To mark the upcoming 50th anniversary of Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War and its subsequent occupation of the Palestinian territory, the Washington Post published three articles on Thursday and Friday of last week covering life in the West Bank. To show the human cost of this 50 year-old occupation, each article focused on three different Palestinian individuals, their families and the separate but related hardships they have experienced.

The subject of the first piece, Tarek Al Taweel, is a 30 year-old Palestinian man with a wife and newborn child who gets up at 3:30am every morning for the commute to the construction site in East Jerusalem, where he works.

The second piece tells the story of Rawabi, a “model city” project still in the works that is being overseen by the multi-millionaire Palestinian developer and American citizen Bashar Masri.

The final piece, which came out last Friday, details the tragic fate of a Palestinian woman named Maweya Abu Salah who recently succumbed to kidney cancer without her children present because of the harsh permit system that prohibits most Palestinians from crossing into Israel.

Ultimately, these three pieces provide a chilling insight into the lives of Palestinians who have faced the occupation daily for 50 years. This collection of articles reminds us all of the cost of inaction and the ever-pressing need for a comprehensive peace.