2.6bn) investment in the Palestinian private sector.

The US secretary of state, speaking at the World Economic Forum on the Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea, told an audience including Israeli president Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that an independent Palestinian economy is essential to achieving a sustainable peace.

Speaking under the conference banner "Breaking the Impasse", Kerry announced a plan that he promised would be "bigger, bolder and more ambitious" than anything since the Oslo accords, more than 20 years ago.

Tony Blair is to lead a group of private sector leaders in devising a plan to release the Palestinian economy from its dependence on international donors. The initial findings of Blair's taskforce, Kerry boasted, were "stunning", predicting a 50% increase in Palestinian GDP over three years, a cut of two-thirds in unemployment rates and almost double the Palestinian median wage. Currently, 40% of the Palestinian economy is supplied by donor aid.

Kerry assured Abbas that the economic plan was not a substitute for a political solution, which remains the US's "top priority".

Peres, who had taken the stage just minutes before, also issued a personal plea to his Palestinian counterpart to return to the negotiations.

"Let me say to my dear friend President Abbas," Peres said, "Should we really dance around the table? Lets sit together. You'll be surprised how much can be achieved in open, direct and organised meetings."

Thick locks hug the front gates of shuttered shops, now covered in graffiti and dust from lack of use. Only a handful of customers pass along the dimly lit road, sometimes stopping to check the ripeness of fruits and vegetables, or ordering meat in near-empty butcher shops.

“All the shops are closed. I’m the only one open. This used to be the best place,” said 64-year-old Mustafa Sunocret, selling vegetables out of a small storefront in the marketplace near his family’s home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.

Amidst the brightly coloured scarves, clothes and carpets, ceramic pottery and religious souvenirs filling the shops of Jerusalem’s historic Old City, Palestinian merchants are struggling to keep their businesses alive.

Faced with worsening health problems, Sunocret told IPS that he cannot work outside of the Old City, even as the cost of maintaining his shop, with high electricity, water and municipal tax bills to pay, weighs on him.

“I only have this shop,” he said. “There is no other work. I’m tired.”

Abed Ajloni, the owner of an antiques shop in the Old City, owes the Jerusalem municipality 250,000 Israeli shekels (68,300 U.S. dollars) in taxes. He told IPS that almost every day, the city’s tax collectors come into the Old City, accompanied by Israeli police and soldiers, to pressure people there to pay.

“It feels like they’re coming again to occupy the city, with the soldiers and police,” Ajloni, who has owned the same shop for 35 years, told IPS. “But where can I go? What can I do? All my life I was in this place.”

He added, “Does Jerusalem belong to us, or to someone else? Who’s responsible for Jerusalem? Who?”

Illegal annexation

Israel occupied East Jerusalem, including the Old City, in 1967. In July 1980, it passed a law stating that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. But Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and subsequent application of Israeli laws over the entire city remain unrecognised by the international community.

Under international law, East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory – along with the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syrian Golan Heights – and Palestinian residents of the city are protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Jerusalem has historically been the economic, political and cultural centre of life for the entire Palestinian population. But after decades languishing under destructive Israeli policies meant to isolate the city from the rest of the Occupied Territories and a lack of municipal services and investment, East Jerusalem has slipped into a state of poverty and neglect.

“After some 45 years of occupation, Arab Jerusalemites suffer from political and cultural schizophrenia, simultaneously connected with and isolated from their two hinterlands: Ramallah and the West Bank to their east, West Jerusalem and Israel to the west,” the International Crisis Group recently wrote.

Israeli restrictions on planning and building, home demolitions, lack of investment in education and jobs, construction of an eight-foot-high separation barrier between and around Palestinian neighbourhoods and the creation of a permit system to enter Jerusalem have all contributed to the city’s isolation.

Formal Palestinian political groups have also been banned from the city, and between 2001-2009, Israel closed an estimated 26 organisations, including the former Palestinian Liberation Organisation headquarters in Jerusalem, the Orient House and the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce.

Extreme poverty

Israel’s policies have also led to higher prices for basic goods and services and forced many Palestinian business owners to close shop and move to Ramallah or other Palestinian neighbourhoods on the other side of the wall. Many Palestinian Jerusalemites also prefer to do their shopping in the West Bank, or in West Jerusalem, where prices are lower.

While Palestinians constitute 39 percent of the city’s population today, almost 80 percent of East Jerusalem residents, including 85 percent of children, live below the poverty line.

“How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t control your resources? How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t have any control of your borders?” said Zakaria Odeh, director of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, of “this kind of fragmentation, checkpoints, closure”.

“Without freedom of movement of goods and human beings, how could you develop an economy?” he asked.

“You can’t talk about independent economy in Jerusalem or the West Bank or in all of Palestine without a political solution. We don’t have a Palestinian economy; we have economic activities. That’s all we have,” Odeh told IPS.

Israel’s separation barrier alone, according to a new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD), has caused a direct loss of over one billion dollars to Palestinians in Jerusalem, and continues to incur 200 million dollars per year in lost opportunities.

Israel’s severing and control over the Jerusalem-Jericho road – the historical trade route that connected Jerusalem to the rest of the West Bank and Middle East – has also contributed to the city’s economic downturn.

Separation of Jerusalem from West Bank

Before the First Intifada (Arabic for “uprising”) began in the late 1980s, East Jerusalem contributed approximately 14 to 15 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the Occupied Palestinian territories (OPT). By 2000, that number had dropped to less than eight percent; in 2010, the East Jerusalem economy, compared to the rest of the OPT, was estimated at only seven percent.

“Economic separation resulted in the contraction in the relative size of the East Jerusalem economy, its detachment from the remaining OPT and the gradual redirection of East Jerusalem employment towards the Israeli labour market,” the U.N. report found.

Decades ago, Israel adopted a policy to maintain a so-called “demographic balance” in Jerusalem and attempt to limit Palestinian residents of the city to 26.5 percent or less of the total population.

To maintain this composition, Israel built numerous Jewish-Israeli settlements inside and in a ring around Jerusalem and changed the municipal boundaries to encompass Jewish neighbourhoods while excluding Palestinian ones.

It is now estimated that 90,000 Palestinians holding Jerusalem residency rights live on the other side of the separation barrier and must cross through Israeli checkpoints in order to reach Jerusalem for school, medical treatment, work, and other services.

“Israel is using all kinds of tools to push the Palestinians to leave; sometimes they are visible, and sometimes invisible tools,” explained Ziad al-Hammouri, director of the Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER).

Al-Hammouri told IPS that at least 25 percent of the 1,000 Palestinian shops in the Old City were closed in recent years as a result of high municipal taxes and a lack of customers. “Taxation is an invisible tool…as dangerous as revoking ID cards and demolishing houses,” he said. “Israel will use this as pressure and as a tool in the future to confiscate these shops and properties.”

"An end to occupation, a just peace in Israel-Palestine: towards an active international network"

Sponsored by MIFTAH and FFIPP

Ladies and Gentlemen

1. It gives me great pleasure to address such a distinguished gathering at this conference. One of the remarkable characteristics of the evolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the past decade is the grass-roots mobilization of the common people, academia, non-governmental organizations and institutions of civil society focused on conflict resolution, reconciliation and reaching out to the other. Though this phenomenon has been eclipsed by the official representatives of the parties to the conflict and their versions of political developments, this ‘grass-roots’ track has complemented, and at times, competed with the official one. While they are traditionally referred to as "track two" initiatives, in the Israeli-Palestinian context they merit far greater attention and recognition especially because "track one" could not sufficiently underscore and realize the aspirations of ordinary Israelis and Palestinians. Your presence here today further contributes to the momentum for peace in the Middle East.

2. The over five decade-long conflict in the Middle East has spawned its own lexicon. Peace has been used by the parties to the conflict along with a variety of adjectives – just peace, durable and lasting peace and a balanced peace. The concept of ‘justice’ is central to the purposes of the United Nations. Article 1 of the UN Charter notes the purpose of the UN as bringing about an "adjustment or settlement of international disputes" through "peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law". Article 2 of the Charter enjoins member states to "settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered". What then, are the principles of justice that have been enunciated by the international community to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? How have such principles of justice evolved over time?

3. The international community, while considering the Palestine problem and the termination of the British mandate in 1947, drew up a blue-print of what it considered a just solution in UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (II) of 29 November 1947 : i) creation of independent Arab and Jewish states and a Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem; ii) adoption of a democratic constitution in each state providing for equal and non-discriminatory rights to all persons and enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms; and iii) provision for an ‘economic union’ including a customs union, joint currency system, common operation of infrastructure, telecommunication and transport networks and non-discriminatory access to water and power facilities. The 1948 conflict and its consequences led to the establishment of Israel as the Jewish state in Palestine. The Arab state as envisioned in UNGAR 181 was not established and the refugee problem was created as a result.

4. Even as the travails of the Palestine refugees continued, it was not until the 1967 conflict that the various elements of a just solution were revisited by the international community with a greater focus, through the fora of the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council. The General Assembly in its resolutions had: i) reaffirmed the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people in Palestine, including the right to self-determination without external interference and the right to national independence and sovereignty; ii) recognized that the Palestinian people is a principal party in the establishment of a just and durable peace in the Middle East; iii) recognized that the problem of the Palestine Arab refugees has arisen from the denial of their inalienable rights under the Charter of the UN and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and called for their repatriation or compensation in terms of UNGAR 194 (III) of 11 December 1948; iv) expressed grave concern at Israeli policies and practices in the occupied territories including acts of collective punishment, arbitrary detention, curfews, destruction of homes and property and deportation; and v) declared Israeli steps to change the status of occupied territories, notably in occupied East Jerusalem, as null and void. The Security Council, charged with the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, arrived at a different set of principles for arriving at a "just and lasting peace in the Middle East": i) withdrawal of Israeli forces from territories occupied in the conflict; ii) respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty of every state and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries; iii) guaranteeing freedom of navigation through international waterways in the area; and iv) achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem. Thus, the different mandates and the balances of power in the General Assembly and the Security Council have resulted in different articulation of the principles of justice in addressing the Palestine problem. This situation has persisted until 2002. There were no explicit calls for resolving the dispute through a two-state solution and even the Oslo accords referred only to the ambiguous formulation, first mentioned in the Camp David Frameworks for Peace in the Middle East, of "final status negotiations".

Ladies and Gentlemen

5. The cycle of violence and counter-violence that has engulfed the West Bank and the Gaza Strip since 2000 has brought about certain fundamental changes in the perceptions of the international community of what constitutes a just basis for addressing the Palestine problem. It is interesting to note that it was the UN Security Council that took the initiative in articulating these positions, considering the spiraling violence in the occupied territories as a threat to international peace and security. The General Assembly meanwhile continued with its earlier stated positions, including on the refugee issue. The principal elements of both of the international community’s approaches are:
   1. an explicit affirmation of a two-state solution in UNSCRs 1397 of 12 March 2002 and1515 of 19 November 2003. The Council affirmed "its vision of a region where two states, Israel and Palestine, live side by side within secure and recognized borders";

   2. taking direct note of the various initiatives by various parties to facilitate the resumption of the diplomatic process for a political settlement and calling on the Israeli and Palestinian sides to implement the same– in UNSCR 1397, the Council called on the parties to "cooperate in the implementation of the Tenet work plan and the Mitchell Report recommendations" and welcomed "the contribution of Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah"; in UNSCR 1402 it called upon both parties "to cooperate fully with Special Envoy Zinni"; in UNSCR 1435 it recognized "the continuing importance of the initiative endorsed at the Arab League Beirut Summit"; and in UNSCR 1515 it endorsed the Quartet’s roadmap to a permanent two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and called on the parties "to fulfill their obligations under the Roadmap in cooperation with the Quartet";

   3. demand for a just settlement of the refugee problem through repatriation or compensation in terms of UNGAR 194(III);

   4. demand for a cessation of all acts of violence including terrorism, provocation, incitement and destruction and to move to a meaningful cease-fire;

   5. expression of concern about the dire humanitarian situation of Palestinian civilians and a call for immediate provision of humanitarian access to ICRC, UNRWA and other humanitarian actors in the occupied territories; and

   6. emphasizing the need to achieve progress on the Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-Lebanese tracks for achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East.

6. The tragic developments since the eruption of the Al Aqsa intifada have facilitated the crystallization of the international community’s opinion that the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians will not be resolved either through military means or through terrorism and violence. The original two-state solution of the partition resolution has again reappeared in a modified format after over five decades. For this to happen and for an independent, viable and contiguous Palestinian state and Israel to live side-by-side in peace within secure and recognized borders, Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip since 1967 and its attendant consequences must end. It is to be noted that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has forthrightly supported the establishment of a Palestinian state, despite opposition from within his party. He has also publicly acknowledged that Israel cannot continue its occupation of the Palestinian people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, notwithstanding the clarification over whether the territories are ‘occupied’ or ‘disputed’.

7. Even as ending the occupation and establishing a just peace on the lines discussed here is the ultimate objective, what are the challenges in the interim? The most important challenge is to ensure respect for international humanitarian and human rights law. The Palestinians, the refugees in particular, have suffered from statelessness in general, and occupation in particular, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. They have been denied the basic freedoms and human rights that are recognized as universally applicable under all circumstances. While Israel denies the de jure applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention to the occupied Palestinian territory, it insists that its actions must not be measured against the rules of international human rights law contained in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights but by the rules of international humanitarian law. The international community has not accepted this argument and has time and again reaffirmed its determination to judge Israeli actions in terms of both these legal regimes. While Israel has legitimate security concerns, its measures against terrorism and violence must be balanced by respect for basic human rights and guided by the principle of proportionality. Protection of human life, a basic human right, has been violated by both the Israeli military and the Palestinian militants. Since September 2000, 2750 Palestinians and 830 Israelis have been killed, and 28000 Palestinians and 5600 Israelis injured. Five hundred and fifty children have been killed of whom 460 were Palestinian and 90 Israelis. Extrajudicial killings by the Israeli military and suicide bombings by Palestinian militants have only raised levels of frustration and anger and derailed the political process. The time for introspection is now.

Ladies and Gentlemen

8. UNRWA has for decades dealt with the political vicissitudes of the region and continued to maintain its humanitarian space and implement its mandate of providing essential services to the Palestine refugees and developing their human potential. It has had to face wars, internal insurrections, military occupation of both short and extended durations, and uprisings. Today, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, UNRWA’s primary challenge is to continue with its regular and emergency programmes amidst Israeli measures considered by the international community as collective punishment – unprecedented destruction of homes and property, curfews and closures, restrictions on freedom of movement and denial of humanitarian access. The situation is a humanitarian crisis that can be alleviated by a change of Israeli policy. The construction of the Wall/Barrier in the West Bank, continued settlement construction and expansion and talk of unilateral disengagement and annexation of occupied territory erode the hope of eventual statehood as these actions are seen to be creating permanent facts on the ground that would vitiate the creation of an independent, viable and contiguous Palestinian state. The Palestinian and Israeli people have been through a great deal of tragedy and hardship. It is time their leaders and the international community work to fulfill their aspirations to lead normal and peaceful lives. It is my fervent hope that this conference will contribute to that process.

Thank you.

The world has grown used to the idea that hunger manifests itself only in the hollow cheeks and distended stomachs of an African famine. But today in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, an insidious hunger has the Palestinian people in its grip. Hidden in the anaemic blood of children or lost in the statistics of stunted growth, a dreadful, silent malnutrition is stalking the Palestinians. The populations of Gaza and the West Bank have lived for over two years with checkpoints, closures and curfews that have ravaged their economy. Over 50 per cent are now unemployed and more than 60 per cent are living below the poverty line.

The effect of this economic collapse was felt first in the erosion of family savings, followed by increased indebtedness and then the forced sale of household possessions. The Palestinian extended family and community networks have saved the territories from the absolute collapse that might have been found elsewhere in the face of such rapid decline. Every dollar is shared in the occupied territory. Anyone with an income, or a cousin working abroad, supports as many as seven other adults.

Nevertheless, after two hard years of the intifada (Palestinian uprising), poverty is increasingly being felt in the stomach. In the terminology of experts, the Palestinians are suffering in the main from micronutrient deficiencies - what the World Health Organisation calls the "Hidden Hunger." It may be less dramatic than the protein-energy malnutrition that stalks African emergencies, but on the scale that it is being found among the Palestinians it is just as serious. Micronutrient deficient children fail to grow and develop normally; their cognition is damaged, often severely and irreversibly; their immune systems are compromised; in both adults and children, mental and physical capacities are impaired. In extreme cases, blindness and death result. The mental and physical development of a generation of Palestinian children hangs in the balance. An ongoing study funded by the United States Agency for International Development has found that four out of five children in Gaza and the West Bank have inadequate iron and zinc intake, deficiencies that cause anaemia and weaken the immune system. Over half the children in each territory have inadequate caloric and vitamin A intake.

The stark fact is that 22 per cent of the Palestinian children are suffering from acute or chronic malnutrition for purely man- made reasons. No drought has hit Gaza and the West Bank, no crops have failed and the shops are often full of food. But the failure of the peace process and the destruction of the economy by Israel's closure policy have had the effect of a terrible natural disaster. Nursing and pregnant mothers too are suffering. On an average, they consume 15-20 per cent fewer calories per day than they did before the outbreak of strife in 2000. The consequent anaemia, low folic acid intake and lack of proteins threaten both their health and the normal development of their children.

The United Nation's relief agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, is the largest aid organisation in the territories. Before the start of the intifada, it was providing food aid to around 11,000 families in the West Bank and Gaza - families that had lost their breadwinner or were otherwise especially at risk. For the last two years, as part of its emergency programme, the UNRWA food programme has grown to 2,20,000 families - or almost half the Palestinian population of the territories. To fund this huge food security effort, and its other emergency activities, UNRWA has turned to the international community with a number of emergency appeals. The latest appeal, to cover emergency operations for the first half of next year, has just been launched and contains a request for $32 million to provide food for Gaza and the West Bank. It would be a sad indictment of the world's priorities if funding for this feeding programme were not forthcoming because of the invisible nature of the crisis. There are as yet no skeletal faces in Gaza for the television cameras to record, no bloated bellies to shock the world to action. Instead, the Palestinians face hidden hunger and the quiet horror of a generation that will be physically and mentally stunted for the rest of their lives.

The writer is Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

Source: The Hindu

Palestinian children

GAZA Imagine the political fallout if every schoolchild in London had missed a month's schooling last year because teachers could not get to classes. Think of the parental anguish and outrage if the Paris school system saw its pass rates in French language exams fall from 71 to 38 percent in a year. Now picture your own child traumatized by fear because every day her journey to school meant a trip past tanks, checkpoints and soldiers.

This nightmare is the reality facing Palestinian parents, teachers and around a million pupils - the school population of a major European capital - in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip after two years of the intifada.

The main causes of this educational crisis are the curfews and closures imposed by the Israeli authorities in their attempt to deal with Palestinian militants. These have crippled the education program of the Palestinian Authority and the United Nations.

The UN Relief and Works Agency runs 264 schools for almost 250,000 pupils in the West Bank and Gaza. Last year it lost an average of 29 working school days per school because staff or pupils could not get to their classes. Last year, in total, 72,000 teacher workdays were lost. Exams could be given only when curfews were lifted, and summer schools, designed to create a secure environment for children, were barely attended. Things this year seem, if anything, to be getting worse. Since school started on Aug. 31, 36 UN schools in the West Bank have been closed for from two to 15 days. Access to schools in Nablus has been so bad that some teachers have been hired based only on telephone interviews and will meet their supervisors only when they can get to work.

But closed schools are only one part of the story. Military operations, largely by Israel but in some instances by Palestinian factions, have violated the sanctity of schools across the occupied territory. Scores of schools have been used as detention centers, almost 200 have been damaged by gunfire and more than 170 students have been arrested. According to an Amnesty International report, 250 Palestinian schoolchildren have been killed since September 2000.

It is not uncommon for children to be searched and abused by Israeli troops on their way to and from school or to be subject to tear gas and warning shots near checkpoints.

This terrifying environment has had a devastating effect on Palestinian children. Exam pass rates in Arabic and math have collapsed, while dropout rates are starting to rise for the first time in a decade. Pupil assaults on teachers, unthinkable in the past, have begun to make an appearance. Teachers are increasingly reporting signs of psychological trauma.

UNRWA has employed counselors to encourage children to share their experiences and has boosted its remedial and summer school programs, as well as extended its school year, in an effort to mitigate the worst effects of the conflict. But it is becoming ever more apparent that Palestinian children will be paying twice over for the crisis in the West Bank and Gaza.

Already they have paid with the loss of their security, innocence and education. But they will also pay with their futures. They will pay with the loss of opportunity, development and hope that a sound education brings.

This is a tragedy for the Palestinian people, who, with so many disadvantages to cope with, have traditionally put great stock in education. Palestinian literacy rates were among the highest in the region. Palestinian girls were the first in the Arab world to achieve educational parity with boys. All of which meant that Palestinian-educated engineers helped build the Gulf region and Palestinian-educated doctors have benefited communities from California to Cairo. It is imperative that the Israeli authorities begin to lift their curfews and closures on population centers now, before more damage is done to children. Israel has security concerns - and Amnesty reports that 72 of its children have been killed since the start of the intifada - but I cannot believe that those security concerns are being served by depriving a generation of Palestinians of their right to a future. The writer is commissioner-general of the UN Relief and Works Agency. He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.