REPORTER: Chris Hammer
This is a story about maps, not just maps that describe the past and present but maps that foretell the future - a future of continuing strife and bloodshed. It's the story of an ambitious plan to redraw the borders of Israel and, without consultation, impose a state on the Palestinians. It's the plan that seems certain to decide the Israeli election.
LIOR CHOREV, POLITICAL ADVISOR TO EHUD OLMERT: Let's not be mistaken. Israel will not wait. Israel has waited too much. Israel has been willing to go, time and time again, to new agreements with the Palestinians, which they never followed. At the end of the day, Israel has one, and only one, responsibility for security and the security of its citizens. And, if we have to do more unilateral disengagements this will be done, only if that makes our security better.
SAMI ABU ZUHRI, HAMAS (Translation): Unilateral solutions and the policy of forcing a 'fait accompli' on the Palestinians is rejected. We have rights and we'll continue our journey, until we get all our Palestinian rights. But a forced 'fait accompli' we will not accept that.
East Jerusalem - and Palestinians are risking arrest, or worse, by crossing through a semi-completed section of Israel's security wall. I decide to follow, hoping someone will talk to me. The Israeli Government wants to complete this 600km-long barrier within a year.
MAN: This is our miserable life, I mean.
REPORTER: Your miserable life?
MAN: Of course.
REPORTER: And it's going to get worse?
MAN: I think so. In the next days, I think, it will be more worse, unfortunately.
When the Israelis started building this wall in earnest, four years ago, they assured the world that it would not be the basis for a border - that it was here for security, to stop the suicide bombers and other terrorists crossing into Israel proper. But now, acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has indicated that Israel is considering imposing borders on a new Palestinian state and that this wall, here, will form the foundations for those borders.
EHUD OLMERT, ACTING PRIME MINISTER, (Translation): The direction is clear, disengagement from the Palestinians, determining a permanent border for the State of Israel, we will maintain Jerusalem's unity, we will maintain the central settlement blocks, but the borders we envisage are not the present borders of the State of Israel.
During the Six Day War, back in 1967, Israel took control of the West Bank from Jordan. Ever since, the international community has recognised this as an occupied territory. But that hasn't stopped large scale Israeli settlement. The security wall runs well inside the West Bank, effectively annexing East Jerusalem and the larger settlements.
The policy to unilaterally withdraw behind the wall marks a seminal change in Israeli politics. It seems Ehud Olmert and Kadima believe the mainstream of Israeli voters want to wash their hands of the West Bank and the Palestinians.
DR MARK HELLER, JAFFEE CENTER FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES: Those who thought that it was practical to pursue a peace agreement with the Palestinians have become disabused of the idea that any such thing is possible, and those who thought that holding on to the territories, at some kind of tolerable or reasonable cost, have also become disabused of that possibility, because of the experience over the last five or six years.
So what's left is a kind of default option, in the great central, middle of Israeli body politic, which is to say the conflict can't be resolved, it has to be managed, the way to manage it most effectively is through unilateral retrenchment.
While Ehud Olmert's disengagement plan would effectively annex large swathes of the West Bank, it would still be necessary to abandon several dozen of the more remote Jewish settler communities. Yet, for many settlers, this is the promised land, given by God.
On a hill-top in the West Bank, Haim Makovsky takes me to an archaeological site linking the Jews of antiquity with the West Bank.
HAIM MAKOVSKY: We're here at an ancient Mikveh. A Mikveh is the place where there is gathering of water, a pool, which was used, in ancient days, it's used even today in some places, for purification of the body.
For hardliners like Haim, the whole idea of disengagement, even the wall, is tantamount to surrender.
HAIM MAKOVSKY: Putting up the wall indicates that we want to stop fighting, that we're not going to fight any more. We're just going to enclose them in something or other and, once they're on the other side, we don't have to fight any more. The words 'defending yourself', the word 'retaliation' is being wiped out of our lexicon. And in our philosophy, Kadima is ruining Judaism in the state of Israel.
REPORTER: So they're betraying the purpose of the Jewish people?
HAIM MAKOVSKY: They are, in our eyes, betraying the purpose of the Jewish people.
The settlement of Ofra is one of the oldest on the West Bank, home to Aliza Herbst and about 2,000 others. Ofra finds itself on the Palestinian side of the wall and, under Kadima's plan, may be surrendered to the Palestinians.
ALIZA HERBST: I don't place any kind of importance on what they're saying now, before the elections. I don't think it has anything to do with what they will or won't do, should they be elected, which is also a good question - as their support is going down every week.
There's been talk about evacuating people from communities, from my community, for as long as I can remember, for as long as I've been here, and I've been here for 25 years. So, I don't get too excited about it.
Pinchas Vallerstein is a settler leader with his own maps, showing plans for expanding settlements on the West Bank. He says Kadima has not identified which settlements would need to be abandoned, so Ehud Olmert would have no mandate to remove the settlers.
PINCHAS VALLERSTEIN, SETTLER LEADER (Translation): If it's not a national decision we won't accept it. No question about it. It has to be clear, it will be hard anyway. If he thinks he can do it without national concensus he is seriously mistaken. It is the total irresponsibility of someone aspiring to be a statesman, not a mere politician.
When settlers were forcibly removed from Gaza last year, there was fierce resistance. Yet there were only about 8,000 settlers in Gaza, the number of settlers that would need to be removed from the West Bank would number in the tens of thousands.
LIOR CHOREV: It's a matter of courage. Things that are done by very strong leaders to take actions, in terms of dismantling settlements, in places where Israel will not remain towards a final agreement with the Palestinians.
Lior Chorev is political advisor to Ehud Olmert. He shows me Kadima's election ads, which present Olmert as the natural heir to Ariel Sharon, the leader who withdrew the settlers from Gaza.
KADIMA'S ELECTION AD, (Translation): It was clear Sharon cares about this country, but at the same time he cares about the Jewish people. He understood... And it must have torn him apart-that people should be aware of the danger to the existence of Israel as a Jewish democratic state if we remain in the territories.
Unilateral disengagement from the West Bank has become the central issue of this election.
KADIMA'S ELECTION AD, (Translation): The spirit of Kadima is to look into the future and to say 'yes'. Yes to permanent borders for Israel.
But, as Lior Chorev makes clear, disengaging the settlers does not mean disengaging the soldiers.
LIOR CHOREV: We're not just only going to pull out the settlers, but we'll keep the idea of the Israeli army in those territories. They are not going to be passed to the Palestinian Authority until final agreement, peaceful agreement is reached.
But the impact on settlers will be nothing compared to the impact on the Palestinians. Under Kadima's strategy, not just East Jerusalem, and the major Jewish settlements west of the wall, would be annexed by Israel. Israel would control the Jordan Valley, encircling the West Bank and depriving the Palestinians of a border with Jordan. The Jordan Valley's major north-south highway, route 90, has been turned into an Israeli-only road and the Valley has become a no-go zone for most Palestinians.
David Shearer is the head of OCHA, the UN agency coordinating humanitarian relief in the occupied territories.
DAVID SHEARER, HEAD OF OCHA: There are 470-odd roadblocks, checkpoints, obstructions on the road. Now, unless you show that on a map, it's very difficult to have a kind of mental appreciation of just how bad that is.
Since arriving three years ago, the New Zealander has had his team develop detailed maps, revealing the patterns of Israeli occupation. He says Israel is tightening its control of the Jordan Valley.
DAVID SHEARER: We've noticed, in the last year, a dramatic change in the access to the Jordan Valley by Palestinians. Palestinian traffic and transport can not flow through the Jordan Valley, Palestinians who live outside of the Jordan Valley can't visit for longer than one day, they can't stay overnight, they can only enter the Jordan Valley if they have a permit. And there has also been restrictions on Palestinians, who are living in the Jordan Valley, to the degree in which they can move around themselves.
I wanted to see the Jordan Valley for myself, so I headed down from Jerusalem, until I reached Route 90. It's an Israeli-only road, despite the Jordan Valley being part of the occupied West Bank. This bus is carrying Palestinians, entering the West Bank across the river from Jordan. The bus crosses Route 90 but it's not allowed to stop. No-one can get on or off until it reaches the Palestinian enclave of Jericho.
Once the bus reaches Jericho's outskirts, I can get on board, where I meet Majed, a Palestinian from Jenin. He's lived in Jordan for 16 years because the Israelis won't give his Jordanian-born wife a residency permit.
MAJED: I can reach New York before reaching Jenin, usually. From Amman to New York, I think, it's around eight hours, but from Amman to Jenin it will take more than this time. It's 250km, the other is 13,000 or 15,000km. If I want to go to New York, it's easier.
At Jericho, the passengers disembark. Majed boards one of a fleet of vans and taxis that will take the passengers further into the West Bank.
MAJED: I'm now going because my mother, she is ill. I'm coming to see my mother she is ill. He came to tell me that "your mother is so ill, she wants see you." I came here. I told you, I left at 7:00 and now it is 11:00 and we are still in Jericho. We need two or three more hours.
Also on the bus is Ayam, now working in the United Arab Emirates. It's taken him three days to get this far.
AYAM: Actually there's too much suffering, even now days it's a bit better than in summer, in summer days some people have to sleep three or four days here in Jericho, also families, small kids, ladies. There is no humanity, nothing. Nobody cares about that, there is no water, no food. Aren't we human beings? We're animals, maybe we are from another planet, not from this world.
The bus snakes its way through the mountains of the West Bank, trying to avoid Israeli checkpoints, before finally arriving in Jenin. It's taken Majed almost eight hours to travel a distance that could have taken less than three.
Inside the hospital, Majed learns why he has been summoned. His mother's leg is turning gangrenous, the doctors want him to persuade her to have it amputated.
He's concerned that soon he may not be able to visit his elderly parents at all. Last year, he'd been able to make some of his journey along Route 90.
MAJED: Last year it's easier, because the check points of the Israelis were very less and they are passing, last year. This year they're controlling the whole area, they are making a lot of checking points so you have to take a very long journey to reach Jenin.
Many of the Palestinian farmers, with land in the Jordan Valley, now can not access it, because their residency permits say they live elsewhere in the West Bank. For those Palestinians with permits to live in the Valley, life is also getting harder. This is the Bedouin settlement of Jiflik.
ZEINAB SBEITAN: This house, my friend. My brother.
Zeinab Sbeitan shows me where her brother's house stood until a few months ago.
ZEINAB SBEITAN (Translation): This is my brothers house, it was demolished, they came the first year and demolished a house over there, there are no traces left, because they cleared the location and fixed it. They made him remove the windows and take the furniture from his house. They said "We'll hurt him twice, let's not demolish it this year." Then the next summer they came back and demolished it.
Later she tells me her brother, who has now moved to Jericho, built the house when he married and moved out of the parental home.
ZEINAB SBEITAN (Translation): They have plans and photos taken from t he air. If for example someone adds an extension, suddenly the officials are there. Even before the building is finished, they decide to demolish it, they send first, second and third notices and then t hey demolish it.
The new restrictions on Palestinian movement in the Jordan Valley mean Israeli Arabs can no longer come to collect produce. The army checkpoints mean produce can perish before it gets to market. Zeinab shows me a field of eggplants, left to rot in the sun.
ZEINAB SBEITAN (Translation): Because there are no markets to export to, the crops rot on the vine. The farmer has to harvest them and dump them.
Under Kadima's disengagement plan, Israel would almost certainly retain control of at least two Israeli-only highways connecting the Jordan Valley with Israel. This would severely restrict Palestinian movement.
JAMAL JUMA: It is slicing the whole West Bank and dividing it into three main ghetto.
Jamal Juma heads the Palestinian group Stop The Wall.
JAMAL JUMA: When you talk about the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, this is totally dividing the south from the middle, and when you talk about from Ariel to the Jordan Valley, you are dividing the south from the middle and the north from the middle and the south. It is an open-air prison that is open for the Palestinians, controlled by gates that will totally not allow for them to do anything outside their control.
This is the Israeli-only road linking Jerusalem to the Jordan Valley. Work is already under way to widen it into a 4-lane highway. To facilitate Palestinian movement, a series of tunnels are being built under these major roads.
DAVID SHEARER: To minimise disruption to the Palestinians, what Israel has done is dig a series of tunnels under their roads so the Palestinians can move to one area to another. Now the problem with that, obviously, is that, before, they had free movement, up and down, and now, suddenly, they have to all be funnelled through a tunnel in their own area, in their own land, to go through to the other side. And that creates an enormous inconvenience, cost, hassle, everything else, and basically compartmentalises communities of Palestinians in groups divided by roads they are not allowed to travel on.
The town of Qalqiliya is a case in point. It lies within the occupied West Bank, but the security wall protecting a nearby Jewish settlement, and the Israeli army checkpoint on the road into town, have left it isolated. In a taste of what the future holds, the Israelis have built a tunnel under the Israeli-only road, linking Qalqiliya with nearby Habla.
What we've got here, running along the top, this way, is an Israeli-only road, flanked by a couple of patrol roads. It joins Israel proper, over there, to an Israeli settlement up on the West Bank behind me. And running down this way, through a series of tunnels, is a Palestinian-only road, joining two Palestinian enclaves. Now it's possible that, if Israel imposes a 2-state solution, the border here won't be a clear line on the map - up the top will be Israel, down the bottom will be Palestine.
Drive through the tunnel and it seems almost a workable solution - that is, until the Israeli army arrives. Without warning, it sets up a checkpoint, checking Palestinian papers one-by-one. At last count, there are some 300 permanent army checkpoints on the West Bank - on any given day, there are dozens more like this. Traffic soon backs up. Rather than ensuring free movement, the tunnel is funnelling Palestinians through the checkpoint. Any time it likes, the Israeli military can shut the tunnel down.
With my own car blocked in, I walk into the neighbouring citrus farm. Here I meet Jamal, pruning his trees. He takes me up to the security fence to show me the land the Israelis have taken.
JAMAL: It was from here, to that tree over there, that big one.
REPORTER: Over beyond the razor wire there?
JAMAL: Yeah.
Jamal has lost several hectares of land but says the tunnel has provided few benefits.
JAMAL: Nothing changed, you know. It's maybe worse. You make a tunnel for me, why are you coming inside it and looking for our papers, instead of saying this is ours and this is yours. You put a wall down there and say this is ours, this is yours. Before Israel used to say all this whole country is ours. Now they put everyone in a small zoo. This is for cows, this is for donkeys this is for horses, you know.
Back on the road, the checkpoint is still there, even though the tunnel simply links one Palestinian area with another. For Hamas, the militant group which recently won the Palestinian elections, the disengagement plan is unacceptable. Spokesman Sami Abu Zuri says it will lead to more violence, not less.
SAMI ABU ZURI, (Translation): Of course, unilateral solutions and imposing a 'fait accompli' mean a continuation of the struggle, not an end to it. If the legal effort is futile and the international community fails to stop the building of the wall then yes, we'll have no choice but to use force.
LIOR CHOREV: The Palestinians have to understand, they will lose every national asset they have today if they keep on supporting and sponsoring terrorism, if they don't recognise the state of Israel. They're losing, already, crucial assets for themselves in terms of their national aspirations and they will continue to do so if they don't respect to what the international community is demanding of them.
REPORTER: So there is a punitive element to this?
LIOR CHOREV: Of course.
In Israel, maps are being drawn, plans are being made. Ehud Olmert wants the wall finished within a year, the settlers withdrawn within two and final borders declared within four. But in attempting to impose peace, Israel risks perpetuating conflict.
This is a story about maps, not just maps that describe the past and present but maps that foretell the future - a future of continuing strife and bloodshed. It's the story of an ambitious plan to redraw the borders of Israel and, without consultation, impose a state on the Palestinians. It's the plan that seems certain to decide the Israeli election.
LIOR CHOREV, POLITICAL ADVISOR TO EHUD OLMERT: Let's not be mistaken. Israel will not wait. Israel has waited too much. Israel has been willing to go, time and time again, to new agreements with the Palestinians, which they never followed. At the end of the day, Israel has one, and only one, responsibility for security and the security of its citizens. And, if we have to do more unilateral disengagements this will be done, only if that makes our security better.
SAMI ABU ZUHRI, HAMAS (Translation): Unilateral solutions and the policy of forcing a 'fait accompli' on the Palestinians is rejected. We have rights and we'll continue our journey, until we get all our Palestinian rights. But a forced 'fait accompli' we will not accept that.
East Jerusalem - and Palestinians are risking arrest, or worse, by crossing through a semi-completed section of Israel's security wall. I decide to follow, hoping someone will talk to me. The Israeli Government wants to complete this 600km-long barrier within a year.
MAN: This is our miserable life, I mean.
REPORTER: Your miserable life?
MAN: Of course.
REPORTER: And it's going to get worse?
MAN: I think so. In the next days, I think, it will be more worse, unfortunately.
When the Israelis started building this wall in earnest, four years ago, they assured the world that it would not be the basis for a border - that it was here for security, to stop the suicide bombers and other terrorists crossing into Israel proper. But now, acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has indicated that Israel is considering imposing borders on a new Palestinian state and that this wall, here, will form the foundations for those borders.
EHUD OLMERT, ACTING PRIME MINISTER, (Translation): The direction is clear, disengagement from the Palestinians, determining a permanent border for the State of Israel, we will maintain Jerusalem's unity, we will maintain the central settlement blocks, but the borders we envisage are not the present borders of the State of Israel.
During the Six Day War, back in 1967, Israel took control of the West Bank from Jordan. Ever since, the international community has recognised this as an occupied territory. But that hasn't stopped large scale Israeli settlement. The security wall runs well inside the West Bank, effectively annexing East Jerusalem and the larger settlements.
The policy to unilaterally withdraw behind the wall marks a seminal change in Israeli politics. It seems Ehud Olmert and Kadima believe the mainstream of Israeli voters want to wash their hands of the West Bank and the Palestinians.
DR MARK HELLER, JAFFEE CENTER FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES: Those who thought that it was practical to pursue a peace agreement with the Palestinians have become disabused of the idea that any such thing is possible, and those who thought that holding on to the territories, at some kind of tolerable or reasonable cost, have also become disabused of that possibility, because of the experience over the last five or six years.
So what's left is a kind of default option, in the great central, middle of Israeli body politic, which is to say the conflict can't be resolved, it has to be managed, the way to manage it most effectively is through unilateral retrenchment.
While Ehud Olmert's disengagement plan would effectively annex large swathes of the West Bank, it would still be necessary to abandon several dozen of the more remote Jewish settler communities. Yet, for many settlers, this is the promised land, given by God.
On a hill-top in the West Bank, Haim Makovsky takes me to an archaeological site linking the Jews of antiquity with the West Bank.
HAIM MAKOVSKY: We're here at an ancient Mikveh. A Mikveh is the place where there is gathering of water, a pool, which was used, in ancient days, it's used even today in some places, for purification of the body.
For hardliners like Haim, the whole idea of disengagement, even the wall, is tantamount to surrender.
HAIM MAKOVSKY: Putting up the wall indicates that we want to stop fighting, that we're not going to fight any more. We're just going to enclose them in something or other and, once they're on the other side, we don't have to fight any more. The words 'defending yourself', the word 'retaliation' is being wiped out of our lexicon. And in our philosophy, Kadima is ruining Judaism in the state of Israel.
REPORTER: So they're betraying the purpose of the Jewish people?
HAIM MAKOVSKY: They are, in our eyes, betraying the purpose of the Jewish people.
The settlement of Ofra is one of the oldest on the West Bank, home to Aliza Herbst and about 2,000 others. Ofra finds itself on the Palestinian side of the wall and, under Kadima's plan, may be surrendered to the Palestinians.
ALIZA HERBST: I don't place any kind of importance on what they're saying now, before the elections. I don't think it has anything to do with what they will or won't do, should they be elected, which is also a good question - as their support is going down every week.
There's been talk about evacuating people from communities, from my community, for as long as I can remember, for as long as I've been here, and I've been here for 25 years. So, I don't get too excited about it.
Pinchas Vallerstein is a settler leader with his own maps, showing plans for expanding settlements on the West Bank. He says Kadima has not identified which settlements would need to be abandoned, so Ehud Olmert would have no mandate to remove the settlers.
PINCHAS VALLERSTEIN, SETTLER LEADER (Translation): If it's not a national decision we won't accept it. No question about it. It has to be clear, it will be hard anyway. If he thinks he can do it without national concensus he is seriously mistaken. It is the total irresponsibility of someone aspiring to be a statesman, not a mere politician.
When settlers were forcibly removed from Gaza last year, there was fierce resistance. Yet there were only about 8,000 settlers in Gaza, the number of settlers that would need to be removed from the West Bank would number in the tens of thousands.
LIOR CHOREV: It's a matter of courage. Things that are done by very strong leaders to take actions, in terms of dismantling settlements, in places where Israel will not remain towards a final agreement with the Palestinians.
Lior Chorev is political advisor to Ehud Olmert. He shows me Kadima's election ads, which present Olmert as the natural heir to Ariel Sharon, the leader who withdrew the settlers from Gaza.
KADIMA'S ELECTION AD, (Translation): It was clear Sharon cares about this country, but at the same time he cares about the Jewish people. He understood... And it must have torn him apart-that people should be aware of the danger to the existence of Israel as a Jewish democratic state if we remain in the territories.
Unilateral disengagement from the West Bank has become the central issue of this election.
KADIMA'S ELECTION AD, (Translation): The spirit of Kadima is to look into the future and to say 'yes'. Yes to permanent borders for Israel.
But, as Lior Chorev makes clear, disengaging the settlers does not mean disengaging the soldiers.
LIOR CHOREV: We're not just only going to pull out the settlers, but we'll keep the idea of the Israeli army in those territories. They are not going to be passed to the Palestinian Authority until final agreement, peaceful agreement is reached.
But the impact on settlers will be nothing compared to the impact on the Palestinians. Under Kadima's strategy, not just East Jerusalem, and the major Jewish settlements west of the wall, would be annexed by Israel. Israel would control the Jordan Valley, encircling the West Bank and depriving the Palestinians of a border with Jordan. The Jordan Valley's major north-south highway, route 90, has been turned into an Israeli-only road and the Valley has become a no-go zone for most Palestinians.
David Shearer is the head of OCHA, the UN agency coordinating humanitarian relief in the occupied territories.
DAVID SHEARER, HEAD OF OCHA: There are 470-odd roadblocks, checkpoints, obstructions on the road. Now, unless you show that on a map, it's very difficult to have a kind of mental appreciation of just how bad that is.
Since arriving three years ago, the New Zealander has had his team develop detailed maps, revealing the patterns of Israeli occupation. He says Israel is tightening its control of the Jordan Valley.
DAVID SHEARER: We've noticed, in the last year, a dramatic change in the access to the Jordan Valley by Palestinians. Palestinian traffic and transport can not flow through the Jordan Valley, Palestinians who live outside of the Jordan Valley can't visit for longer than one day, they can't stay overnight, they can only enter the Jordan Valley if they have a permit. And there has also been restrictions on Palestinians, who are living in the Jordan Valley, to the degree in which they can move around themselves.
I wanted to see the Jordan Valley for myself, so I headed down from Jerusalem, until I reached Route 90. It's an Israeli-only road, despite the Jordan Valley being part of the occupied West Bank. This bus is carrying Palestinians, entering the West Bank across the river from Jordan. The bus crosses Route 90 but it's not allowed to stop. No-one can get on or off until it reaches the Palestinian enclave of Jericho.
Once the bus reaches Jericho's outskirts, I can get on board, where I meet Majed, a Palestinian from Jenin. He's lived in Jordan for 16 years because the Israelis won't give his Jordanian-born wife a residency permit.
MAJED: I can reach New York before reaching Jenin, usually. From Amman to New York, I think, it's around eight hours, but from Amman to Jenin it will take more than this time. It's 250km, the other is 13,000 or 15,000km. If I want to go to New York, it's easier.
At Jericho, the passengers disembark. Majed boards one of a fleet of vans and taxis that will take the passengers further into the West Bank.
MAJED: I'm now going because my mother, she is ill. I'm coming to see my mother she is ill. He came to tell me that "your mother is so ill, she wants see you." I came here. I told you, I left at 7:00 and now it is 11:00 and we are still in Jericho. We need two or three more hours.
Also on the bus is Ayam, now working in the United Arab Emirates. It's taken him three days to get this far.
AYAM: Actually there's too much suffering, even now days it's a bit better than in summer, in summer days some people have to sleep three or four days here in Jericho, also families, small kids, ladies. There is no humanity, nothing. Nobody cares about that, there is no water, no food. Aren't we human beings? We're animals, maybe we are from another planet, not from this world.
The bus snakes its way through the mountains of the West Bank, trying to avoid Israeli checkpoints, before finally arriving in Jenin. It's taken Majed almost eight hours to travel a distance that could have taken less than three.
Inside the hospital, Majed learns why he has been summoned. His mother's leg is turning gangrenous, the doctors want him to persuade her to have it amputated.
He's concerned that soon he may not be able to visit his elderly parents at all. Last year, he'd been able to make some of his journey along Route 90.
MAJED: Last year it's easier, because the check points of the Israelis were very less and they are passing, last year. This year they're controlling the whole area, they are making a lot of checking points so you have to take a very long journey to reach Jenin.
Many of the Palestinian farmers, with land in the Jordan Valley, now can not access it, because their residency permits say they live elsewhere in the West Bank. For those Palestinians with permits to live in the Valley, life is also getting harder. This is the Bedouin settlement of Jiflik.
ZEINAB SBEITAN: This house, my friend. My brother.
Zeinab Sbeitan shows me where her brother's house stood until a few months ago.
ZEINAB SBEITAN (Translation): This is my brothers house, it was demolished, they came the first year and demolished a house over there, there are no traces left, because they cleared the location and fixed it. They made him remove the windows and take the furniture from his house. They said "We'll hurt him twice, let's not demolish it this year." Then the next summer they came back and demolished it.
Later she tells me her brother, who has now moved to Jericho, built the house when he married and moved out of the parental home.
ZEINAB SBEITAN (Translation): They have plans and photos taken from t he air. If for example someone adds an extension, suddenly the officials are there. Even before the building is finished, they decide to demolish it, they send first, second and third notices and then t hey demolish it.
The new restrictions on Palestinian movement in the Jordan Valley mean Israeli Arabs can no longer come to collect produce. The army checkpoints mean produce can perish before it gets to market. Zeinab shows me a field of eggplants, left to rot in the sun.
ZEINAB SBEITAN (Translation): Because there are no markets to export to, the crops rot on the vine. The farmer has to harvest them and dump them.
Under Kadima's disengagement plan, Israel would almost certainly retain control of at least two Israeli-only highways connecting the Jordan Valley with Israel. This would severely restrict Palestinian movement.
JAMAL JUMA: It is slicing the whole West Bank and dividing it into three main ghetto.
Jamal Juma heads the Palestinian group Stop The Wall.
JAMAL JUMA: When you talk about the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, this is totally dividing the south from the middle, and when you talk about from Ariel to the Jordan Valley, you are dividing the south from the middle and the north from the middle and the south. It is an open-air prison that is open for the Palestinians, controlled by gates that will totally not allow for them to do anything outside their control.
This is the Israeli-only road linking Jerusalem to the Jordan Valley. Work is already under way to widen it into a 4-lane highway. To facilitate Palestinian movement, a series of tunnels are being built under these major roads.
DAVID SHEARER: To minimise disruption to the Palestinians, what Israel has done is dig a series of tunnels under their roads so the Palestinians can move to one area to another. Now the problem with that, obviously, is that, before, they had free movement, up and down, and now, suddenly, they have to all be funnelled through a tunnel in their own area, in their own land, to go through to the other side. And that creates an enormous inconvenience, cost, hassle, everything else, and basically compartmentalises communities of Palestinians in groups divided by roads they are not allowed to travel on.
The town of Qalqiliya is a case in point. It lies within the occupied West Bank, but the security wall protecting a nearby Jewish settlement, and the Israeli army checkpoint on the road into town, have left it isolated. In a taste of what the future holds, the Israelis have built a tunnel under the Israeli-only road, linking Qalqiliya with nearby Habla.
What we've got here, running along the top, this way, is an Israeli-only road, flanked by a couple of patrol roads. It joins Israel proper, over there, to an Israeli settlement up on the West Bank behind me. And running down this way, through a series of tunnels, is a Palestinian-only road, joining two Palestinian enclaves. Now it's possible that, if Israel imposes a 2-state solution, the border here won't be a clear line on the map - up the top will be Israel, down the bottom will be Palestine.
Drive through the tunnel and it seems almost a workable solution - that is, until the Israeli army arrives. Without warning, it sets up a checkpoint, checking Palestinian papers one-by-one. At last count, there are some 300 permanent army checkpoints on the West Bank - on any given day, there are dozens more like this. Traffic soon backs up. Rather than ensuring free movement, the tunnel is funnelling Palestinians through the checkpoint. Any time it likes, the Israeli military can shut the tunnel down.
With my own car blocked in, I walk into the neighbouring citrus farm. Here I meet Jamal, pruning his trees. He takes me up to the security fence to show me the land the Israelis have taken.
JAMAL: It was from here, to that tree over there, that big one.
REPORTER: Over beyond the razor wire there?
JAMAL: Yeah.
Jamal has lost several hectares of land but says the tunnel has provided few benefits.
JAMAL: Nothing changed, you know. It's maybe worse. You make a tunnel for me, why are you coming inside it and looking for our papers, instead of saying this is ours and this is yours. You put a wall down there and say this is ours, this is yours. Before Israel used to say all this whole country is ours. Now they put everyone in a small zoo. This is for cows, this is for donkeys this is for horses, you know.
Back on the road, the checkpoint is still there, even though the tunnel simply links one Palestinian area with another. For Hamas, the militant group which recently won the Palestinian elections, the disengagement plan is unacceptable. Spokesman Sami Abu Zuri says it will lead to more violence, not less.
SAMI ABU ZURI, (Translation): Of course, unilateral solutions and imposing a 'fait accompli' mean a continuation of the struggle, not an end to it. If the legal effort is futile and the international community fails to stop the building of the wall then yes, we'll have no choice but to use force.
LIOR CHOREV: The Palestinians have to understand, they will lose every national asset they have today if they keep on supporting and sponsoring terrorism, if they don't recognise the state of Israel. They're losing, already, crucial assets for themselves in terms of their national aspirations and they will continue to do so if they don't respect to what the international community is demanding of them.
REPORTER: So there is a punitive element to this?
LIOR CHOREV: Of course.
In Israel, maps are being drawn, plans are being made. Ehud Olmert wants the wall finished within a year, the settlers withdrawn within two and final borders declared within four. But in attempting to impose peace, Israel risks perpetuating conflict.