Published: September 6, 2011
...While the boundary largely separates the Israelis from the Palestinians, (click here) about 1.5 million Palestinian Arabs are citizens of Israel, and more than 500,000 Israeli Jews now live east of the Green Line.
But for the Palestinians, the old line already serves as a virtual border, though one without a state on the other side.
Here in Bartaa, a northern Arab village that straddles the Green Line in the area known as Wadi Ara, one encounters a quirky reality where the Green Line is alternately ignored and enforced — a paradox that, by extension, can be applied to the entire land.
Bartaa’s market spreads across a narrow valley that is dissected by crossroads. It is a riot of noise and color, with stores displaying gaudy evening gowns and plastic toys strung above the sidewalks. Only a well-informed traveler would know that the eastern half of the market sits in the West Bank, and the western half in Israel.
The Green Line runs, unmarked, right through the market, an imaginary wall separating two parts of a village that has long been inhabited by one extended family, the Kabha clan.
With Israel’s conquest of the West Bank in 1967, the hostile frontier evaporated and the two parts of Bartaa were reunited, the western part being part of Israel and the eastern part falling under Israeli military rule. Then, when Israel constructed the West Bank security barrier, which it said was essential to prevent suicide bombers, it looped the fence east of Bartaa, deeper into the West Bank territory. Although Palestinians see the barrier as a land grab, in this particular case, the villagers accepted it as the lesser of two evils, to prevent them from being redivided...
Mutually agreed swaps of land may be something the authorities believe is possible, but, the people have no clue and feel threatened in losing their lives and identities, including land their ancestors have farmed and lived on for centuries, if not millenia.
Challenges in Defining an Israeli-Palestinian Border (click here)
