The shocking human cost that occupation has taken on Palestinian women is laid bare in research published today. Combining research, extensive surveys, and first-hand testimonies from over 40 Palestinian women, Palestinian Women: The Disproportionate Impact of The Israeli Occupation provides new insight into the gendered experience of occupation, looking into four issues in particular:

• women refugees
• the impact of residency revocation on Palestinian women in Jerusalem
• the experience of women prisoners
• Gazans’ access to health

Co-authored by four Palestinian NGOs – the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH), Palestinian Working Woman Society for Development (PWWSD), the Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling (WCLAC), and Women Media and Development (TAM), the report includes detailed findings that demonstrate how the oppression occupation has permeated women’s daily lives, and the particular impact is has had on women in Palestinian refugee camps, Palestinian women living in Jerusalem, women prisoners, and residents of Gaza who require health services.

The impact on refugee women

Researchers spoke to 500 Palestinian refugee women from 12 Palestinian camps (7 in the West Bank, 5 in Gaza). Their findings included the following:

• A third of women surveyed had been directly exposed to physical assault by Israeli Occupation Forces. 9% had been exposed to threats of being attacked by police dogs during Israeli night raids on their homes.
• Over a third (37%) of respondents had been exposed to detention or interrogation, while 38% said that they or members of their households had been exposed to verbal abuse during Israeli army raids, at checkpoints or while visiting religious places.
• Nearly a quarter (24%) were forced to live in shelters or with extended family. 22% were forced to live under unhealthy conditions. 13% stated that the female and male members of their families were separated as a result of having to live in shelters.
• More than one in five (21%) had been exposed to beatings or tear gas at Israeli checkpoints while they were pregnant. 4% reported that they aborted or gave birth at Israeli checkpoints.
• The majority (64%- 321 cases) had been unable to visit religious or recreational places because of Occupation restrictions.

Jerusalem: Residency Revocation and Family Reunification

According to official figures, 14,595 Palestinians from East Jerusalem had their residency status revoked between 1967 and the end of 2016.

Through residency revocations, Israel has separated husbands from wives, parents from children, and extended families from one another, causing traumatic complications for women attempting to remain with their families in both Jerusalem and the West Bank.

This leads to traumatic fears of separation from children for mothers and an entrenching of patriarchal practices across society. Palestinian women living in Jerusalem lose residency rights if they get divorced or their husbands remarry. Limiting their access to justice, female victims of domestic violence fear reporting abuse to authorities in case they are forcibly transferred away from their children.

Women prisoners

Since the beginning of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine in 1967, approximately 10,000 Palestinian women have been arrested and detained by Israeli military forces. According to the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs’ 2017 annual report, 1,467 children were arrested last year.

Our researchers spoke to prisoners who experienced physical and psychological torture at arrest and imprisonment, and traumatic, gendered treatment, including:

• Women denied access to menstrual products while detained
• A woman arrested while pregnant who gave birth while chained to a prison hospital bed
• Ex-prisoners who report being subjected to rape and death threats during interrogation, including a girl in of 15-years old threatened with rape
• Women who were subjected to frequent forced and violent strip searches
• A prisoner who reported toothache, only to have the wrong tooth removed

Access to Health in Gaza

Israel exercises strict control Gaza’s borders, a policy of ‘actual authority’, constituting continued occupation, despite the withdrawal of its permanent presence. This control in particular affects those who need medical treatment outside of Gaza’s struggling health system, who require permission to leave. The report shows that the rate of approval applications is falling year-by-year:

• 92.5% of applications were successful in 2012
• 88.7% in 2013
• 82.4% in 2014
• 77.5% in 2015
• 62.1% in 2016

Of the 26,282 permit applications submitted by patients aiming to exit through Erez in 2016, 8,242 (31.4%) were delayed. Many applicants received no response from border authorities, even after lawyers filed formal applications on their behalf. These delays regularly extend months and years beyond medical appointments, worsening already life-threatening diseases and in some cases resulting in death.

Read the full report here, or download it here:

Palestinian Women – The Disproportionate Impact of the Israeli Occupation

Women represent half of the Palestinian population

The qualitative base of the structure of the population in Palestine the sex ratio stood at 103.3, which means that there are 103 males for every 100 females

The percentage of female-headed households

The percentage of female-headed households in Palestine was 10.6% in 2017, 11.2% in the West Bank and 9.5% in Gaza Strip.

fifth of the persons in Palestine got married at an early age (less than 18 years) in 2016

Early marriage reached to 20.5% among females and 1.0% among males of the total married population in Palestine; the rate was 19.9% out of the total married population in West Bank and 21.6% out of the total married population in Gaza Strip end 2016.

The highest rate of female early marriage in the West Bank was in Hebron 36.8%, and the lowest was in Jericho and the Jordan Valley 1.2% out of the total number of women marriage below 18 years in the West Bank. In Gaza Strip, the highest rate of early female marriage was 42.1% in Gaza Governorate, while the lowest rate was in Dier Al-Balah 7.1% out of the total number of women marriage below 18 years in Gaza Strip.

A continued rise in literacy among women

Despite the rise in literacy rates among females over the last decade, the gap is still in favor of males by 3.0%, female literacy rates was 95.6% compared to 98.6% for male literacy in the year 2017.

Rise in enrollment rate of females in high schools compared to males

Data showed that male enrollment in high schools was 60.5%, compared to female enrollment which was 80.4% for the year 2016-2017.

A gap in the participation rate and average daily wages between men and women

The female participation rate in the labor force was 19.0% of the total female population at work age in 2017, compared to 10.3% in 2001, while the male participation rate was 71.2% in 2017. There was also a pay gap in the average daily wages between males and females; the average daily wage for females was NIS 84.6 compared to NIS 119.6 for males.

Around half of the women are unemployed

The unemployment rate among women participated in the labor force was 47.4% compared to 22.3% for participated males. 65.8% of youth females aged of (15-29 years) were unemployed. While the unemployment rate among women with 13 school years and above represents 53.8% of women in this group.

Palestinian Women in Public Life

In 2017; 21.2% of the members of the local councils are females in the West Bank while 78.8% were males.

In 2016, 82.7% of judges were male, compared to 17.3% female, while 66.6% of registered lawyers were male, compared to 33.4% female and 82.0% of members of the public prosecution staff were male, compared to 18.0% female. Furthermore, Palestinian female ambassadors represented 5.8% compared to 94.2% male. Females represented 32.3% of registered engineers with the Union of Engineers while male represented 67.7%. On the other hand, in 2016, 12.4% of members of student councils in West Bank universities were females, compared to 87.6% males.

In the public sector, females represented 42.7% of civil servants, compared to 57.3% male civil servant. In the public civil sector, female Director Generals represented 11.3% of the total director generals, compared to 88.7% males in the same post.

To View this Report as PDF

To View the Full Statestics as PDF

Many people wonder why Israel won't give back the occupied territories in return for peace. One reason is that more than half of Israel's water supplies now come from the Mountain Aquifer and Jordan river basin, which are situated deep within them.

Jericho used to be one of Palestine's prime agricultural spots. An abundance of springs made the fertile land surrounding the ancient town famous for its oranges, bananas and strawberries. Now, all that is changing. Fields are drying up, crops are dying and farmers are being put out of work.

The reason is simple: water. Israeli settlements get priority access to water and as they expand and new ones are built, the amount of water available to Palestinians decreases. Because of its strategic location between Jerusalem and Jordan, the Jericho region has been particularly affected.

It helps Israel divide the north and south of the West Bank from each other, and creates "facts on the ground" that preclude the establishment of a viable Palestinian state. But its water crises are repeated across the Palestinian Territories.

Since seizing the West Bank in 1967, Israel has illegally exploited the Mountain Aquifer and Jordan river basin. Many historians believe this has been the underlying reason for the invasion and occupation of the West Bank.

One of the first military orders of the occupation was the confiscation of almost all West Bank wells. Since then, drilling for new wells has been banned and quotas have been imposed on the existing ones. The amount of water allocated to Palestinians has been capped at 1967 levels, despite the subsequent growth in population.

Water has always been a source of conflict in the Middle East. Israeli attempts to divert water from the Jordan-Yarmouk river basin into the Negev were a key source of the 1967 war. And the Golan Heights, which Israel still refuses to give back to Syria, are also water rich.

Today, Israel uses 79% of the Mountain Aquifer and all of the Jordan River Basin -- bar a small quantity that it sells to Palestinians in Gaza. The result is apartheid in all but name. Israelis get 350 litres of water per person per day, Palestinians get just 70 litres. The minimal quantity of water recommended by the World Health Organisation is 100 litres.

When supplies run low during the summer months, the Israeli water company, Mekorot, simply shuts off the valves that supply Palestinian towns. This means settlers get their swimming pools topped up while Palestinian villages a few miles away run out of drinking water.

When tensions are high -- as they are now -- the situation becomes unbearable, especially for the 25 per cent of Palestinian villages that were never connected to a water supply.

Since the start of the Intifada, Israel has made it almost impossible for water tankers to enter Palestinian areas -- or for villagers to get to nearby wells. B'Tselem, the Israeli human rights group says Israeli soldiers sometimes beat and humiliate tanker drivers or deliberately spill their water.

Yunis Muhammed 'Abd Tim Jabarin, a father of eight from a village in southern Hebron described how, in hot weather, "often we don't have water for ten to twenty days. In such situations, my wife and daughters ask the neighbours for water, but they can only give enough for drinking and cooking. As for washing, we have got used to showering once every five to seven days. The situation is intolerable, especially in the summer."

But towns with connections also face problems, according to Ayman Rabi, of the Palestinian Hydrological Group. "Settlers attack the Palestinians' water supply, severing pipes and switching off valves," he said. "They dump untreated sewage on Palestinian land, polluting wells and aquifers." The Israeli army has also routinely destroyed water supplies, an activity defined as a war crime.

Part of the problem is that the Oslo peace process tried to institutionalise Israel's theft of Palestinian water, and its discriminatory allocation system. Yehezkel Lein of B'Tselem said, "Comments from Israeli offices give the impression that Oslo transferred responsibility (for water supplies) to the Palestinian Authority."

"However, Israel continues to maintain almost total control over water in the occupied territories. Every new project, from drilling a well to laying pipes or building a reservoir, requires Israel's consent."

Israeli reluctance to relinquish control of West Bank water is not surprising. More than a quarter of its water supplies now come from the West Bank aquifer -- and over a third comes from the Jordan Basin. But it has no legal right to the water -- and it's not using it sustainably. Private swimming pools and green lawns are not a priority in desert areas.

Over-extraction from the Jordan river is the main reason the river flow has dropped nearly 90 per cent in the last 50 years. It is now just a small stream, too small to replenish the Dead Sea, which is also fast disappearing. Many hydrologists predict that it won't exist in 50 years. So how will the population of Israel and Palestine -- predicted to double in 25 years -- survive?

Israel likes to boast about how it made the desert bloom, how the original inhabitants of Palestine were "wasting" the land. But far from wasting the land, the Arabs lived within its constraints, in harmony with it. By making parts of its desert bloom, Israel has simply turned parts of Arab land into desert, unable to provide its inhabitants with water, the most fundamental pre-requisite for human life.