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.”

“For the past five years we’ve collected garbage by traditional means: donkey and cart,” says Abdel Rahem Abulkumboz, director of health and environment at the Municipality of Gaza. The municipality of Gaza alone produces 700 tons of waste daily, Kumboz says. More than half of this waste is collected daily by 250 donkey carts.

“It’s a means of doing the job, but not an optimal one,” says Kumboz.

Among the growing problems facing waste management throughout the Gaza Strip, even this simple solution nearly came to an end this month.

“The funding allotted to garbage collectors finished at the end of February,” says Kumboz, noting that it is not slated to resume until June at the earliest.

Hamada al-Bayari from the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that the emergency response came recently after the intervention of Cooperazione Internazionale (COOPI), an Italian aid group. Bayari says that COOPI provided the funding for the waste collection to continue until the already-slated June funding begins.

One potential disaster avoided, the Gaza Strip’s waste management problem nonetheless remains near crisis point.

The most critical issues include overflowing landfills, non-functioning collection vehicles, waste site toxins leaking into the groundwater, and no means of hazardous waste disposal.

“The severe siege over the past six years has affected all aspects of waste management,” says Kumboz, referring to the Israeli-led siege, which bans entry of construction materials into the Gaza Strip.

The municipality has 75 collection vehicles “over half of which are completely unusable,” he says. “The rest have been in use for more than 15 years and are in need of repair. Because of the Israeli import bans, we can’t get the parts we need for maintenance. We get some of them through the tunnels from Egypt, which is expensive and not guaranteed.”

The most urgent issue, Kumboz says, is the overflowing landfills. Expansion of Gaza’s landfills has thus far been impossible due to lack of construction materials and the routine Israeli army attacks in border regions where the three main dumps are located.

A February 2011 World Bank report had noted even back then that the Gaza Strip’s three main landfills are “reaching their maximum capacity.”

The report further noted that the landfill situation “has been further aggravated by the Israeli military actions” which resulted in “substantial amounts of demolition debris of damaged buildings, some of which is contaminated with hazardous substances.”

Other hazardous substances in Gaza’s waste sites include asbestos, used on many roofs in Gaza and found amidst bombing debris, chemicals and toxins from Israeli bombs, and hazardous healthcare waste from hospitals including infectious or pathogenic waste, blood and body fluids, and radioactive or chemical waste, according to a September 2009 United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) report.

During the winter 2008/2009 Israeli attacks on Gaza, “incinerators did not function due to electricity shortages. All landfills thus indiscriminately received hazardous materials such as healthcare waste,” the UNWP report notes.

Add to that more than 35,750 cattle, sheep and goats and more than a million birds and poultry killed in the attacks, which Gaza’s landfills did not have the means to dispose of hygienically.

Eight days of continued Israeli attacks in November 2012 further complicated the demolition debris and hazardous waste problems.

Of the Strip’s three main landfills, only the Strip’s central Deir al-Balah site was built according to acceptable sanitary standards, according to a March 2012 World Bank report.

All three landfills lie close to the Green Line border separating Gaza and Israel, and routine Israeli army incursions and attacks along the border limit regular access for landfill maintenance.

As the World Bank report notes, any future expansion of another of the three main landfills, Johr ad-Deek, “entails risks.”

On Jan. 5 this year, the Israeli army fired on a waste truck on the Beit Hanoun landfill. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) reports that the truck was 150 metres from the border when fired upon. It reports that a worker, Awad al-Zaanin, was injured by bullet shrapnel to his head.

“Much of Beit Hanoun is a border area. There are many Israeli army invasions and bombings here. All of this causes problems for solid waste management,” says Sufyan Hamad, head of Gaza’s northern municipality.

On an aerial map of the northeast border, Hamad points out the dump’s location. “We were forbidden from reaching the dump, the Israelis banned us from going within 300 metres of the border.”

On Mar. 12 this year, Israeli rights group Gisha reported that the Israeli army spokesperson confirmed that the 300 metres along Gaza’s border remains off-limits to Palestinians. This is in spite of the Israeli army-Palestinian November 2012 ceasefire which stipulated that access be allowed up to 100 metres from the border.

Of the Strip’s three main landfills, the World Bank notes that only the Sofa site in south-eastern Gaza has the potential for expansion.

Yet, the report cites the need for “construction of two sanitary landfills” to serve the entire Strip, as well as the need to “close and rehabilitate all remaining dumpsites” and to “replace the old collection fleet with a new one.”

For Kumboz, who has been waiting for years for already purchased collection vehicles, getting enough vehicles just to replace Gaza Municipality’s broken vehicles scarcely seems possible.

“We have waited for five years for trucks already in Ramallah to be allowed to enter Gaza,” says Beit Hanoun’s Hamad. “The problem is with the Israelis, they say the trucks aren’t allowed to enter.”

The March 2012 World Bank report confirms the delay of 22 new trucks destined for Gaza which “have been waiting for the last three years in Ramallah for the necessary permits from the Israeli authorities in order to enter Gaza.”

“An ark is literally a large floating vessel designed to keep its passengers and cargo safe,” say the group preparing ‘Gaza’s Ark’. But their ark, they say, is “a vessel that embodies hope that the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip can soon live in peace without the threat of the Israeli blockade.”

An initiative by Palestinians in Gaza and international solidarity activists, Gaza’s Ark entails “purchasing a run-down boat from a local fishing family,” says Michael Coleman, a member of Free Gaza Australia and on the Gaza’s Ark steering committee.

“The refurbishing will be done by Palestinians in the port of Gaza, and the sailing will be with a mixed crew of Palestinians and internationals,” says David Heap, spokesperson for Gaza’s Ark in Canada and Europe. The sailing date has not been announced yet.

Pointing to a weathered fishing trawler with a ‘for sale’ sign painted on it, Mahfouz Kabariti, president of Gaza’s Fishing and Marine Sports Association, points to fishers’ poverty.

“Why sell?” he asks. “Because of years of poor incomes from Israeli restrictions on sea, many fishers have debts they cannot pay off. Fishers were optimistic when the Israelis re-extended the fishing limit six miles. We hoped that maybe it would be extended to 12 miles.”

The Ark initiative includes exporting a token amount of trade goods from Palestinian artisans, an act which Coleman admits is “symbolic” but necessary. Exports will include date goods, embroidery, and crafts from the Aftfaluna society for Deaf Children and other associations in Gaza.

The steering committee for Gaza’s Ark comprises mainly well-respected Palestinian scholars, doctors and rights activists from Gaza. International supporters include Archbishop Desmond Tutu, various UK and Canadian former and current members of parliament, two former UN assistant secretaries general, and Hedy Epstein and Suzanne Weiss, both Holocaust survivors.

Since 2008 solidarity boats have sailed, or attempted to sail, to the Gaza Strip in efforts to challenge the Israeli-led siege on Gaza and bring awareness over it. The Free Gaza boats of 2008-2009 were followed by the Freedom Flotilla of 2010, and various non-violent attempts afterwards to bring an end to the naval blockade of Gaza.

The Freedom Flotilla is most known for the Israeli naval commandos’ execution of nine and the injury of over 50 of the flotilla activists on board the Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara while it was in international waters. The rest of the over 600 people on the flotilla boats were taken to Israel and deported home.

“It was a completely illegal act, Israel had no right to board the ship,” says Coleman.

“That has been the theme of how they stopped Freedom Flotilla 2, the Freedom Waves initiative and the Estelle which sailed at the end of 2012,” he says. “Israel has a long history of targeting peaceful, non-violent direct action with violence and sabotage.”

“Gaza’s Ark is the evolution of the flotilla movement. We’ve moved away from sailing into Gaza with aid,” says Coleman. “We now focus on sailing trade out, because it’s quite clear that if the Palestinians were able to trade, their dependence on aid would be diminished quite significantly.”

The Ark website emphasises the need for trade, their slogan is “trade, not aid.”

Aid, the website notes, “does not address the root cause of why the Palestinians of Gaza are in need: the Israeli blockade. We believe that aid provides a ‘cover’ for the actions of the Israeli government against the people of Gaza, alleviating the consciences of international powers while leaving the blockade in place.”

The Gaza’s Ark initiative aims to “challenge the blockade of Gaza from the inside out. By purchasing Palestinian exports from Gaza, buyers around the world can bring critically-needed public attention to the blockade while supporting Palestinian businesses in Gaza,” reads the Ark website.

The siege on Gaza, which was enforced by the Israeli occupation authorities shortly after Hamas was democratically elected in 2006, came into severe force in 2007 when virtually all exports were banned and imports severely limited.

The Al Mezan Center for Human Rights notes that “it is common for the (Israeli) navy to open fire on fishermen, pursue them in Gazan waters, and destroy and confiscate their equipment, including their nets and boats. Such acts constitute flagrant violations of Israel’s legal obligations as an occupying power under international law, and violate the fishermen’s rights to life and work.”

Gaza’s fishers once numbered over 10,000, but under the Israeli siege and assaults, the vast majority have given up on a trade that was passed down to them by their fathers and grandfathers.

With the siege, Israel has also enforced no-go zones along the Green Line border separating Gaza and Israel, and in Gaza’s sea, to which Palestinians under the Oslo accords have the right to fish as far as 20 nautical miles from the coast.

Since 2008, Israel has unilaterally enforced a limit of between six and three miles. Although Israeli authorities expanded this limit back to six miles following the cessation of Israel’s November 2012 attacks on Gaza, in March 2013 Israel again unilaterally declared Palestinians can go no further than three miles.

Fishers and human rights groups report that the Israeli navy shoots on, harasses and abducts Palestinian fishers even within three miles, as close at times as less than a mile from Gaza’s coast. The Israeli navy has killed and injured numerous fishers while shooting at their boats.

“In Gaza we don’t lead normal lives, we just cope, and adapt to our abnormal lives under siege and occupation,” says Dr. Mona El-Farra, a physician and a long-time human rights and women’s rights activist in the Gaza Strip. On International Women’s Day, when many of the world’s women are fighting for workplace equality and an end to domestic violence, Farra and the majority of Gaza’s women fight for the most basic of rights.

“It is difficult to live in this small piece of land, where basic needs like clean water, regular electricity, proper sanitation and means of recreation are not met. Women in Gaza are particularly traumatised by the continuous Israeli military attacks,” says Farra.

A 2009 Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) report highlights the suffering of Palestinian women under the illegal Israeli-led siege imposed on Gaza for the past seven years, and under the 23 days of Israeli attacks in 2008-2009 which killed over 1,400 Palestinians, including 112 women.

The report, ‘Through Women’s Eyes’, notes Gazan women’s continued struggle “as they attempt to come to terms with their grief and their injuries; with the loss of their children, their husbands, their relatives, their homes, and their livelihoods.”

For Hiba an-Nabaheen, 24, a media studies graduate from Gaza’s Palestine University, the biggest issues facing women in Gaza are the poverty and unemployment that result from the siege.

“How can a woman whose husband has died or been imprisoned continue to take care of her children? The deadly Israeli wars we endure don’t compare to the growing poverty we face. I’m a university graduate and can’t find work, and many graduates like me face the same problem, including those with exceptionally high marks.”

From a family of ten, Nabaheen is the only child to have yet gotten a degree. “My father is disabled and cannot work, and my siblings are younger than me. Even my sister who has a 98 percent average in high school won’t find any work when she finishes university.”

Um Oday, 30, would love to work. “I have three young children to care for, but my husband is very supportive of me working, if I found work. In addition to my university education, I’ve taken different training courses in the hope that I’ll find work. But in Gaza, there is none.”

Tagreed Jummah, director of Gaza City’s Union of Palestinian Women Committees (UPWC), agrees that the siege is the main oppressor.

“The siege affects us all, but it especially affects women,” says Jummah. “In recent years, more women have been forced to become heads of the family because their husbands have been killed, are in Israeli prisons, or are unemployed as a result of the siege. But the majority of these women have no means of earning money.”

An August 2012 United Nations (UN) report, Gaza in 2020: A liveable place? cites unemployment as “higher than in the late 1990s.” The report highlights the impact on women, whose unemployment rate in early 2012 was 47 percent.

For Malaka Mohammed, 22, an English Literature graduate from Gaza’s Islamic University, and now employed at the university, higher education is both her greatest ambition and greatest obstacle.

“In Gaza, whether you are a woman or a man, you face the same consequences under the siege and the occupation. I’d like to do a Masters degree, but there is no English Masters programme here.”

For the past over ten years, Israel has banned Gazan Palestinians from studying at universities in the occupied West Bank.

“Studying abroad is very expensive, so I am searching for a scholarship, but even then I will be among thousands of people applying.”

Egypt under the Mubarak regime was complicit in preventing hundreds of Palestinian students holding places and scholarships in foreign universities from leaving the Strip.

Rana Baker, studying business administration at the Islamic University, and a freelance journalist, is active on numerous political issues facing Palestinians.

“To be honest, when it comes to the impact of Israel’s siege and colonial policies on the people of Gaza, indeed all of Palestine, I do not think that the experiences of men and women differ from each other,” says Baker.

“When Israel deliberately bombards schools, both males and females are affected. When talking about the limits Israel forces upon our aspirations, both genders share the same suffering. The Israeli government acts with indifference to the Palestinian population. The same lethal policies are applied to men, women and children in an indiscriminate manner.”

But women do have particular problems. The siege-manufactured poverty leading 80 percent of Gaza’s 1.7 million Palestinians to be food-aid dependent has caused increasing rates of malnutrition and anaemia in women.

A June 2012 joint report by Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) and Save the Children notes that anaemia affects 36.8 percent of pregnant women in Gaza and that anaemia can result in “poor pregnancy outcome, reduced work productivity in adults,” and “contributes to 20 percent of all maternal deaths.”

For UPWC’s Tagreed Jummah, the Palestinian woman “represents Palestinian resilience, resistance, is strong, and is a mirror of the Palestinian struggle and steadfastness. We’ve lost families, children, and suffer under the closures and Israeli army attacks. We carry all of the suffering of our people, but we continue living and continue resisting.”

In its report on the suffering of Gazan women, PCHR highlights that prospects will not improve until the siege on Gaza is lifted and normal economic activity allowed.

“The dire economic situation means that many women and their families are sliding deeper and deeper into abject poverty. They have suffered the horrors of an illegal war, and now are struggling just to survive.”

A few stoic lines from Palestinian political prisoner Samer Issawi, 33, transmitted to his sister Shireen have given new strength to Palestinian resolve to fight Israeli occupation and its prison policies. As has the hunger strike of four others in Israeli prisons along with Issawi.

“The battle waged by me and by my heroic colleagues, Tariq, Ayman and Ja’affar, is everyone’s battle, the battle of the Palestinian people against the occupation and its prisons,” he told his sister last week. He added that his health has deteriorated dramatically and “I’m hung between life and death.”

The day he sent that message, Feb. 16, was the 208th day of Issawi’s hunger strike. Held under administrative detention in an Israeli prison, Issawi is one of five long-term Palestinian hunger strikers protesting indefinite detention by Israel without charge or fair trial.

On Feb. 19, three days after proclaiming his dedication to hunger striking until justice or death, an Israeli court rejected an appeal for the near-death Issawi’s bail, instead postponing a decision until mid-March. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) notes that in addition to his hunger strike, Issawi, now 46 kg, recently began refusing water and vitamins.

A Jerusalemite, Issawi was re-arrested months after being released in the October 2011 prisoner swap exchanging Israeli tank gunner Gilad Shalit for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners.

Israel re-arrested Issawi, Ayman Sharawna, 37, and 12 others using article 186 of Israeli military order 1651, which the Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, Addameer, notes “allows for a special Israeli military committee to sentence released prisoners to serve the remainder of their previous sentence based on secret evidence provided by the military prosecution without disclosing the evidence to the prisoner or his lawyer.”

Re-arrested on Jan. 31, 2012, Sharawna has been on and off hunger strike for over 200 days collectively since Jul. 1, 2012, stopping briefly when he believed there was hope for his release. Already in November 2012, Addameer reported that Sharawna’s health had “drastically deteriorated” and that he was “unable to stand, speak easily or urinate.” A recent independent report suggests Sharawna is now in solitary confinement despite his critical condition, and his health is rapidly failing.

According to Addameer, there are currently over 4,743 Palestinians detained by Israel, including 193 children and 178 held under administrative detention.

“Administrative detention is an illegal Israeli policy where the Israelis imprison Palestinians without any trial or charges, claiming that they have secret information that certain Palestinians are dangerous to Israeli security,” says Gaza-based Osama al-Wahidi, head of the information department at the Hussam association for Palestinian prisoners and ex-prisioners.

“Two of the hunger strikers were arrested immediately after the November 2012 Israeli attacks on Gaza,” notes Wahidi.

One of the two, Jafar Ezzedine, 41, is likewise nearing death on his quest to freedom.

“After nearly three months of hunger striking, he is very thin, very weak and ill. He looks like he shouldn’t still be alive,” says Tarek Ezzedine, Jafar’s brother. Also imprisoned by Israel, Tarek Ezzedine, director of Voice of Prisoners Radio, was likewise released in the prisoner swap, and immediately exiled by Israel to Gaza.

“This isn’t his first hunger strike,” says Tarek Ezzedine. “He went on a 54-day hunger strike in March 2012, part of a mass prisoners’ hunger strike.” In May, 2012, through Egyptian mediation, more than 1,000 prisoners agreed to end their strikes when Israel agreed to improve conditions for Palestinian prisoners.

“We have no direct contact with Jafar. His lawyer says that Jafar’s health is extremely poor now.”

Ezzedine and two others arrested in the early hours of Nov. 22, 2012, went on hunger strike on Nov. 28.

Tarek Qa’adan, 40, and Yousef Shaaban Yassin, 29, participated in demonstrations against the November 2012 Israeli attacks on Gaza. They were among 55 Palestinians arrested on Nov. 22, in what Tarek Ezzedine says is punishment for peacefully protesting the Israeli attacks.

“On the same day that they stopped bombing Gaza, the Israeli army took Jafar from his house,” says Tarek Ezzedine. “He participated in a demonstration in Jenin, where over 1,000 people were demonstrating, why arrest him? He didn’t organise the demo, he was like anyone participating.”

As with Samer Issawi, Addameer reporrs that already as of Jan. 24, 2012, Qa’adan was at risk of a fatal heart attack due to his weakened state.

“The road of prisoners, and the road of Palestinians in general, is not paved with flowers, it’s paved with thorns,” says Mahmoud Sarsak, a Palestinian footballer from Rafah, and one of the prisoners’ movement victors.

Waging a 92-day hunger strike in protest over being held for three years by Israel in a similar form of administrative detention specific to the Gaza Strip, Sarsak was released in July 2012.

Like Sarsak, Hana Shalabi and Akram Rikhawi were likewise released back to the Gaza Strip after their extended hunger strikes.

“If any of the hunger strikers die, it will not be in vain,” says Sarsak. “Their martyrdom will be a message to re-awaken the struggle for freedom. There will surely be a third Intifada (uprising) against the Israeli prison system and the occupation.”

Although hashtags like #ReleaseIssawi, #PalHunger, and #FreeSamer have been trending on Twitter, and news of the hunger strikers is all over Facebook, little has been said or written in international media about the plight of the five Palestinian strikers nearing death.

“When Shalit was being held in Gaza, the whole world, especially America and Obama, was focused on Shalit, talking about democracy, calling on the Red Cross to be able to visit him,” says Tarek Ezzedine.

“So why is the world silent on our prisoners?”

On Feb. 13, 2013, Richard Falk, United Nations Special Rapporteur, called for the release of Palestinian prisoners held without charge, saying “Israel must end the appalling and unlawful treatment of Palestinian detainees. The international community must react with a sense of urgency and use whatever leverage it possesses to end Israel’s abusive reliance on administrative detention.”