Caged

[DuctapeFatwa]

Baqa al-Sharqia's plight is much the same as that of a string of Palestinian villages severed from their lands or caged behind barbed wire under a large red sign in Hebrew and Arabic: "Mortal danger. Military zone. Any person who passes or damages this fence endangers his life." But the mayor dwells on a single, telling distinction. When Moayad Hussain faces Israel's vast new "security fence" toward the beginning of its meandering journey through the occupied territories - which the Israeli government envisages will end nearly 400 miles later with almost the entire Palestinian population encircled - he is not looking out from the West Bank but into it. The fence carving through Baqa al-Sharqia's olive groves places the village and its 4,000 Palestinian residents on the Israeli side of the wire.
"We have asked ourselves the same question many times," says Hussain. "If the fence is for security, if the fence is to keep us out, then why aren't we on the other side? With every kilometre of fence Sharon builds we are sure there is only one answer. This is not about security, it's about land and resources."

There are two ways to travel the 123 kilometres (76 miles) of the newly completed first section of what the Israelis used to call the "separation obstacle" - until they realised that smacked too much of apartheid...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1034483,00.html

[Scurrilous]

1. Step one: build fence.

"We have asked ourselves the same question many times," says Hussain. "If the fence is for security, if the fence is to keep us out, then why aren't we on the other side?"

Because that's step two.