Oxfam Director Barbara Stocking describes her recent visit to Oxfam projects in the troubled region.

The realisation that I was going into one of the world's worst trouble spots hit me the night before I left. I was picking out one or two photos of my husband and children to take with me - just in case I am taken hostage, as recommended in Oxfam's hostage guidance as a way to show you are a human being. It's not the first time I have been in dangerous locations, so it didn't feel so unusual. Nor did the questions by Israel security officials at Heathrow, in fact I welcomed the level of security, but it certainly made the trip feel serious.

I am sure I am not the first person to be struck by the irony of going into this region, just at the end of the Christmas season. The phrase "peace and goodwill to all men" is still ringing in my ears.

My first day and it is straight to Gaza. I am lucky as an "international" person I can get through the Erez tunnel to get into Gaza - almost no Palestinians can get in or out. It is still a frightening experience though with the questioning and searches - my colleague was strip searched for no apparent reason on the way out.

To visit Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories is to go to an upside down world, where things you think would be ridiculous, impossible or a scandal are normal daily life. Although in the Palestinian area there is great poverty, it is not (yet) at the level of destitution you see in parts of the world. But these people are blocked in every way from trying to make their lives better, I am amazed by their resilience and willingness to keep trying.

Let me start with Gaza. The 1.4 million people in Gaza are blocked off virtually in a prison. Very few of them can get in or out even for medical emergencies. Precious few goods are going in and out, other than humanitarian aid (food and some medicines). According to the UN 80% of people are now dependent on food aid. We have been raising serious concerns about energy cuts to Gaza which could have a very negative effect on the provision of water and sanitation. In fact we are supporting an Israeli partner that has taken the issue to the Israeli Supreme Court. There has been huge difficulty for sometime in getting spare parts for water and sanitation pumps and materials to shore up the banks of the water/sewage lagoons. Without an injection of spare parts and material the system is at risk of a looming catastrophe. This is not an overstatement, about a year or more ago, the water level in one lagoon got too high and it burst its banks. Five people were drowned in sand and sewage - three small children and two elderly people. So we must keep our media and advocacy work going strongly to get some things in - but also to press to end this blockade. Gaza cannot be self-sufficient.

Having said how appalling this is, I want to tell you the better news. The people I met who are beneficiaries of our programme are working so hard to find ways to survive and what we are doing with them is giving them hope. Our programmes are excellent - vouchers which people can use to buy local produce from farmers, with us providing funds so the farmers get a reasonable price; kitchen gardens on roofs, rabbit breeding for food; and using unused rolls of cloth still in Gaza to produce clothes which we buy and give in schools.

Two men I met in the sewing workshop (total 3 men and 17 women) were so pleased to be earning some money so they could be 'proper' fathers again. They were getting out of the house too and family relationships had improved. It was so sad when one of the men told me about his small son. The son asked for a rubber (eraser). His father asked why and the boy said he wanted to rub himself out, because life there was so awful. In some ways what we have to do is easier in Gaza than the West Bank. There is such a crisis we have to help now and to try to get it changed.

In the West Bank working out what we can do to help people improve their lives is harder. The restrictions on movement mean that everything you think about is almost impossible. We have developed a new livelihoods programme and I visited several villages. I met a farmer who was growing organic tomatoes to European standards because he wanted to export them. He would have to have a permit to get them through a particular crossing for export into Israel, this would require an Israeli business partner and in any case by the time he gets the tomatoes through checkpoints and crossings it is likely they would have rotted anyway. He understood this and said 'this is my dream'. In our programme we have to think through very carefully what markets there are for products and what the restrictions on movements mean for this product.

Perhaps the worst parts of my visit were to two places around Bethlehem. One is a village which will probably be entirely surrounded by the wall, they have been fighting to stop being a cut-off enclave for several years, but it now looks as if they have lost. Even worse was inside Bethlehem right beside Rachel's tomb. There we visited a family in a house which is surrounded close up on three sides by the wall. It is appalling. I stood at the kitchen sink and looked out - all you can see is the blank wall a few feet away.

I experienced such a powerful set of emotions from this visit, I am still trying to come to terms with them. It has left me very committed to making sure Oxfam does everything we can possibly do for people now and to bring this dreadful situation to an end so that Palestinian and Israeli citizens can really live in a world where there is "peace and goodwill to all men" - and women of course.

Barbara Stocking describes her recent visit to Oxfam's projects in the region and
how Oxfam is making a difference (audio).