Palestinian village and Israeli town build rare partnership across line

[Scurrilous]

<snip>

"Mohammed Mansara, a 70-year-old farmer who goes by the name Abu Mazen, indicates with a sweep of his arm the fruit trees and vegetables he grows on his small plot of land in this Palestinian village in the West Bank, population 1,200.

Then he points to a small green hill on the western side of the village topped by a tidy cluster of red-roofed homes. That is Tzur Hadassah, an Israeli community of about 5,000 Jewish residents.

"Tzur Hadassah has such nice people," he says in Hebrew. "They are great neighbors."

Mansara could walk from his home to Tzur Hadassah in about half an hour, but it’s illegal. Wadi Fukin sits smack on the Green Line, the demarcation between pre-1967 Israel and the West Bank. A portion of the West Bank security fence is slated to go through the valley, cutting off Wadi Fukin from Tzur Hadassah and from much of what remains of its agricultural land.

Similar stories repeat all along the Green Line, as Israelis and Palestinians jostle over the route of the fence.

What makes Wadi Fukin’s case different is that it has strong allies across the Green Line: Tzur Hadassah residents who buy fresh produce from village farmers, and Friends of the Earth Middle East, or FOEME, an Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian environmental organization that is challenging the route of the security fence here in Israel’s Supreme Court."

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[Ozymanithrax]

1. Wadi Fukin? Well, at lest we know where lover's lane is.

Sorry, I could not stop myself.

[LeftishBrit]

2. One small bit of good news!

[Tripmann]

3. Hats off to them all!