This article was originally published by Bitterlemons.org and is republished with permission.

A Palestinian carts food aid from the United Nations Development Programme in Gaza. (Hatem Omar, Maan Images)

Israel's intentional and systematic policy of separating the West Bank from the Gaza Strip is one of three major Israeli strategies vis-a-vis the occupied territories.

The second is the continuous expansion of illegal settlements in different parts of the West Bank. This strategy aims at acquiring the maximum possible amount of non-populated areas of the West Bank while dividing the different populated areas from each other.

The third is the revival of the Israeli civil administration, a body that was, until Oslo, the arm of the Israeli occupation that maintained control over the day-to-day aspects of the lives of Palestinians in the occupied territories.

Together, the three strategies are designed to prevent the emergence of a viable Palestinian state and the possibility of any coherent Palestinian self-rule. Of the three, separating Gaza and the West Bank from each other probably constitutes the most immediate strategic threat against the Palestinian objective of establishing an independent state in the West Bank including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

Under the cover of Israeli security concerns and after the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, Israel stopped movement from Gaza to Israel and of course through Israel to the West Bank. That includes all kinds of movement, whether that of cargo and goods--which has been severely restricted as a result of policies at the Karni crossing--or the movement of people, whether for commercial, political, administrative or social purposes.

While movement between the two parts of the Palestinian territory is almost completely restricted, Gazans are, with difficulty and to a very limited extent, able to travel to or through Egypt while Palestinians in the West Bank are able, again to a limited extent, to travel to or through Jordan.

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Theoretically then, a Gazan can travel to Cairo, Damascus, Tehran, London or New York, but not to Ramallah, Hebron or Nablus, where his presence is prohibited by Israel. In time, this situation is likely to lead to total political, economic and social disintegration between the two territories and will ultimately jeopardize any practical possibility of establishing an integral state.

This Israeli policy, furthermore, has resulted in severe negative effects on all aspects of Palestinian lives. The first, and most dangerous, is the economic effect. The Palestinian economy, already small and isolated, has regressed. The closures have discouraged investments, because the market of the Palestinian territory is small and purchasing power is weak, while the ability to export is limited by Israeli restrictions.

With separation of the West Bank from Gaza a further shrinkage of the market happens, whereby a producer in Gaza can only market to Gaza, and the same in the West Bank. This will further hinder the possibility of economic growth and discourage investment and consequently cause further unemployment and economic deterioration.

World Bank and UN reports have explicitly fingered the Israeli restrictions on movement as the primary cause of the economic deterioration, particularly the increase in unemployment and poverty.

The latest numbers from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics have also shown significant differences in all economic indicators between the West Bank and Gaza, with, for example, a ten percent difference in the rate of unemployment between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Another area of significant damage is the performance of Palestinian administration, whether Palestinian Authority institutions, the Cabinet, the different ministries or other central government institutions, or non-government institutions. Civil servants at all levels have been restricted from moving between the West Bank and Gaza in the last four to five years. Even ministers faced severe restrictions on their movement until it was completely curtailed in the last year.

That negatively affected the different functions and services of these supposedly central government bodies to the extent that eventually each of these institutions has become two, one for each territory. This situation also applies to non-government developmental and humanitarian organizations.

Finally, another serious consequence of Israel's policy of disassembling the Palestinian territory is growing discrepancies in the politics and discourse of Gaza and the West Bank. The last poll conducted by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center indicated serious differences between the two publics on most issues.

Separating Gaza from the West Bank and Gaza from the rest of the world is also a direct cause of the desperate situation that led to the recent internal violence and chaos, and will continue to contribute to the rise in radicalization and extremism in Gaza.

Ghassan Khatib is the coeditor of the bitterlemons family of internet publications. He is vice-president of Birzeit University and a former Palestinian Authority minister of planning.

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