10 July 2004	Saturday	21 Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1425

Sami Shamlawi has turned out most days over the past month for the now ritual showdown with the bulldozer. On a good day, the 48-year-old school caretaker and hundreds of other Palestinians from al-Zawiya bring work on the cage under construction around their West Bank village to a halt.

On occasions, Mr Shamlawi has thrown himself into the bulldozer's bucket or lain in the path of its grinding tracks in defence of the village's olive trees. But, more typically, the Israeli army drives the protesters away with teargas and rubber bullets before they get near the clanking machinery laying the path for what Israel calls the 'anti-terror fence' snaking its way through the occupied territories.

The barrier will surround al-Zawiya and two neighbouring villages close to the large Jewish settlement of Ariel, with access restricted to a single gate.

In similar protests across the West Bank over recent months, four people have been killed and hundreds more injured in largely passive resistance to the construction of the system of fences, eight-metre-high walls, trenches and free-fire zones that Ariel Sharon would like to see surround the bulk of the Palestinian population.

Mr Shamlawi was hit by a rubber bullet in the leg. "Two weeks ago, a soldier shot me after I told them not to fire tear gas at my house because there were children inside," he said.

The village authorities say hundreds of others in al-Zawiya have been injured by rubber bullets and teargas. A pregnant woman's child was stillborn after she was teargassed. The family said the baby had turned black.

Mr Shamlawi and many other Palestinians living in the shadow of the barrier hope that a ruling by the international court of justice in The Hague will establish that it is the Israeli government that is acting illegally.

Israel is braced for the world court to take a different view and support the Palestinian contention that the barrier is an illegal land grab at the expense of hundreds of thousands of people separated from schools, work and hospitals - and frequently caged in tiny enclaves.

Palestinian lawyers argue that, if the barrier were purely a defensive measure, it could have been built along the 1967 border, the green line. But Lieutenant Colonel Shai Brovender, an Israeli army battalion commander overseeing the operation of the barrier, says it benefits Palestinians living in cities such as Qalqilya, which is entirely surrounded by a huge wall and fence with just a single exit.

"As a result of the fence, we no longer need to have troops patrolling the streets inside Qalqilya. That makes things better for the Palestinians. It's better for us not to have to patrol, and it's better for them not to have us on their streets all the time."

The mayor of Qalqilya, Maa'rouf Zahran, doesn't see it that way. "I don't know how it's better if you confiscate 53 per cent of people's land and 32 per cent of their water and you refuse them access to nearby villages and hospitals and university," he said.

"How is it better to be completely surrounded and have just one entrance? People feel they have a noose around their neck. They feel they are in prison. There is a lot of despair. There are 8,000 families living on food aid, 540 stores closed in town, 3,000 people moving out."

For Mr Shamlawi, the route of the fence has taken on a personal twist. The stretch being worked on at al-Zawiya this week runs along the back of the school where he is caretaker. The army refused to allow children to attend classes as the bulldozer tore away at the land nearby.

"After they finish we'll be one of three villages in a ghetto. The gate will be open for some hours during the day, but it will be like a prison and some families will leave, just as the Israelis want," he said. - Dawn\ The Guardian News Service.