Al-Ahram Weekly | Region | Save the children

		15 - 21 August 2002 Issue No. 599 Region	Current issue Previous issue Site map
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Recommend this page

Save the children
The Israeli occupation is killing the Palestinians. Bombings and armed invasions are merely the tip of the iceberg, writes Catherine Cook*

A recently released US Aid funded nutritional assessment indicates that acute and chronic malnutrition rates of Palestinian children under five have reached emergency levels, with 22.5 per cent of children suffering moderate or severe acute or chronic malnutrition and 1/5 suffering moderate and/or severe anemia. The study, designed by Johns Hopkins University's School of Public Health, surveyed nutrition levels, availability of food in the market and household consumption, and found that the factors affecting the dangerous rise in malnutrition directly relates to Israeli imposed movement restrictions and the dismal economic situation in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Major food shortages were caused primarily by Israeli imposed road closures, checkpoints, and curfews, while the economic situation and subsequent loss in purchasing power was the main factor inhibiting people's ability to buy food.
Fifty six per cent of surveyed families indicated that they had been forced to decrease the amount of food consumed for more than one day in the previous two week period. Of those, 2/3 cited lack of money and 1/3 cited Israeli imposed curfews and closures as the reason.
The study found that 36.6 per cent of Palestinian families in the West Bank and Gaza Strip lack the purchasing power to consistently feed their families. Families affected were highest in Gaza City, where 41.3 per cent of families reported selling assets to buy food. This is how collective punishment works: Israel implements restrictions on freedom of movement, Palestinians lose their jobs inside Israel or can no longer reach their places of work in the occupied territories, and their level of income decreases. As of December 2001, unemployment had reached 35 per cent in the occupied territories according to the World Bank.
Figures released by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) in April indicate that in the first two months of the year 2002, more than two-thirds of Palestinian households were living below the poverty line, set at $340/month(less than $1.90/day). PCBS also reports that more than half of Palestinian households have lost more than 50 per cent of their income since September 2000.
How does this affect children? The USAID study tells us the answer: Palestinian wholesalers and retailers are facing difficulty getting food into the market, particularly fresh meat and dairy products (powdered milk, infant formula). Once they do, many families are either unable to reach the store, due to Israeli imposed restrictions on freedom of movement or they cannot afford to buy adequate food, both in terms of quality and quantity. The lack of purchasing power has forced Palestinians to buy less of more expensive high protein foods, such as fish, beef, and chicken. Lack of protein is one of the direct causes of malnutrition and anemia.
This situation is not the result of a natural disaster or a lack of natural resources, it is a result of Israeli government sanctioned policies implemented by an occupying power against civilians, a government which is the largest recipient of US foreign aid, totaling some five billion annually. These policies are part and parcel of the 35 year long Israeli occupation.
What the nutritional assessment illustrates clearly is that the Israeli occupation is more than a soldier with a gun -- it is a system of control that impacts every aspect of the lives of three million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, 53 per cent of whom are children.
Israeli actions are having a similarly devastating impact on other areas related to children's well being. The reality for Palestinian children is that they live in an environment where they suffer collective and concurrent violations of their rights at all times. Israeli occupation policies simultaneously prevent Palestinian children from receiving adequate nutrition, interrupt the educational process, deprive children of homes, parents and siblings, lead to the death, injury, and arrest of thousands of Palestinian children, and imprison hundreds of thousands of children in their homes for days on end, under the policy of curfew. The cumulative psychological effects of the last two years on Palestinian children have been immense and will take many years of intensive, serious work to treat. These factors not only impact the child's daily life, they constitute a major obstacle to the child's healthy development, and, thus, rob the child of prospects for a decent future.
The Israeli government repeatedly asserts that it is not targeting the Palestinian civilian population, but you cannot implement policies such as these without bringing a society to its knees. You certainly cannot do it for two years and claim that the results are unintended. And the international community cannot continue to turn a blind eye.
On 5 August, the UN General Assembly passed yet another watered-down resolution calling for an end to the violence on both sides. However, another resolution is not what is called for, but rather concrete action on the part of the international community to intervene to end the Israeli occupation is needed.
The US AID study pointed out in its conclusion that "today's acute malnutrition ... will be tomorrow's chronic malnutrition ...unless a variety of interventions -- economic, political and health related -- take place." The international community would be well advised to open its eyes and take this a step further: Palestinian children today constitute 53 per cent of the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. What will the situation look like in ten or twenty years when this generation of children reach adulthood?
*The writer is international advocacy coordinator for Defence for Children International/Palestine Section, a children's rights NGO based in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

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