MIDDLE EAST: It is slicing through communities, farmland and a university. Michael Jansen reports from Abu Dis on the West Bank on the effects of Israel's perimeter wall, its " security fence".
On the way to Abu Dis, via Bethany, we find two Israeli military roadblocks slung across the road back to Jerusalem. Three lines of cars stretch hundreds of metres.
I apologise to my friend Dyala for asking her to take me to Abu Dis. She shrugs: "It's our life, my dear. It's normal to spend some time waiting in lines."
We are going to the campus of al-Quds University. Al-Quds is the Arabic name for Jerusalem. The university is not located in al-Quds, but in the West Bank village of Abu Dis.
The university was not permitted to set up in the Holy City, claimed by Israel as its exclusive capital. The existence of such an institution was seen by Israel as a Palestinian attempt to establish sovereignty over the eastern sector occupied in 1967.
Consequently, al-Quds University sits atop a hill 10 minutes by car from Jerusalem. But Dyala, who is Palestinian, is not permitted to go there by the direct route. We head east towards the Jordan Valley, and then turn west and double back to Bethany, which overlooks Jerusalem. A journey of at least half an hour if there are no temporary or "flying" roadblocks.
We turn into the university's basketball court, where youths are playing a rough and ready game, half bouncing, half kicking the ball.
Behind the court is a stage for musical performances, and at the back of the stage is a display of maps and photos depicting the depredations of the wall Israel is building in the West Bank.
On the football field, two local teams, one in green jerseys, the other in yellow, are in mid-match. Three tents have been erected to shelter spectators and visiting notables. Dyala introduces Roula of the university's public relations department.
"Every night we have an event. People come from all over the West Bank to attend and protest the wall," says Roula.
This is the first time I hear of football being used as a means of political action.
If it is built according to plan, the wall complex will sit upon 15.5 acres of university land, obliterating not only the sports grounds but also a garden, altogether one-third of the campus.
When completed the wall will be 680 kilometres, stretching the entire length of the green line (320 kilometres) separating Israel from the West Bank and projecting deep into the West Bank to take in Israeli settlements. Al-Quds University is to be on the eastern, wrong side of the wall. Its faculty and students will be cut off from Jerusalem.
The campus protest and a foreign tour by the university's president, Dr Sari Nusseibeh, have temporarily halted the construction of the wall. The southwards extension has also been stalled by the discovery of Roman ruins on a hill next to the university sports fields where a stadium was to be built.
We make the long, hard climb to the site, which is under excavation. A chill wind whips across our faces as we negotiate the ruts in the rocky track. A Palestinian guard leads us to the dig, conducted by the Israeli department of archaeology.
"They found more than 20 columns when they came up here," he says, pointing to two stumpy limestone pillars.
As the sun sinks behind the purple and brown Judean hills, the lights come on in Jerusalem and the villages all round us. "There's the tower of the Hebrew University," says Dyala. Nearly 800 students and staff of the Hebrew University have signed a petition calling upon academics and students worldwide to protest at the confiscation of al-Quds University land for the wall.
The petition states: "There are no doubts about its poisonous effects on the relations between moderate Palestinians and Israelis who have been trying to build bridges, not walls, between the two battered communities."
If the wall had been built at the time of the birth of Jesus, his parents would never have reached Bethlehem for the nativity.
If the wall had been in place at the time of his crucifixion, Jesus would never have reached the Holy City after the Last Supper. It is believed he used to stay with Mary Magdalene or Lazarus in Bethany, set to be on the wrong side of the wall.
While the Israeli government portrays the wall as a "fence" designed to separate Israelis and Palestinians and provide protection from Palestinian bombers, peace-minded Palestinians and Israelis refer to the eight metre high concrete structure with electrified fences on either side as the apartheid wall.
While construction is just beginning on the Jerusalem and southern sections, Israel has completed 145 kilometres, stretching from the northern edge of the West Bank to the town of Qalqilya, which has been bottled in.
At the village of Jayous, cut off from its agricultural land, 50 farmers have been camped since November in tents and temporary structures on the western, right side of the wall so they can continue cultivating their fields.
According to a report issued yesterday by the Palestinian Negotiations Affairs Department, 11,700 Palestinians living in 18 towns and villages have been trapped between the wall and the green line, 25,154 acres and 50 wells have been confiscated, 102,320 trees have been bulldozed and 546 greenhouses have been damaged.
Upon the wall's completion, 55 per cent of the West Bank will, de facto, be annexed by Israel.