Poverty, unemployment, and occupation are pushing a growing number of Palestinians towards drug addiction.

The status of east Jerusalem is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Its residents are mainly Palestinian but it has been occupied by Israel since 1967 -and unlike Gaza and the West Bank, the Palestinian authority has no...
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Poverty, unemployment, and occupation are pushing a growing number of Palestinians towards drug addiction.

The status of east Jerusalem is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Its residents are mainly Palestinian but it has been occupied by Israel since 1967 -and unlike Gaza and the West Bank, the Palestinian authority has no control.

Palestinians say this has led to a vacuum in the provision of social and legal services, and no power to police the heroin dens such as in Shuafat Refugee camp, just 30 feet from an Israeli checkpoint.

With as many as 6,000 drug addicts in East Jerusalem, concentrated in the old city (one square kilometer crammed with 200,000 residents)--the situation is spiraling out of control and weakening both family & community. The family is the main coping mechanism that has allowed the Palestinians to maintain their identity under decades of occupation.
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