As President Obama meets with Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and says 'settlements must stop', Malcolm Fleming of Oxfam Scotland reflects on his recent visit to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories and his experiences of demolition of Palestinian settlements there.

The day I visited Al-Grein in Israel was Nur's fourth birthday. When we arrived, her celebration was in full swing in the local nursery school. Twenty toddlers singing, playing and having fun, with all the ingredients of a great kids' party: juice, sweets, balloons, music and dancing. Nur was clearly delighted to be the centre of attention and I can vouch that her birthday cake was very tasty.

Al-Grein is one of the 'un-recognised' villages in the Negev desert area of Israel. Unrecognised because, despite having been there since the early 1950s, the Israeli authorities have neither recognised its right to exist, nor provided basic facilities such as water or electricity or public transport. And unrecognised, despite the families being moved from their own land to this area by the Israeli army back in 1951.

'That makes it an unrecognised nursery' my Oxfam colleague Jamal Atamny said wryly. The nursery was well equipped and looked lovely, with kids' paintings adorning the walls, just like any nursery school in Scotland. I visited Nur's school about two months ago. By now, the nursery may well have been demolished, as when I was there, a demolition order had been served on it by the Israeli authorities.

"I have a document, which was given to my father back in 1951, that states that we would only be moved here for six months", said 47-year-old father of five Ali Abu Shcheta, who is amazingly calm for a man whose house, which joins onto the nursery, is also due for demolition. Perhaps he is resigned to it, or has a quiet determination to resist the destruction of his family home and the community nursery school he is clearly proud of. "It's ridiculous", he adds, "everywhere else in the world, states invest to raise and protect their children. Except here, where the government invests in the opposite approach and does not care."

Oxfam, which runs poverty reduction programmes in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, has been helping Al-Grien village with support for community facilities and support in securing their rights, but it is an uphill struggle.

Demolition was to be a recurring theme during my two-week visit to Israel and the West Bank. I was shocked again and again by how the Israeli authorities have demolished and are demolishing Palestinian homes, and at the same time, failing to grant planning permission for new construction. This is a practice that appears to be very one-sided: Israeli applicants seem to have no problem getting planning permission even for building settlements in the occupied West Bank, a practice illegal under international law, as is the occupation itself under UN Security Council resolutions.

During my visit I stayed in a small hotel in East Jerusalem. Only two minutes walk away a family were living in a tent beside their demolished house. A ten-minute walk in the other direction and you reached the community of Silwan. Here eighty-eight houses, most of them over sixty years old, have been served demolition orders, (two have already been demolished), ostensibly because they were built without permits, even though most were built before the state of Israel was established and were inherited from the current residents' parents. The Israeli authorities wish to build a park and tourist attraction on the site. This is only a few minutes' walk from the Old City of Jerusalem, the ancient centre of the city where pilgrims and tourists and locals converge to visit and worship at the holy sites of Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

Abd Shlode, a young Silwan resident, told me "The final goal for Israel's action in this area is to impose the Jewish flavour on the whole area and move the Palestinian Jerusalemites."

You might think that the destruction of your family home, being forced off of the land your family have lived on for generations, and being forced into making do in a tent was bad enough, but just to add insult to grievous injury, in many cases you can then expect a bill for the cost of demolition. If you don't pay you can find yourself in jail.

A look at the statistics backs up the view that Israeli law is applied differently in East Jerusalem compared to West Jerusalem. In 2004 and 2005, despite there being almost four times the number of breaches of planning law recorded in Jewish West Jerusalem, there were almost five times the number of demolitions in East Jerusalem.

This was my first time in Israel and Palestine. I thought I was reasonably aware of what was happening. I have read about the area in books and newspapers, and try to keep up to date with international news, but was shocked again and again by the inequity of what is happening there. I was struck by the way that the state of Israel treats you totally differently be you Palestinian or Israeli, Muslim, Christian or Jew. It is glaringly clear that each community is treated different by the authorities, despite living cheek by jowl, and that as a Palestinian you have far fewer rights, and the rights you do have are not upheld.

Rights that are infringed daily include freedom of movement, access to water, security of tenure on your land, access to medical services, the right to travel without harassment and the right to access your farmland. Some of the differences are not immediately apparent, or are apparent only in the application of laws, not the laws themselves. Others are more blatant. Certain roads in the West Bank are banned to cars with Palestinian number plates. You can only drive along them if your car has the yellow number plates from Israel, but cannot if you have the White West Bank plates that denote Palestinian ownership. That is segregation.

Security is cited as the over-riding reason for much of what goes on. It is totally understandable that security is important in a society that has buried its dead again and again after terrorist attacks over many years, and security issues remain real today. However, it became clear to me that removing basic rights for virtually all of the Palestinian population for the acts of a few is not only morally wrong, but doing so could also threaten future stability and security for everyone.

I was surprised at how the vast majority of Israeli society seemed okay with, or ignorant of, the blatant human rights violations on their doorstep. I got the impression that this stems from a very one-sided media view and a very efficient Israeli government PR machine. I was also struck by the demonisation of Palestinians, and Arabs in general, as being terrorists. That was certainly the view I picked up when meeting and talking with ordinary Israeli citizens when, in an effort to learn what the average Israeli Jerusalemite thought, I walked over to the city centre of West Jerusalem and struck up conversations in a couple of the pubs there. Of course the suggestion that all or most Palestinians (far less all Arabs) are terrorists because of the actions of some, makes no more sense that the suggestion that all Irish are terrorists because of the actions of the IRA, however it seems to be common currency.

Certainly the Palestinians I met were doing their best to make ends meet, earn a living, bring up their children and put food on the table, in difficult and provocative circumstances. My Palestinian Oxfam colleagues, for example, are no more a terrorist than I, or their Israeli colleagues, yet as Palestinians they would clearly be considered a security threat or at least much more of a threat than me as a UK passport holder. The evidence lies in the myriad of checks they face just travelling from the West Bank to the Oxfam office in Jerusalem, and the curfew they are subject to which means they cannot spend an evening socialising with colleagues in Jerusalem.

In the West Bank, south of Hebron, lies Suseya, an Israeli settlement built on the land of the neighbouring Palestinian village of the same name. The Palestinian village of 100 families has dwindled to 35 families as people have fled from intimidation from settlers. The 35 families remaining have had their homes demolished five times, each time rebuilding, but now their homes are tents, some of them erected by Oxfam in the hope that they will be less of a target for demolition and, if they are demolished, less of a loss.

Taking shade from the sun inside one of the tents, we sip sweet tea as 49-year-old Khaled Na'aja, points out of the tent door to the settlement perhaps half a mile away, home to over 200 settlers. Like many Israeli settlements, it was established by a couple of families moving caravans onto the site, and then the Israeli authorities provided security and then services such as water and electricity. Clearly the presence of the remaining Palestinian families is unwelcome. "The settlers attack, but not every day. Kids walking to school are stoned by settlers, car tyres slashed, Molotov cocktails are thrown in tents, people have been shot."

I ask Khaled if he has any message for the international community. He replies, "I am asking all people of conscience, who like peace and freedom, we want to live in peace. We want to live in dignity and peace, just go to work and come back to our families."

Again I am struck by his calmness in the face of such intimidation, as he adds "we don't think all Israelis are like the settlers, we know some are trying to help us."

Khaled is referring to our guide on this occasion, 27-year-old ex-Israeli soldier Ilan Fathi. Ilan is from an Oxfam partner organisation called Breaking the Silence, and has been showing us round Hebron and the surrounding district where he served in the Israeli Defence Force, (IDF). Breaking the Silence is made up of a group of ex-IDF soldiers who believe that Israel, in Ilan's words, "is paying a huge moral price for this occupation", and who collect testimonies from other ex-soldiers, over 700 to date.

In Israel it is clearly not easy to speak out as Ilan and others are doing, and he has been ostracised by some family members. But he and others from Breaking the Silence are saying that what is happening is wrong. "Before I joined up I spent the summer teaching school kids about environmental issues like recycling, then as a soldier I was throwing teargas at school kids. People who join the IDF think it is about protecting the country, but throwing teargas at kids can't be about protecting the state of Israel."

Of the many people I met in Israeli and Palestine - be it four-year old Nur; Ali, Abd or Khaled, who were resisting demolition of their homes; the people in the bars of West Jerusalem; or some of the many other people I met but have not mentioned here - it was Ilan who represented hope. Although he did not agree, he and the work of Breaking the Silence made me feel that, some day, if more young Israelis join his ranks, a peaceful resolution could be found here. Here's hoping.

Click here for more information on Oxfam's work in Palestine and Israel