Area C doesn't sound very ominous. A land of stone-sprinkled grey hills and
soft green valleys, it's part of the wreckage of the equally wrecked Oslo
Agreement, accounting for 60 per cent of the Israeli-occupied West Bank that
was eventually supposed to be handed over to its Palestinian inhabitants.
But look at the statistics and leaf through the pile of demolition orders
lying on the table in front of Abed Kasab, head of the village council in
Jiftlik, and it all looks like ethnic cleansing via bureaucracy. Perverse
might be the word for the paperwork involved. Obscene appear to be the
results.
Palestinian houses that cannot be permitted to stand, roofs that must be taken
down, wells closed, sewage systems demolished; in one village, I even saw a
primitive electricity system in which Palestinians must sink their
…
