Israel seals off Jenin as troops pull out

The Israeli army may have withdrawn from Jenin, but they are surrounding the town with giant earthworks as part of a new policy to seal off the city.

Israeli soldiers are digging a two-metre wide trench all around Jenin. This, and the creation of ramparts of freshly dug earth, are intended to stop suicide bombers getting out of the town, according to Israeli military sources.

You have to queue for more than an hour to get through the first checkpoint into the city. A Palestinian, blindfolded with a black-striped piece of cloth, could be seen being questioned by Israeli soldiers at the checkpoint. The soldiers smiled and waved us through, as if nothing untoward was happening.

The good news for Palestinians inside Jenin is that the 24-hour curfew, which has been in force here most of the time since June, is over.

Palestinian shops were open for business yesterday, but the Israeli earthworks weigh heavily on everybody's minds. Already the army is building a fence to separate the entire West Bank from Israel, complete with look-out posts and snipers. Now Jenin is being encircled by a trench within a wall.

It is the best way to protect Israeli civilians from suicide bombers, say the Israeli authorities, but Walid Masud, sitting outside his house in the refugee camp, saw it differently. "We are being put in a canton," he said, "just like in South Africa."

Dr Masud, who works in Jenin's hospital, and his brother Sa'id were sitting by the huge expanse of wasteland where in April the Israeli army bulldozed more than 100 houses. "The problem is not whether there is a curfew or not," said Dr Masud. "The problem is that Israel is destroying the entire economic situation. When you make this closure around the city people can't get to their jobs here from elsewhere, people from the villages cannot come here to trade. That makes a big economic destruction." That was the Israeli government's aim according to his brother, who said: "It's economic war."

All around them, the infrastructure of Jenin is crumbling. There are huge potholes in the roads, the damage done by tank tracks unrepaired. Other roads have turned into dirt tracks. Broken railings lie where they have since the Israeli invasion in April.

Sa'id, who trained as an architect in Belgrade and speaks fluent Serbo-Croat, recently went to a civil engineering job in nearby Nablus, usually less than an hour's drive across the West Bank. "It took five hours," he said. "There was checkpoint after checkpoint. You can get to England more easily than you can get to Nablus." Nablus, the centre of Palestinian industry in the West Bank, is a vital link in the economy here.

Dr Masud said: "The Israelis want to make isolation between the Israeli and Palestinian people because the American war with Iraq is coming. That is why they have withdrawn."

In his shop nearby, Adnan Hassan said he cannot make a profit any more. "People are only buying absolute necessities," he said. "They have no money." He is happy just to cut down the size of his loss now the curfew is over.

In comments to the Israeli Foreign Ministry leaked to the Israeli press, the British ambassador here, Sherard Cowper-Coles, was reported last week to have compared the West Bank to a giant prison. They were remarks that had not gone unnoticed by the Masud brothers.

"This is the biggest prison in the world," said Sa'id Masud bitterly.