settlers) would be on one side of it (the western one) and all the Palestinians on the other. The line should be as straight and as short as possible, because it will need inspecting, patrolling, and defending. The shorter it is, the easier and cheaper it will be to defend it. That is the logic of security.

But in reality, except for short sections, the wall is not being built on the Green Line, nor in a straight line. On the contrary, it meanders like a river, twisting and turning, approaching the Green Line and receding from it.

Not by accident. The bed of a river is dictated by nature. The water has to obey gravity. But the design of the wall has no connection with nature. The bulldozers are quite indifferent to nature; they cut through it remorselessly. What then determines this design?

Standing near it, the answer is clearly visible. The sole consideration that dictates its path is the settlements.³⁶ The wall twists like a snake according to a simple principle: most of the settlements must remain on the western side of the wall, so as eventually to be absorbed into Israel.

Standing on a hill that will be crossed by the wall, I saw down below, on the western side, Elkana, a large settlement. On the eastern side, only a few dozen meters away, there is the Palestinian village of Mas'ha. The village itself stands on the eastern side, but almost all its lands lie on the western side. The wall will cut the village off from 98 percent of its lands-olive groves and fields that stretch up to the Green Line some seven kilometers away, near Kafr Kassem.

Mas'ha is a big village-like its neighbor Bidia, where thousands of Israelis used to come every Saturday to shop. Mas'ha, too, was once a blooming village. It has a big industrial zone, now completely deserted.

One can reach the village only on foot, climbing steep tracks. At the beginning of the intifada, the Israeli army blocked the main road with two piles of earth and rocks. No vehicle can pass.

"First they came to destroy our livelihood," the village chief, Anwar Amar, says bitterly. "Now they come again to take away our land."

Indeed, the foul smell of "transfer" hovers over the wall. Its location leaves whole Palestinian villages on the western side-trapped between the wall and the Green Line. The inhabitants will not be able to move, to find a livelihood, to breathe. Other villages, like Mas'ha, will remain on the eastern side of the wall, but their land, on which their livelihood depends, will be on the western side. There are places, like the town of Qalqilia, which will be almost completely surrounded by a loop of the wall, leaving only a small opening to the West Bank. One of the purposes of the wall is, without a doubt, to make the lives

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