Lawrence of Cyberia writes:
In case you’re not sure what you’re looking at in the first photograph, the white ribbon around the residential center of Qalqilya is Israel’s Wall. The brown areas to the north and south of the town, and outside the wall, are where Qalqilya’s water resources and farmland lie, now abandoned, their crops rotting. There is a gate that opens onto the farmland at the northern side of the Wall, but it has never been opened since the Wall was built. The gate on the south side may or may not be opened (at the whim of the soldiers on duty) three times a day for fifteen minutes each time, to allow children to travel to and from school and for farmers to access their fields. Though for most farmers, it really doesn’t matter if the gate remains locked: they are not allowed to pass through without a permit, and 60% of Qalqilya’s farmers have been arbitrarily refused the permits they need to pass through to their fields on the days when the gate is actually opened.
The end result here will be that as the farmers can’t reach the fields, Israel will declare them “abandoned”. Under Israeli law, Israel then has the right to seize the “abandoned” land for itself.