Residents of the villages near Qalqilya fear that Israel's wall around the West Bank will force them to abandon their homes, Talal Jabari investigates As the sun touches the sea just beyond the hazy skyline of the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv, the residents of a handful of villages near the West Bank city of Qalqilya brace for another cold winter night and the uncertainty of days to come. The small villages are located along line of demarcation that Israel is working hard to protect. The Israeli Ministry of Defence is pushing ahead to construct a wall that will put a physical barrier between the West Bank and the 1948 borders of Israel. Construction of the edifice began in June 2002 in the area around the northern West Bank city of Jenin following a spate of suicide bombings inside Israel. Work has now moved south to Qalqilya, less than 30 kilometres away from Israel's coastal cities. When completed, the wall will be approximately 360-kilometres-long and will encircle the West Bank, generally following the once-demarcating Green Line -- the armistice line drawn after Israel's occupation of Palestine in 1948. The eight-metre-high concrete wall with circular guard posts every 300 metres, and two-metre-deep trenches on either side, has the appearance of a formidable fortress. But it's not designed to keep people out. It's designed to keep people in. Sadeq Oudeh, Daba's village headman, is convinced the wall will be a failure. "Look where the attacks were. They passed all the towns in Israel to get to Tel Aviv. Is a wall like this going to stop them?" "They will know they made a mistake when, after they finish the wall, there is an attack," Oudeh said. And as the sounds of explosions rang out through the hills, bringing the wall closer to Palestinians, the residents are now worrying about the future of their villages. Azmi Arar, 28, is a merchant from Ras Atieh. He is married to a 1948 Palestinian woman from the nearby town of Lod. Their son, Mohamed, only a few months old, has inherited Israeli citizenship from his mother. His father remains stateless. "The future of this place is like that of my son and I," says Arar cradling the toddler. His main concern is that the wall will separate him from his family. Arar ponders the worrisome thought for a few moments before his attention shifts to a gathering crowd not very far away. A white jeep belonging to the Civil Administration, the Israeli Army body that governs the West Bank, has pulled up to Oudeh's home. With his son still in his arms, Arar watches the discussion. The officer, known to the villagers as "Rami", has come to clear up confusion about the location of the wall. There is to be a meeting with Oudeh to inform him about the wall's location next Sunday. The army doesn't want another direct confrontation. With that, Rami climbs back into his jeep and drives away. "[Last week] the bulldozers came. We were surprised that the wall was suddenly 300-metres closer to my home. All of the village residents came and stood in the way of the bulldozers," said Oudeh. It was a momentary victory for the villagers, the likes of which they know they will probably not see many more. The new location of the wall is 30 metres away from Oudeh's house -- in his olive orchard, in fact. "When I saw him heading for my olives, I sat in front of the bulldozer. They are like my children," Oudeh said. "What is the future of our village if the wall is so close?" Across the valley, on an adjacent hilltop, is the settlement of Alfei Menashe. According to the military maps supplied to the residents of the villages by the Civil Administration, Alfei Menashe will be on the Israeli side of the border, along with the villages of Daba' and Ras Tireh. Fear and speculation about what this will bring is rife among the residents here. All have accepted the wall, but they don't know exactly what it will bring. Many fear the army will demolish their homes, sending the village's 250 residents packing -- a concept known as transfer. Oudeh already considers himself a refugee. "It's not easy to leave, [but] when a person is stripped of his land, what stops him from becoming a refugee?" he asked. Others don't expect such a physical transfer to happen, but they think that life will become so difficult that they will have to move. Arar said he wouldn't mind living on the Israeli side if he were given citizenship. "The problem is nobody knows what will happen." And as speculation continues, and the digging around the villages proceeds, so does work in the villages. Daba' is installing new water infrastructure to bring running water to the village for the first time, and in Isla, builders continue work on new houses. But as the labourers plaster the walls of the vacant houses, citrus and olive trees lie uprooted in the nearby fields, and it is only a matter of time, the villagers fear, before the bulldozers reach the buildings. Mohamed Marabeh of Ras Atieh points to the map. The wall will eventually put Ras Tireh and Daba' on the Israeli side and cut them off from their land, while Ras Atieh and Isla will be on the Palestinian side without much of theirs either. In an area that now relies heavily on agriculture after many locals lost their jobs in Israel and already live below the poverty line, the effects could be devastating. Marabeh points to a particular place on the map. At that site, he said, there will be a 150-metre-wide gap in the wall. It is the only place where people from the villagers may pass back and forth to their land and to see their neighbours. He sighs as he looks up. "Put one Israeli soldier there, and you put 7,000 people in a prison."
