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.

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George Mitchell, the US Middle East envoy, today launched a fresh effort to win agreement for indirect talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

Mitchell was on his first visit since the so-called "proximity talks" collapsed last month when Israeli officials announced planning approval for hundreds of homes in an East Jerusalem settlement.

He met the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, in Jerusalem and was due to meet Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, in Ramallah tonight.

Mitchell told Netanyahu that Washington supported Israel's security and wanted a peace agreement that would create an independent Palestinian state. "That has been American policy. That is American policy. That will be American policy," Mitchell said.

Netanyahu said he was serious about talks with the US. No immediate agreement emerged from their two-hour meeting, but Mitchell is to stay on and will meet Netanyahu again on Sunday.

The Israeli leader has refused to halt Jewish settlement construction in East Jerusalem, which Washington and the Palestinian leadership had been asking for. But there were signs that a process of indirect talks might yet start despite Israel's position.

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, was critical of Netanyahu's continued building in East Jerusalem, but suggested talks might be agreed. "We should give the proximity talks the chance they deserve, but at the same time, it is evident after Mr Netanyahu's statements last night that this Israeli government is determined to continue the course of settlements, dictation and confrontation and not peace and reconciliation," he said.

He said the Palestinians would come to the talks if Israel agreed not to begin new Jerusalem construction projects and if it cancelled plans to build 1,600 homes in Ramat Shlomo. It was the Ramat Shlomo announcement that scuppered the first effort at establishing indirect talks.

If there is an agreement for indirect talks, in which Mitchell would shuttle between the two sides, it would be the first semblance of a peace process since Israel's war in Gaza more than a year ago. However, since the two sides have been holding direct negotiations over nearly two decades, the fact that this process would be only indirect shows how deadlocked the conflict has become.

Netanyahu leads a rightwing coalition government that supports the settler movement but maintains his government's relationship with the US, by far Israel's most important ally. The dispute about East Jerusalem settlements has pitched that relationship to a new low and some of his colleagues, notably the defence minister, Ehud Barak, have spoken much more publicly than Netanyahu about the need to end the occupation and create a Palestinian state.

Israel captured East Jerusalem in 1967 and annexed it, claiming full sovereignty. But the international community has never recognised that. Nearly 500,000 settlers live in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, even though settlement on occupied land is illegal under international law.

Israel's leading human rights groups are trying to stop two new Israeli military orders which will make any resident of the occupied West Bank who does not have an Israeli-issued permit liable for deportation or jail.

The new Order Regarding Prevention of Infiltration and Order Regarding Security Provisions, which comes into force on Tuesday have "severe ramifications," the rights groups say. Palestinians, and any foreigners living in the West Bank, could be labelled infiltrators and deported within 72 hours or jailed for seven years if they are found without the correct permit. It does not define what Israel considers a valid permit.

"The orders … are worded so broadly such as theoretically allowing the military to empty the West Bank of almost all its Palestinian inhabitants," said the 10 rights groups, which include Ha-Moked, B'Tselem, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, and Rabbis for Human Rights. Until now the vast majority of Palestinians in the West Bank have not been required to hold a permit just to be present in their homes, the groups say.

"The military will be able to prosecute and deport any Palestinian defined as an infiltrator in stark contradiction to the Geneva conventions," they said. The law broadens the definition of an "infiltrator" and could allow Israel to transfer some Palestinians from the West Bank to Gaza, or to deport foreign passport holders married to West Bank Palestinians, or to deport Israelis or foreigners living in the West Bank. The groups said tens of thousands of Palestinians were in those categories.

Israel effectively controls the Palestinian population register and since 2000, apart from once in 2007, the Israeli authorities have frozen applications for renewal of visitor permits for foreign nationals, or applications to grant permanent status in the occupied territories. As a result, many Palestinians live in the West Bank without formal status and are now vulnerable under the new orders. The human rights groups wrote to the Israeli defence minister, Ehud Barak, today asking him to delay or revoke the orders, which they said were "unlawful and allow extreme and arbitrary injury to a vast number of people".

The Israeli military said the purpose of the orders was "the extradition of those residing illegally in Judea and Samaria," an Israeli term for the West Bank. The orders had been "corrected" in order to "assure judicial oversight of the extradition process," it said.

However, Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said the orders would make it easy for Israel to imprison or expel Palestinians from the West Bank. "These military orders belong in an apartheid state," he said. "They are an assault on ordinary Palestinians and an affront to the most fundamental principles of human rights. Israel's endgame is not peace. It is the colonisation of the West Bank."

Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, tried to smooth over a breach in relations with the US today, speaking out against unnamed confidants who described Barack Obama as pro-Palestinian and Israel's "greatest disaster".

Netanyahu made his first public comments after a fraught visit to Washington last week, where he held a long but low-key meeting with Obama that ended with significant disagreement.

Israeli reports said the US was pressing Israel to freeze settlement construction in East Jerusalem and to extend a temporary, partial curb on West Bank settlement building. But so far Netanyahu has shown no sign that he will bow to pressure from Washington. One of his most senior cabinet ministers was reported today as saying the US demands were unacceptable and there would be no compromise.

The Yedioth Ahronoth, an Israeli newspaper, sparked the premier's anger when it quoted unnamed Netanyahu confidants delivering extraordinary criticisms of the US administration. One said Obama and Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, had "adopted a patently Palestinian line".

"We're talking about something that is diseased and insane," the confidant told the paper. "The situation is catastrophic. We have a problem with a very, very hostile administration. There's never been anything like this before. This president wants to establish the Palestinian state and he wants to give them Jerusalem … You could say Obama is the greatest disaster for Israel, a strategic disaster."

Netanyahu admitted to his cabinet this morning that after his meetings with Obama, although there were some agreements, "there are matters that we have yet to agree on". But he singled out the comments in the Yedioth as "anonymous, unworthy remarks". "Relations between Israel and the US are those between allies and friends and reflect long-standing tradition," Netanyahu said.

In the US, there was a similar effort to ease the rift. David Axelrod, a senior Obama adviser, said the US had a "deep, abiding interest in Israel's security". Despite the low-key nature of the meeting with Netanyahu which ended without a joint statement or customary photographed handshake, Axelrod told CNN: "There was no snub intended. This was a working meeting among friends."

Washington spent much of last year trying to persuade Netanyahu to halt all settlement construction as a prelude to restarting peace talks with the Palestinians for the first time since Israel's war in Gaza. However, Netanyahu agreed only to a partial, 10-month curb of settlement building in the West Bank. That brought initial US praise, but the dispute erupted again earlier this month when Israeli officials approved 1,600 new settler homes in East Jerusalem during a visit by the US vice-president, Joe Biden. That scuppered a programme of indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinians that Washington had spent months arranging.

Israel claims sovereignty over East Jerusalem, which it captured in 1967, but that is not recognised by the international community. Britain, and many others, regard the east of the city as under military occupation, like the West Bank. Settlement on occupied land is illegal under international law.

The Yedioth Ahronoth also quoted one unnamed senior Israeli minister, from the forum of seven top ministers, as strongly rejecting the US demands. "Our decision on this matter is not to give in, not to compromise and not to accept their list of demands," the minister said. "The document of demands that the Americans submitted to Netanyahu in the White House is unacceptable."

Netanyahu met with his senior ministers today and will hold more meetings this week. Reports said some wanted to work with the US to resume peace talks, but other more rightwing ministers were against a halt to settlement building in Jerusalem or any discussion of the future of Jerusalem during indirect talks. The latter included Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister, Moshe Ya'alon, the vice-prime minister, Eli Yishai, the interior minister, and Benny Begin, a minister without portfolio.

Like other Israeli prime ministers before him, Netanyahu has to balance pressure from the US with pressure from within his rightwing coalition. Some Labour party ministers from within the coalition have now threatened to quit. They want two key rightwing parties to be forced out of government and replaced with Kadima, the centrist party led by Tzipi Livni which polled first in elections last year.

The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, will hold talks in Washington on Tuesday with President Barack Obama as tension escalates in the Middle East after a weekend of violence and with little sign of an imminent return to direct peace talks with the Palestinians.

Netanyahu sounded a defiant tone today, refusing to back down on settlement construction in East Jerusalem, but he faced a new round of criticism after four Palestinian teenagers were shot dead on the occupied West Bank in the space of 24 hours, in what Palestinian officials condemned as an Israeli military escalation.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, travelled to Gaza, where he denounced the Israeli economic blockade and the "unacceptable suffering" it causes.

Netanyahu was to fly to Washington tonight to speak at the annual meeting of the powerful pro-Israel lobby Aipac before his meeting with the president. His trip comes at a time of rare crisis in relations between Israel and the US, triggered by Israeli approval earlier this month for the construction of hundreds of settler homes in Jerusalem.

The international community does not recognise Israel's occupation and annexation of East Jerusalem, and settlements on occupied land are regarded as illegal under international law. The approval for the construction meant indirect talks with the Palestinians collapsed before they had even begun.

At first Washington was strongly critical of Israel, but the administration soon tempered its language and has instead reportedly pressed for concessions from the Israelis in private.

However, Netanyahu refuses to concede on the main issue: he told his cabinet today he would not give up building in East Jerusalem. "From our point of view, construction in Jerusalem is like construction in Tel Aviv," he said. "These are the things which we have made very clear to the American administration." He did concede that all key issues could be discussed in any indirect "proximity" talks involving Israel and the Palestinians, but there have been no talks between the two sides since Israel's war in Gaza, more than a year ago.

George Mitchell, the US special envoy, was in Jerusalem again today hoping to start at least indirect talks. Speaking before meeting Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, Mitchell said US relations with Israel were "unshakeable".

The diplomacy was overshadowed by growing concerns about violence on the ground. Two Palestinian teenagers, Muhammad and Salah Qawariq, were shot dead today by Israeli troops near Nablus. The military said the two had tried to stab a soldier; Palestinian officials said the pair had been farming and were detained by the troops for some minutes before they were shot.

The incident happened as Palestinians in another village near Nablus buried two boys, Mohammad Qadus, 15, and Osaid Qadus, 17, who were shot dead by Israeli troops on Saturday. It marked the most serious violence in the occupied West Bank for more than a year. A Thai worker was also killed in southern Israel last week by a rocket fired by Gazan militants.

Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, said there had been a "military escalation" by Israeli which "has serious risks and puts in jeopardy the Palestinian authority's achievements of security and stability".

Mustafa Barghouti, an independent Palestinian politician, said the latest killings were a "provocation", and that Palestinians should not return to negotiations without a halt to all settlement building. "Without a total and complete freeze of settlements immediately, both in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, any negotiations will be a cover for Israeli measures," he said.

The UN secretary general, Ban, crossed into Gaza and again called for an end to the three-year economic blockade of the strip and its 1.5 million Palestinian residents. Israel has finally allowed in window frames and construction materials to allow the UN to complete 151 apartments, but there are still tens of thousands of homes awaiting repair after last year's war. The supplies were "a drop in a bucket of water", Ban said. The blockade "undercuts moderates and encourages extremists", he said.

It was mid-afternoon on Saturday when Mohammad Qadus, 15, and Osaid Qadus, 17, returned by bus to their village, Iraq Burin, near Nablus. They arrived during a demonstration that took their lives. Israelis from the nearby Brakha settlement, built in part on the village's land, had come down on to Iraq Burin's farmland, as they do most Saturdays, according to Palestinian witnesses. The villagers began protesting and Israeli troops were deployed, entering the village. Palestinian boys threw stones at the soldiers; the soldiers fired teargas and rubber-coated bullets.

The two Qadus boys, friends but not close relatives, were at the end of the village furthest from the settlement and did not join in the stone throwing, witnesses said. But an Israeli army vehicle approached, and a soldier fired two rounds in quick succession at the boys. Mohammad was hit in the chest and died within minutes. Osaid was hit in the head, slipped into a coma and died hours later in hospital.

Amir Aref, 16, a friend of both boys, tried to drag them to safety. He described how he saw Osaid sitting on the ground in front of a store. "I was telling him: 'Stand up, stand up.' But he refused to answer," Aref said. "I looked at him. Blood was coming down from a small hole in his forehead, his brains were coming out."

He then turned to Mohammad and saw him lying on the road nearby. He had been hit in the chest: photos of his corpse later showed a small entry wound near his heart and a larger exit wound in his back.

"I carried him and took him into the village in my arms," Aref said. "I looked at him and he said 'Amir', then blood came out of his mouth. He gasped and then he died."

Witnesses and doctors at the Nablus Speciality hospital, where the boys were taken, said both had been hit by what appeared to be live rounds.

The Israeli military said in a statement there had been a "violent and illegal riot" in the village and that soldiers "responded with riot dispersal means". It said troops fired teargas and rubber bullets but denied firing live rounds. "Live fire was not used," it said.

However, a hospital x-ray of Osaid Qadus, seen by the Guardian, showed a bullet lodged in his brain. Ahmed Hamad, a doctor at the Nablus hospital, said the x-ray showed a "classic, pure metallic bullet". He said both boys had injuries with small entry wounds indicating live rounds.

As the families buried their children today, the Brakha settlers were out on the hilltop with bulldozers clearing more farmland. The settlement, home to about 1,300 religious settlers, was built in 1983 and is deep inside the occupied West Bank.

Abdul Nasser Qadus, 51, father of Osaid, said it was "beyond doubt" that both children had been shot with live bullets. Standing next to him, Amar Qadus, 37, brother of Mohammad, said: "Do you believe a 15-year-old boy is threatening Israel's security?"