Lucy Mair

If a just peace is to prevail in the region, Israel must agree to dismantle the Wall, return confiscated land to its owners, and compensate Palestinians for damages and lost income, argue Lucy Mair and Robyn Long. Israeli occupation has made the Palestinian economy dependent upon Israel. The wall would exacerbate that dependence and vulnerability.

How do I describe what life is like here - of the sadness in the eyes of my colleagues, of the exhaustion that results when every daily action requires an extraordinary effort, when perseverance is no longer enough and futility and despair fight for a place on the proud faces carrying bags and babies and the burden of poverty through checkpoints, over dirt piles, past soldiers and tanks and the bombed-out shells of buildings.

Much international attention has recently focused on the ‘humanitarian crisis’ in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). Recent studies have shown that child malnutrition rates there are now on par with those in some of the poorest countries in the world, and that unemployment has doubled in the past six months. While the scale of this unfolding tragedy is undeniable, Grassroots International’s Jerusalem-based consultant Lucy Mair argues that calling it a humanitarian crisis is wrong.