Al Walaja in the West Bank turned into an enclave despite residents' protests
Sixty-three-year-old Ahmed Bargouth sits in the shade of a walnut tree and contemplates the view before him.
Across the valley is Jerusalem's zoo, which his grandchildren have never been able to visit, although they have watched animals through binoculars.
Below is the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv railway, also never travelled by the Bargouth family. Its route here marks the Green line, drawn after Israeli and Arab armies agreed an armistice in 1949, when Bargouth was aged two, which placed most of the original village of Al Walaja out of the reach of its Palestinian owners. A cluster of Israeli houses stand on land owned, inhabited and farmed by the Bargouth family and other villagers.
Behind Bargouth is the Jewish settlement of Har Gilo, built – illegally under international law – on occupied Palestinian territory and fast encroaching on what remains of the diminished village.
And in front of Bargouth's garden, planted with figs, plums, grapes and pomegranates, is an ugly scar of raw flattened earth where Israel is erecting a section of its separation barrier that will encircle the village and cut off farmers from fields, students from places of learning and patients from hospitals.
The original route of the barrier – which Israel says is necessary for security reasons – would have cut Al Walaja in two. The community launched a legal petition to keep the village intact, which was granted – with the catch that the revised route, announced in April 2006, would completely encage the village. Al Walaja would become a tiny Palestinian enclave connected to the nearest West Bank town by one road or tunnel controlled by a checkpoint.
. . .