This book brings an Israeli peace activist’s reports from the occupied West Bank in Palestine

May 24, 2008, Samu’a

Imagine a village on a brown rocky hill. A tractor, a few donkeys, a horse or two, a jumble of stone houses. Imagine the access road to the village, meant to connect up with the larger road that flows into the main north-south route from Jerusalem to Hebron. Imagine a tall mound of compacted earth and rock that blocks the access road completely – one of the 540-odd roadblocks that the Israeli army has put in place throughout the occupied West Bank. Ten meters to the south of the blocked road and parallel to it runs a dirt path that now serves the village; yellow taxis, minibuses, and private cars hobble along it to the point where it somehow impinges on the highway. So what is the point of the roadblock? That is one question.

Samu‘a, like everywhere else in these parts, has a sad history. On November 13, 1966, a few months before the Six-Day War, an Israeli reprisal raid here killed three villagers and wounded 96. The soldiers also destroyed a large part of the village. One Israeli officer was killed. Samu‘a had no connection whatsoever to the incident that set off the reprisal. Then came the...

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