QALQILYA (WEST BANK): Two years ago when Qalqilya’s new junior school was completed, it was hailed by the city’s mayor, Marouf Zahran, as the West Bank’s showpiece school. Built with a donation from the Gulf states and boasting a large playground and a building featuring a central glass-topped courtyard surrounded by light, airy classrooms, parents queued to send their children there.

Today, many parents are queuing again, this time to get their children transferred as quickly as possible. For the playground no longer looks out across fields of olive and citrus groves; it lies in the shadow of a thick concrete wall some 30ft high. Overlooking the school are watchtowers soon to be manned by armed Israeli soldiers.

Qalqilya, once a peaceful, prosperous Palestinian city located on the Green Line — the border that existed between Israel and the West Bank before 1967 — has found itself on the very frontline of Israel’s military crackdown.

After a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings that followed the eruption of the Intifada more than two years ago, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon approved the construction of a security barrier in June to prevent Palestinians entering Israel.

Eventually Israel plans to seal off the whole of the West Bank, as it has already done with the Gaza Strip. The first phase of the fence is being built in the northern West Bank, a 115km stretch from the village of Salem, close to Jenin, to Kfar Qassem near Qalqilya.

Qalqilya’s fate, however, is peculiarly harsh. The 40,000 inhabitants will not only be sealed off from Israel; the wall will surround them on all sides, separating them from the rest of the West Bank too and effectively imprisoning them in a space little bigger than the city limits. The only way in and out will be an access road controlled by the Israeli army.

Zahran says: “The city is being turned into a giant prison. Israel says it will be possible for us to get permits to leave and return but you only need to see what happens now each time a curfew is imposed, often for weeks at a time, to guess what the reality will be.”

Israel says that because Qalqilya is located on the Green Line it offers cover for Palestinian militants trying to enter Israel. Palestinians and human rights group argue that this is collective punishment of the city’s civilian population.

Before the Intifada, the city might have served as a model for economic and social harmony between Israelis and Palestinians. It benefited from thousands of Palestinian labourers who stayed here during the week while they worked on Israeli farms or construction sites. Israelis from neighbouring Kfar Saba and elsewhere would visit at weekends, seeking out the cheap car workshops and eating in its restaurants.

But since Israel’s imposition of a general closure on the West Bank and Gaza, the supply of work for Palestinians has been cut off, ending Qalqilya’s role as a dormitory town. The army has also forbidden all Israelis from entering the city.

Qalqilya’s economic life, and its prosperity, has slowly been strangled. With the coming of the wall, even the last gasps are likely to be silenced, says the mayor. “Before the intifada only about a quarter of the city’s income was derived from farming. Now with the loss of other employment, it is nearly half,” Zahran said. “Many people farm now so that they have food to feed their families.”

But he claims that the wall is being built close to the city limits so that Qalqilya’s connection to more than a thousand acres of fertile farming land can be severed. When the wall is finished, in the next few months, the inhabitants will no longer have access to their lands, he believes.

Zahran said: “Unemployment is at 70 per cent but in a few months it will be much higher. With no work, no hope, no money, the Israelis will turn us into a city filled with hatred and desire for revenge. Israel will not get security, it will get more terror.”

Israel has taken the land of Qalqilya and that of dozens of villages in this part of the West Bank under military confiscation notices until 2005. The orders are renewable and, given the expense of erecting the fence — $1 million for each kilometre — almost certain to be extended indefinitely.

The Israeli human rights group Btselem warns: “Israel’s intention is not to seize the land for a temporary period but to expropriate it permanently.”

Gone with Qalqilya’s confiscated land will be 14 wells, which account for about 30 per cent of the city’s water supply and are a major source of irrigation for the city’s farmers as well as for neighbouring villages. Qalqilya sits on the biggest of four acquifers in the West Bank and there are fears among the locals that Israel, desperately short of water, intends to take a larger share of the supply once it controls more of the land above the acquifer.

Many neighbouring communities are also being separated by the fence from their land holdings, most notoriously the villages of Falamia and Jayyous, where thousands of acres of agricultural land are being confiscated by the army. Israeli promises that the farmers there and in Qalqilya will be allowed to reach their land through a series of gates in the barrier fail to impress farmers.

Only five main crossing points between the West Bank and Israel have been budgeted for. The nearest one to Qalqilya will be several kilometres north, at the town of Taibeh. What other access routes will be available is unclear. The Palestinian human rights group, LAW, says Israel has promised 30 local checkpoints but no money has been allocated for them.

Akiva Eldar, a senior political analyst for the Haaretz daily newspaper, has also revealed that the initial $12 million allocated for the five crossing points has been secretly transferred to the fund for the fence’s construction. He quoted a defence ministry source who doubted that the army had enough soldiers to staff all the barrier’s crossings, watchtowers and patrols, let alone man small local checkpoints.

Even if Israel does provide checkpoints and commits to the expense of staffing them permanently, Zahran believes that curfews will prevent farmers from properly tending their fields.

“This is not about security but about confiscating our lands and destroying our livelihoods. Ultimately it is about driving us out of our towns and villages, and out of the West Bank,” he claims.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.