Continuing restrictions by Israeli authorities are causing immense hardship, writes Lara Marlowe.
Within hours of Israel's failed attempt to assassinate the Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Israeli occupation authorities announced a complete closure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in anticipation of retaliation by the extremist fundamentalist movement.
Yet again, the entire Palestinian population was subjected to collective punishment as the result of the war between armed groups and Israeli forces.
For Ms Donatella Rovera, the Israel and Occupied Territories researcher for the human rights group Amnesty International, the move was sad corroboration of a report to be published by Amnesty today, entitled Surviving under seige: The impact of movement restrictions on the right to work.
Israel has limited Palestinians' freedom of movement since it occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip 36 years ago, but restrictions have increased over the past decade and "reached an unprecedented level in the past three years" since the second uprising or Intifada started, the report says.
The social and economic consequences have been devastating, with half of Palestinians unemployed and 60 per cent living below the poverty line, on less than $2.10 per day.
As a result, malnutrition and anaemia are growing health problems in the Occupied Territories.
The report quotes Israeli Col Shimshon Arbel, who heads Israeli government co-ordination there, saying that "no one is starving in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank".
Col Arbel notes that UN relief agency UNWRA and the Red Cross "operate extensively in the territories".
But Amnesty points out that Israeli forces frequently hinder the work of aid organisations. "The existence of charity and humanitarian assistance do not absolve Israel from its obligation to ensure the Palestinians' right to work so that they can feed themselves and their families with dignity," said Mr Colm Ó Cuanacháin, secretary general of Amnesty's Irish section.
Israel claims impediments to the Palestinians' freedom of movement are self-defence measures, intended to prevent suicide bombers from entering Israel.
"Israel has a legitimate security concern," Ms Rovera said in a telephone interview from Jerusalem. "It has not just the right but the responsibility to take measures to protect the Israeli population.
"But this is not a licence for the Israeli army to confine 3.5 million Palestinians under some sort of house or town arrest, and to continue to do things which are absolutely illegal under international law, like building settlements, building roads for settlers and establishing 'facts on the ground' which are to the detriment of the local population."
The implementation of the "road map" peace plan has been thrown into doubt by the resignation at the weekend of Palestinian Prime Minister Mr Mahmoud Abbas.
"We issued a statement on June 3rd saying that the road map was not likely to succeed," Ms Rovera noted. "Like previous attempts, like Oslo and others, it just did not address the key issue - the expansion of the settlements.
"If one looks at the patterns of the closures and now, more recently, the routing of the wall, these are 90 per cent determined by where the Israeli settlements and the roads used by the settlers are."
During the seven years of the Oslo "peace process", settlements grew at an unprecedented rate, with the protection of 380,000 Israeli settlers receiving priority over the basic rights of 3.5 million Palestinians.
The policy frequently results in death. For example, Suhad 'Ashur, a plumber's wife in Nablus, died of breast cancer last year because she was unable to obtain any treatment during two months of curfews and closures.
The Israelis use lethal force to prevent Palestinians moving within the Occupied Territories. "There have been scores of people killed and hundreds of people injured simply to enforce closures and curfews," Ms Rovera said. "Most were Palestinians but internationals have not been spared. We have ourselves been shot at."
The report cites the example of truck driver Jihad 'Abd al-Rahman al-Qurini. The Nablus municipality obtained Israeli permission for him to carry out electrical repairs during a curfew. Although Mr al-Qurini complied with orders by Israeli soldiers, he was shot dead at the wheel of his truck, which was marked as a city vehicle and had a distinctive crane and flashing light.
The chief military prosecutor said the soldier who killed Mr al-Qurini "did not deviate from the domain of reasonable conduct", and refused to open an investigation.
Ms Rovera says discriminatory measures in the Occupied Territories engender further discrimination.
"Establishing a settlement is an act of discrimination - quite apart from being a violation of the Geneva Convention. This is setting up something that is for Jews only - it's not for you, it's not for me; it's not for the Palestinians who were born there. It then brings about a whole series of other discriminations and violations: roads that are only for settlers and not for Palestinians, massive amounts of water for settlers and not for Palestinians."
The Israeli government is in the final stages of building a 400 km barrier, wall and fence along the West Bank. But the wall has been constructed to take in settlements on occupied territory - and some of the West Bank's most fertile land.
"It's a way of expropriating land and one of the key natural resources - water," Ms Rovera said. "These are war crimes under the Fourth Geneva Convention. This is one of the gravest breaches - the fact of changing the situation on the ground and transferring the population of the occupying power to the occupied territory."
Little by little, the Palestinians are pushed off the land where many were already refugees. Ms Rovera gave the examples of al-Mawasi, a tiny Palestinian enclave in the Gaza Strip that is being strangled by restrictions on movement, and the "H2" area in Hebron, where Israeli settlers live. Now the town of Qalqilya, home to 42,000 Palestinians, is undergoing the same fate. "It's completely walled in, with one checkpoint," Ms Rovera said.
"People are leaving, cramming in with relations in nearby villages."
She described how the destruction of 3,000 Palestinian homes, usually near Israeli settlements, is "squeezing people in from all sides... The question raised is: where will people go?"