The barrier — which aims to block Palestinian attackers from reaching Israel — also drives deep into the West Bank to separate Jewish settlements from Palestinian areas, and Palestinians consider it an expropriation of their land.
Qalqiliya, which reaches up to the so-called Green Line dividing the West Bank from Israel, is surrounded on three sides by walls and fences, with prison-like watchtowers manned with Israeli soldiers rising up over the town, and it has become a focal point of Palestinian protest against the barrier.
“The wall is in complete contradiction of our interests. We are living inside of a prison,” Qalqiliya Mayor Marouf Zahran said during Thursday’s demonstration.
A single road to the east, along a corridor about a mile wide, is the town’s only entry and exit route to the rest of the West Bank.
The barrier cuts off the city from 32 villages in the area — as well as from Israel to the west and Jewish settlements to the north and south — leading to the closing in recent years of some 600 businesses in Qalqiliya, officials say.
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… what the HELL?
