The human rights situation in Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip remained grave throughout 2004, as armed clashes continued to exact a high price from civilians. While many see the period after Arafat’s death on November 11 as the beginning of a new era in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, few changes have occurred on the ground where the wall regime Israel is building inside the West Bank and the illegal Israeli settlements continue to expand. On December 3 a top Hamas leader said that the group would accept the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and a long-term truce with Israel. It remains to be seen whether Israel will make reciprocal declarations and whether words will be translated into action.In 2004,the Israeli army & security forces made frequent and, in the Gaza Strip, large-scale military incursions into densely-populated Palestinian areas, often taking heavy tolls in terms of Palestinian deaths and injuries as well as property destruction. Palestinian armed groups fired rockets from areas of the Gaza Strip at Israeli civilian settlements and populated areas in Israel close to the border, and carried out seven suicide bombings inside Israel and four around Israeli army checkpoints in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). Armed attacks and clashes in the course of the year brought casualties since September 2000 to well over three thousand Palestinians and nearly one thousand Israelis killed, and more than 34,000 Palestinians and six thousand Israelis injured. Most of those killed and injured were civilians.
The Israeli authorities continue a policy of closure, imposing severe and frequently arbitrary restrictions on freedom of movement in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem, contributing to a serious humanitarian crisis marked by extreme poverty, unemployment, and food insecurity. The movement restrictions have also severely compromised Palestinian residents’ access to health care, education, and other services.
Over the past two years these restrictions have become more acute, and in many places more permanent, with the construction of a “separation barrier” inside the West Bank. While the stated Israeli security rationale for the barrier is to prevent Palestinian armed groups from carrying out attacks in Israel, 85 percent of its route extends into the West Bank, effectively annexing to Israel most of the large illegal Jewish settlements constructed over the past several decades as well as confiscating some of the most productive Palestinian farmlands and key water resources.
In October 2004 the Knesset approved Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to “disengage” from the Gaza Strip in 2005 by withdrawing its military forces and Jewish settlements, although the plan will leave Israel in control of Gaza’s borders, coastline, and airspace. This move will not end Israel’s occupation of Gaza or its responsibility for the well-being of its inhabitants.
The control of the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) over Palestinian population centers is frequently nominal at best, and conditions of lawlessness prevail in some areas of the Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank. Palestinian gunmen carried out lethal attacks against persons alleged to have collaborated with Israeli security forces, and political rivalries sometimes erupted into clashes between armed factions and attacks on PA officials and offices.
More at;
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/01/13/isrlpa9806.htm
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