November 15, 2003	Saturday	Ramazan 19, 1424

BEIRUT: An elderly couple struggled with their heavy bags. One by one they hoisted them from a van over the concrete blocks and onto an adjacent rock near Al-Ezariya village in Palestine, says an article published here. The man climbed up on the rock and lifted the first one, then a second bag, both full of vegetables, to the top of a concrete block adorned with a Star of David. A helpful passerby grabbed the bags from the other side. When all four bags were safely over, the elderly couple themselves climbed across.

This is Al-Ezariya, a village on the outskirts of Jerusalem next to Abu Dis. The concrete blocks form a wall that snakes up and down the hillsides and severs this village from the city, some five minutes away by car. It was erected a little over a year ago by the Israeli authorities as a ‘security’ barrier.

But unlike the separation barrier in the West Bank, it is not particularly imposing. There is no electronic surveillance equipment to barbed wire, and it only stands some two metres high.

Unsurprisingly, there is a regular flow of human traffic over the wall. Labourers, teachers, office workers and others who have found themselves living one side and working on the other, cross the barrier in the mornings and afternoons.

Schoolchildren hop over as a dare. Travellers alight on one side of the wall and taxis wait on the other to pick them up. But this is no shortcut. Its the main route to Jerusalem, where many residents of the Abu Dis and Al-Ezariya villages up until recently made their living and it is impossible to pass by car or any other vehicle.

“There is no reason for this wall”, said Abdullah, 47, a shopkeeper just on the Jerusalem side of the wall. “They just want to make life difficult for us”. That people find it easy to jump the wall is proof of his point, he said. “This has nothing to do with security”. Abdullah and other shopkeepers complained that their business have suffered. The corner gas station get almost no business these days without through-traffic. And the shops catering mainly to the local community have seen their customers halved.

“If people have to jump a wall to shopping, they are likely to shop where they are”, said Omar Ahmed, 42 who runs a grocery on the Al-Ezariya side.

Fawzi Abu Shahada, 42, sell Kaek on the street. His sales have suffered in two way. I get my bread on the other side of the wall, just down the hill, he said. “I used to buy a hundred loaves every morning and sell them in one or two hours. Now I only get 60 — it’s easier to get over the wall and I’ve been here three hours today and I still have 25 left”.

When an Israeli army jeep turns up, the climbing stops abruptly. The soldiers stop for a while and talk to some of the taxi drivers. Police and army orders are quite specific. No one with a West Bank identity card is allowed into Jerusalem. If taxi drivers are caught carrying people without the proper ID, they risk a heavy fine and could even lose their licenses and have their cars impounded. The same is true of business who employ Palestinians from the West Bank, which can lead to some bizarre scenarios, especially in a place like Al-Ezariya, where the West Bank is just across the street and over the wall.

“They want to separate us”, said Abdullah. “They don’t want us in Jerusalem. They want to make Jerusalem exclusively Jewish. They want to make life difficult for us so we move away from Jerusalem”.