Oxfam CEO and President Abby Maxman on witnessing life under Israel’s unlawful occupation, and the resilience and determination of Palestinians.
I have visited the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel since the 1980s. During my recent journey there, I saw and heard how the chokehold on so many Palestinian communities in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is tighter now than ever before.
I met with a community in Beit Skaria near Bethlehem who are entirely surrounded by illegal Israeli settlements and face constant violence and intimidation.
One woman told me “Palestinian women never rest, you cannot plan.” Another explained the stark inequality between their community and the settlements around them. “This is what breaks me,” she said, when I asked how she explains to her children what they see and experience — how her children’s schools lack even the basics, while surrounding schools in the settlements, have playgrounds and open spaces, are well-resourced and stable. She told me that Palestinian children know from an early age that they must live differently than others.
In Jenin, I asked a man how he explains the violence and the forced displacement to his kids, and he said he doesn’t need to explain it. They live it, every day.
Obstacles at every step for Palestinians
The stories I heard were not in isolation, and despite the fact that bombs have, in the main, stopped falling, the humanitarian crisis across the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) is far from over.
We’ve all seen the statistics: after two years of Israel’s destructive military campaign, 2 million Palestinians have been forcibly displaced, the majority of which, multiple times; over 70,000 have been killed — 40 percent of whom were women and children; roughly 81 percent of buildings damaged or destroyed, and an entirely preventable famine in parts of Gaza has unfolded in front of the world’s eyes.
In the West Bank, I heard about the especially horrific spike of settler violence against Palestinians. While the genocide in Gaza has rightfully dominated headlines, the violence of the occupation of the West Bank has further deteriorated the humanitarian crisis there. Roughly three million Palestinians in the West Bank live under Israeli military law, suffering the daily indignities of living under occupation. The Israeli government has erected almost 1,000 new blockades across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in the last two years. Oxfam’s teams in the region must plan for obstruction, checkpoints, and daily harassment as they work to support communities and partners. The 30-mile trip from Bethlehem to Ramallah, which used to take just 45 minutes, now can take up to five hours.
Threats to safety on all sides
I heard from Palestinian business owners in Hebron who are experiencing the systematic erasure of their rights. In place of a once-thriving area, much of the city-center is mostly now a set of empty streets patrolled by Israeli soldiers, surrounded by barbed wire, and inaccessible to its Palestinian residents.
Dr. Jad Isaac, the Director General of the Applied Research Institute in Bethlehem who has traveled the world, said of the current situation “I don’t go anywhere. The humiliation is too great.”
During my visit to Ras ’Ein Al ’Auja, I witnessed the impacts on a community that is being systematically pushed off their lands by the relentless violence of illegal settlers, violence that is too often perpetrated under the direct protection and support of the Israeli military. Today, the entire community stands at the precipice of total forced displacement. This is the tragic, recurring reality for herding communities across the OPT, where Israeli state-backed coercion is actively clearing the land of its Palestinian inhabitants.
It is all but impossible to truly understand Palestinians’ experience of living under the indignity and suffering of Israel’s unlawful occupation from afar. Only by being fully present, with communities surrounded by threats to safety on all sides and obstacles at every moment of daily life, have I been able to come closer to truly, viscerally understanding the spiraling coercive environment being imposed on Palestinians.
Humanitarian access continues to be restricted
Despite the settler violence and deterioration of daily life, the communities I met with—and many others—respond with courage and steadfastness. Everyone I spoke with in the country, from Jenin to Hebron, Bethlehem to East Jerusalem to our teams in Gaza, showed a deep commitment to do the work for a better future. Their dreams for their children are the same as the dreams I have for my own: safety, economic and social opportunity and mobility, freedom and justice. The simple and basic undeniable right to food, water, shelter, health care, and home.
And despite the continued obstruction of humanitarian aid, our team and partners in Gaza have scaled up our response in the wake of the ceasefire. Together with our partner organizations, we continue to truck clean water to communities, keep wells and critical hygiene services—including latrines—running, and helping families access food.
These efforts, while vital, are only a fraction of what is possible and what is urgently needed. Oxfam has thousands of food parcels and critical hygiene supplies pre-positioned and ready to move. Our teams and partners in Gaza are ready to scale up immediately to restore water and sanitation systems, expand food assistance, and help people rebuild their lives with dignity. What stands in the way is not capacity, but continued restrictions on humanitarian access. Sustained, full, and safe humanitarian access has been deliberately obstructed. Without more than a fragile or partial ceasefire and end to Israel’s illegal blockade, lifesaving assistance will continue to be constrained, delayed, or denied altogether.
Why we cannot look away
It is on us to demand an opportunity now to help Palestinians achieve those dreams and begin the long process of rebuilding. We must hold all parties to account in adhering to the terms of the ceasefire and the government of Israel to meeting its full obligations as the occupying power under international law. The international community must also act now to create the conditions for recovery. This means holding Israel, as the occupying power, to its full obligations under international law, and ensuring accountability for violations of the ceasefire and ongoing restrictions on aid, without which things will only get worse.
We are calling on the Trump administration to use all available leverage in order to ensure Israel allows aid to flow freely, end the climate of impunity violence against Palestinians including by Israeli settlers , and to halt policies and practices that are entrenching permanent control over Palestinian land, annexation including settlement activity and expansion.
Only then can Palestinians begin to rebuild and only then can all Palestinians and Israelis have a chance to live in peace, security, and dignity. We cannot look away.