Israel's new barrier cuts old ties
An 87-mile-long West Bank barrier has directly affected more than 200,000 Palestinians. [Editor's note: The original version of this story incorrectly stated the number of Palestinians trapped on the Israeli side of the West Bank barrier.]
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Ultimately, access through gates will depend largely on the security situation. "If there's an alert, if it happens at 7 a.m., no one will be able to pass from one side to the other," says Ashkenazi. "And heaven forbid, if someone uses one of these gates for a terrorist attack, or if they want to get into their land and instead go to Tel Aviv - it will be no longer a gate," she adds.
This is precisely what Jayyus residents fear - closure of the two gates that lead to their land. For this reason, many of the families camping in their fields go back to the village only once a week. Without access to their fields, they worry they will lose them. "I'm here because I have to protect my land," says Omar, gesturing around at his hut, where several farmers are gathering.
The shed is at the four-star end of the hastily built shelters. The typical camp consists of a cloth lean-to spread over a ground cover. Omar, the largest landowner in this town of 3,200, can boast a battered wooden table and bed, a gas burner and a small army of sluggish flies, seemingly stupefied by the heat pooling beneath the asbestos roof.
Omar cajoles his guests into chairs, drops a sweat-stained hat onto the table and serves oversized thimbles of coffee. The men, tense and angry, begin to talk.
When Israel wants to use Palestinian land, its army issues orders for "security reasons," stating that it is "laying its hands on the land" in a particular area. The orders are for three- or five-year terms, but are infinitely renewable and good from their date of signing, regardless of when Palestinians receive them.
In 1990, the army laid its hands on 8 percent of Jayyus's land, according to the Jerusalem-based Land Research Center. The land was used to build the Israeli settlement of Zufin. In 1992, the army claimed more land by the village entrance, transforming it into a smoking garbage dump for nearby Israeli settlements.
Of the 3,250 acres the village has left, 138 acres disappeared under the barrier's footprint while another 2,150 - two-thirds of Jayyus's land - lies on the barrier's other side.
What happens to this wide swath of citrus trees, greenhouses, and tomato plots will depend on farmers' access to gates in the barrier, but also on the unlikely combination of ancient law and modern technology.
During the Ottoman era, the sultan owned all the land in the Palestinian territories. He allowed farmers to plant it and even hand it down from father to son, but they could not legally register the land in their names. If farmers didn't cultivate their fields for three years in a row, the sultan could reclaim them.
Israel has assumed the sultan's place and, using satellite photographs to monitor field cultivation, uses the Ottoman law to claim West Bank land.
Around the northern West Bank, farmers like Omar are convinced Israel will use the barrier to keep them from their lands and eventually seize them. When asked about this, Uzi Dayan, the first director of the barrier project, told Ha'aretz newspaper "the Palestinians' fears are not unfounded."
The Ministry of Defense, however, says the barrier "does not annex territories to the State of Israel, nor will it change the status of the residents in these areas."
For Omar, though, life has already changed. The uncertainty lies in what's ahead. "My choice is to be in the new house without my farm, or at the farm without a house," he says. "Without my land, I am nothing."
