This paper views poverty as a feature of socio-economic,
political and cultural processes that generate
different forms of inequality, including gender
and generational inequalities. Its focus is exclusively
on impoverishment among Palestinians in the
West Bank (WB) and Gaza Strip (GS) while
maintaining awareness that poverty needs to be
mapped and analyzed among the other Palestinian
communities; i.e., within the Green Line, and in the
diaspora or al-shatat. Israeli colonial settlers in the
West Bank and Gaza Strip (WBGS) whose numbers
exceeded half a million by the end of 2008 do
not feature in the Palestinian poverty map.1 The
causes of the sharp rise of poverty in the last
decade in the WBGS are explored.