From its onset in 1967, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip has had a negative impact on Palestinian education. Israeli military and settler activity in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) has resulted in killings, injuries, and arrests within the Palestinian student population, which currently comprises some 28 per cent of the Palestinian population of the OPT. Direct military attacks on and raids of Palestinian schools, or their immediate environs, has resulted in injury to students, damage to Palestinian educational facilities, and disruptions to the educational process. Measures of collective punishment, such as restrictions on Palestinian freedom of movement have repeatedly hindered or made impossible, students’ and teachers’ access to schools.
These activities have intensified since the beginning of the current Intifada (Uprising) in September 2000 and continue to occur to date. During the past two academic years, the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MOE) reports that incursions and curfew imposition by the Israeli army caused the loss of some 1,525 schooling days for students in government schools in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.1 Combined these measures have adversely affected Palestinian students’ ability to concentrate.
The quality of education received by Palestinian students will be a determining factor in the future development of Palestinian society. Israeli military and settler activity that repeatedly disrupts and causes harm to Palestinian students, teachers, and schools thus constitutes a significant attack on Palestinian society itself.
This Trend Analysis examines disruptions to education in Palestinian schools (grades 1-12) resulting from Israeli military and settler activity in the OPT, during the periods September 2003 - June 2004 and September 2004 - June 2005. It features select information indicative of trends and represents only a portion of activity during that period. It is based on data from Palestinian Monitoring Group (PMG) Daily Situation Reports, the Palestinian Ministry of Education, and PMG field work.2
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The Future of Warfare and Global Accountability
Date posted: May 20, 2025
By MIFTAH
Executive Summary
The Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory is marked by the systematic violation of digital rights through state-sponsored surveillance, censorship, and structural digital inequality. These practices, including bio-metric surveillance, arbitrary arrests based on online activity, social media censorship, and denial of technological infrastructure, constitute a broader strategy of control that mirrors and reinforces the physical restrictions of occupation. The use of advanced surveillance technologies not only infringes on Palestinians' fundamental rights to privacy and freedom of expression, but also threatens global human rights norms through the international export of these technologies.
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Israel’s Reproductive Genocide in the Gaza Strip
Date posted: April 29, 2025
By MIFTAH
Executive Summary
The ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip has compounded several humanitarian and legal violations, particularly inrelation to the reproductive rights of Palestinian women. Since the launch of its military offensive in October 2023, Israelhas systematically targeted Palestinian women in ways that undermine their ability to survive, give birth, and raisechildren. More than 12,300 women have been killed, 4,700 women and children are missing, and approximately 800,000women have been forcibly displaced. An estimated one million women and girls now suffer from acute food insecurity.Israel’s actions constitute a deliberate attempt to impair the reproductive capacities of Palestinian women, aimed atdismantling the future of Palestinian society. Through the bombing of shelters, destruction of hospitals, blockading ofmedical and hygiene supplies, and attacks on fertility clinics and maternity wards, Israel’s policy of erasure is notincidental, it is intentional.
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Israel’s Attack on UNRWA and Its Implications for Palestinian Refugees
Date posted: March 05, 2025
By MIFTAH
Executive Summary
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is vital inproviding humanitarian aid, education, and health services to Palestinian refugees across Jordan, Lebanon,Syria, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Beyond its humanitarian role, UNRWA represents aninternational commitment to Palestinian refugees' right of return, as established in UN General AssemblyResolution 194 in 1948. However, Israel has long sought to undermine the agency through financial, political,and military means.Recent Israeli actions have escalated, with the Israeli Knesset passing legislation banning UNRWAoperations in areas under Israeli control, effectively revoking its legal status. Concurrently, Israel hasintensified military attacks on UNRWA facilities. In the Gaza Strip since October 2023, Israeli forces havetargeted 310 UNRWA sites, destroying schools and killing 273 UNRWA employees alongside hundreds ofcivilians sheltering in its facilities. Throughout the occupied West Bank, the Israeli military has been turningUNRWA facilities into military bases and detention centers, and has closed UNRWA’s headquarters in EastJerusalem. These actions violate multiple international legal agreements and aim to erase Palestinian refugeeidentity and their legal rights.
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Special Report - Creating a Semi-Enclave: Focus on Anata, Jerusalem Governorate
Date posted: June 17, 2006
By Palestinian Monitoring Group
In 1967, the boundaries of Anata, located in the Jerusalem Governorate, extended over 30,000 dunums (7,500 acres) of land.1 However, multiple Israeli policies affecting the town since then have led to its progressive loss. According to the Anata Local Council, upon completion of Wall construction, only some 2,300 dunums (575 acres) will remain for the use of Anata residents, the majority of which has already been built-up. Israel has appropriated or isolated the rest through construction and expansion of Israeli settlements, establishment of a major military base, and construction of the Wall and its “buffer zone”.
Anata’s natural expansion is now restricted by “facts on the ground” created by Israel. Upon completion of the Wall, Anata and the adjacent Shu’fat Refugee Camp will be enclosed on 3 sides by the Wall. To the east, natural expansion will be prevented by a major road currently under construction, and, to its east, by the Israeli military base of Anatot. Hemmed in by physical structures on all sides, intense overcrowding is likely to occur as the Palestinian civilian population grows over time.
The economic future of Anata is equally bleak. Some 45 per cent of Anata’s labourers depend on work in Israel, and a significant proportion of Anata residents rely on commerce that depends, in large part, on traffic in and out of the town. Completion of the Wall and further Israeli restrictions on Palestinian freedom of movement will contribute to a decrease in commercial trade and in overall income levels.
The damage caused to Anata’s economy will be felt on a national level. Approximately 35 per cent of the Palestinian economy is dependent on Metropolitan East Jerusalem, which extends from Bethlehem to Ramallah. This metropolitan area is now being broken into semi-enclaves – of which Anata is but one – by the route of the Wall. The disintegration of Metropolitan East Jerusalem destroys the possibility of an integrated national economy and thus the possibility of a viable Palestinian state.
While Israel has carried out its policies in the Anata area under a variety of pretexts, including “security”, the facts on the ground clearly indicate that these policies are part of a series of unilateral Israeli actions designed to sever the connection between Occupied East Jerusalem and other parts of the West Bank, to de facto annex Palestinian land and to impose a vision of “final status” that will impede the establishment of a viable, contiguous Palestinian state.
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