On a warm day in early April, I was in a jeep cruising along \ the main highway running from north to south in the West Bank. This particular \ road is, for much of its length, open to travel for vehicles bearing both the yellow \ license plates identifying it as Israeli and the green and white plates identifying \ a Palestinian vehicle. It was the middle of the week and midday, a time when \ highways are generally not packed but have significant traffic, usually \ consisting of commercial vehicles and people heading to some job or meeting \ somewhere. Yet I saw perhaps one vehicle every four or five minutes. The reason for this absence of traffic is simple. Israelis \ have bypass roads, which they much prefer to use instead of the main highway \ because of a history of shooting attacks on Israeli cars during the height of \ the second intifada. And Palestinians simply have nowhere to drive to because \ of the lack of commerce in the West Bank. There is, of course, no explicit prohibition by the Israeli \ authorities on commerce. But the system of checkpoints and closures and various \ other day-to-day restrictions, combine with external factors to severely limit \ Palestinians' livelihood. To be sure ongoing violence means that Israel must \ take steps to ensure the safety of its citizens. But, when one sees an economy \ this comatose, it is important to ask if sufficient care is being taken to \ minimize the impact on the overwhelming majority of Palestinians who are \ innocent of any sort of violence. In recent weeks, a global conference \ was held to help revitalize the economy on the West Bank. But many aspects \ of the occupation that have the same sort of day to day character never get \ that kind of spotlight shone on them. Recently, B'Tselem, The Israeli Information Center for Human \ Rights in the Occupied Territories reported on what might seem like a very \ minor issue at first glance but which actually has enormous impact on the daily \ lives of Palestinians. The report is entitled "Israel \ refuses to issue ID cards to unregistered Palestinians" and it describes \ the impact this policy has on the lives of ordinary Palestinians whose only \ crime is that their parents did not follow the proper bureaucratic procedures \ when they were born. Without an ID card, Palestinians cannot travel around the West \ Bank as they will not be permitted to pass through any of the many hundreds of \ checkpoints throughout the area. The implications of this are many. The most \ obvious is that it makes it very difficult for people in this situation to find \ work and, even if they do, they may end up cut off from their families to \ maintain their jobs or might not be able to hold onto them. The lack of an ID card also presents significant barriers to \ obtaining a normal education. There are significant bureaucratic obstacles in \ the Palestinian education system for those who have not been registered and, \ even for those who manage to finish high school, university education is nearly \ impossible. One might reasonably ask why these folks don't simply get an \ ID card. How hard can it be, right? It turns out to be very difficult indeed. Here's how B'Tselem \ describes the situation: Since \ the occupation began in 1967, Israel has exercised almost total control over \ the Palestinian population registry and has sole power to determine who is a \ Palestinian resident. In this capacity, Israel could enable children whose \ parents did not register them - a tendency that is more prominent as regards \ daughters - to obtain ID cards by applying the simple and relatively rapid \ solution is known as "late registration." However, Israel refuses to authorize \ this procedure and insists, instead, on channeling these cases to the long and \ exhausting family unification procedure, which was created to enable a \ non-resident of the West Bank or Gaza Strip (generally spouses of residents of \ the Occupied Territories) to live there. Not only is the demand to apply for \ family unification ridiculous as regards people who have never lived apart from \ their families and have always resided in the West Bank, but the procedure \ cannot even be implemented, since Israel has frozen handling of all family \ unification requests over the last seven years. Furthermore, even if the freeze \ is removed, and the quota applied prior to the outbreak of the second intifada \ remains in effect, it would take dozens of years to arrange their status. \ B'Tselem has taken the testimonies of Palestinians without a legal status who \ began the family unification process when they were minors, who are now married \ with families, and have yet to receive a status. We can debate the degree to which the many checkpoints \ Israel has set up serve a security purpose (they clearly serve some, but are so \ many necessary and how do we balance that need against Israel's obligation as the \ ultimate authority in the West Bank to ensure the rights of Palestinians?), but \ if there is a security purpose being served by this it escapes me. If there is \ one, why then is there such a cumbersome process in place for obtaining an ID \ card rather than no process at all? I'll leave that question there for others to ponder, along \ with the question of why Israel does this at all. What is more important to \ recognize is the ways in which an occupation regime (and Israel is by no means \ special in this regard, rather this is just the nature of holding millions of \ people under occupation) can severely impact people's lives without much \ fanfare. Such bureaucratic disruption as this largely happens without much \ active intent on the part of the ruling power. This is the sort of thing that doesn't get written about in \ newspapers. There is no violence, no terrorism. There is no issue of "collateral \ damage" or a question of excessive force. This is the occupation of \ bureaucracy. It's not a headline, but it can be just as devastating to an \ individual life. In some ways, it can be even more frustrating, as there is \ only a "system" to blame, no soldier or militant, \ no religious fanatic or radical extremist. There is just a book of rules and procedures and clerks \ who must follow them. One can hope, and not without reason, that the publicizing \ of this issue will lead to its rectification. It wouldn't be the first time B'Tselem \ or other Israeli civil society groups have won such victories. But we do well \ to bear in mind that the problems in the West Bank are not only the result of \ overzealous soldiers, violent attacks on Israelis or fanatical settlers. There \ is also the day to day system of Israel ruling over millions of people who have \ no rights of citizenship. Such systemic problems are, under those \ circumstances, quite inevitable.