Introduction

The Palestinian economy is in a state of total collapse with a 31% rate of unemployment in the West Bank. As a result, despite the difficult circumstances they face, the number of Palestinians seeking work inside Israel is increasing.

Of the approximately one million Palestinian workers living in the West Bank, only a small number are allowed to legally work inside Israel. In 2009, no more than 23,000 Palestinians were given Israeli work permits. Nevertheless, around 40,000 Palestinians continue to work inside Israel, almost half of them do so illegally. As a result, most of these workers are exploited by employers who are aware of their illegal status and sometimes they are not paid at all - if they complain, they are simply handed over to the authorities. The estimated 25,000 Palestinians who enter Israel illegally each year live in constant fear of exposure to the police. According to Moshe Ben Shi, a spokesman for the Israeli Border Police, 15,000 illegal Palestinian workers are arrested annually.

Introduction

• Since the beginning of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967 the number of Palestinians detained is in excess of 700,000 men, women and children, representing 20% of the Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories.
  
  
• The current number of prisoners and detainees is estimated at between 8,000 – 10,000 spread around 30 prisons and detention centres. This includes prisons in the desert, where prisoners are held in tents in the searing heat of the summer and bitter cold of winter.
  
  
• Around 400 women have been jailed since the first Intifada started in 1987; a few dozen are still held in detention, some having given birth in prison and since separated from their children. The Israeli Prison authorities do not allow children to stay with their mothers past the age of two.

The Middle East Peace Process, 2003 – Present
Background

• ‘The Peace Process’ is the term that has come to be used to describe Middle Eastern diplomacy and peace negotiations following the 1967 War in which Israel on one side attacked its neighbours, Egypt, Jordan and Syria on the other. It has taken shape over many years and refers to the gradualist US- led approach to resolving the resultant conflicts which emphasises the ‘process’ of reaching peace rather than its substance.
  
  
• Following the war of 1948 when the state of Israel was established in historic Palestine, three quarters of a million Palestinians were driven out of the territory and forced to become refugees in exile. They were left with only a fraction of the territory that had once been theirs. During the 1967 war waged 19 years later, a second wave of refugees was created and the land that remained to the Palestinians was occupied by Israel along with some Syrian and Egyptian territory. A year after the military occupation commenced, Israel began establishing illegal settlements on Palestinian territory. The refugees have never been allowed to return.
  
  
• In the 43 years since the 1967 War, there have been numerous attempts at resolving the Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. Some have managed to reach settlement; in 1979 and 1994 Israel signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan respectively. Nevertheless, the core conflict that rages between Israel and Palestinians is yet to reach a settlement.

The olive tree: a symbol of Palestinian steadfastness, subject to systematic destruction
The supreme judge in Palestine, Tayseer Al-Tamimi, has denounced what he calls the “repeated crimes of the Israeli occupation authorities against all things Palestinian, be they human beings, stones or trees". The judge was speaking after dozens of olive trees in the town of Burin, south of Nablus, were destroyed by the Israelis; the trees date back to the Roman period of history. Al-Tamimi has urged the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO) to “protect the agricultural land of Palestine which is being seized and destroyed in order to build illegal settlements”. He called upon the organisation to protect the olive trees, which he describes as the historic source of livelihood for tens of thousands of Palestinian families.
 
Season of terror
The olive harvest season is the most important for a large segment of Palestinian society. The joy experienced at this time is often tempered by fear and anxiety because of increasing attacks on olive groves by colonial-settlers intending to sabotage the harvest.

The suffering of the Palestinian farmers is exacerbated by the actions taken by the Israeli government, which restricts their movements and prevents them by means of the apartheid wall and check-points from reaching their fields. The Israelis subject the farmers to lengthy inspections

The harvest season is usually a time of hectic settler activity, especially by those who live near olive groves owned by Palestinians. On one occasion, a leaflet was distributed by an extremist association urging settlers to cut down the olive trees and attack Palestinian farmers. 

The same leaflet regards the olives grown on 900 square kilometres of the West Bank as being contradictory to the rights of the settlers to use the land of what they call Judea and Samaria.