Ayed Samamri sniffs the goaty fug of hay and dung, and grins. Around him, the Dhahiriyah animal market - a braying, bleating festival of capitalism - is booming.

The gravel lot is thick with men haggling over sheep, scrutinizing horses' teeth, eyeing gangly young camels. Vendors lay skewers of lamb over glowing embers. Sage-scented tea perfumes the breeze, a sweet top note in the musky air.

Amid the hubbub, Mr. Samamri happily notes that donkeys are in demand. That means the stocky farmer, sidesaddle on his pregnant burro, Zarqa, is sitting on a gold mine.

During 34 months of conflict, Israel has blocked most West Bank roads in an effort to stop suicide bombers. But damming the movement of people and goods is choking the Palestinian economy. In response, Palestinians are turning to donkeys, making an age-old economic engine one of the West Bank's hottest commodities.

"There's $200 inside this donkey already!" exults Samamri, tapping Zarqa's white mane with a beefy finger. "Prices keep getting higher. I heard of a donkey that went for $1,600," he adds, voice and eyebrows rising in happy unison.

Across towns and cities in the West Bank, farmers tell the same story of rising donkey prices and scarce supply. As the summer bounty of plums, melons, and tomatoes ripens, everyone is looking for ways to get their goods from soil to souk.

Fifteen donkeys were on offer when the Dhahiriyah market opened at 6 a.m. Three and a half hours later, just one nameless burro stands patiently in the heat, its neck festooned with a garland of pink and yellow plastic beads. Its owner, a taut, wiry man named Faisal Ali, looks a little sour.

"Someone offered me $750 for her, but I know I can get $1,000," he grouses. "There's a shortage of donkeys now because there's a great need for them."

Since the Israeli-Palestinian second intifada began in September 2000, Israel has worked to control Palestinian movement in an attempt to disrupt suicide bombers and their helpers.

"We are aware that [this is] seriously disrupting and disturbing life for many Palestinians, we wish [them] to lead a normal life," says Israeli Defense Force (IDF) spokeswoman, Maj. Sharon Feingold. "Yet due to the violent activity of Palestinian terrorist organizations, we are compelled to take measures."

Aid workers estimate that the IDF has cut off, dug up, or gated shut the roads leading to 80 percent of West Bank villages. The IDF says it has no figures on blocked roads, but driving through the territory's rolling, stone-studded hills and olive groves, it is common to see an exit sign followed by a towering pile of dirt and rubble where the road once ran.

The group Physicians for Human Rights Israel says strictures on movement have tightened in the past few months, even as political negotiations resume. At major cities, where some entry roads still exist, the army recently imposed a system in which goods must be transferred from incoming trucks to local vehicles that are allowed inside cities and towns.

"There's no way to use a car. How can you move goods across the road barricades?" asks Mr. Ali, the donkey trader, who answers himself with a salesman's flourish. "You need a donkey!" He has gained an audience of thin, sun-baked men who rest their work-hardened hands on the donkey's back and murmur in agreement.

"The Israelis have sent us back 100 years," shouts one, Yusif Mohammed, a contractor turned animal trader. In the crowd of traditionally robed men, he stands out in his dusty business suit, a vestige of his lost life.

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