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Edition: U.S. Article Comments (0) Save Email Print Reprints Most Popular Most Shared BP pegs spill at worst-case 100,000 bpd | Video 10:58am EDT New Jersey battles over tax on millionaires 20 Jun 2010 Factbox: Winners and losers from a firmer yuan 4:14am EDT Verizon offers FiOS try-out 12:24am EDT China unshackles currency ahead of G20 meeting | Video 11:37am EDT Miley Cyrus "no underwear" photo is fake, blogger says 15 Jun 2010 BP restarts drillship system after 10-hour lapse 19 Jun 2010 Music business badly needs Eminem's "Recovery" 11:00am EDT Wall Street jumps on China yuan move | Video 11:48am EDT Putin boasts new jet fighter better than U.S. plane 17 Jun 2010 BP pegs spill at worst-case 100,000 bpd | Video 10:58am EDT Dell in talks with Google over Chrome OS 3:37am EDT Verizon offers FiOS try-out 12:24am EDT China unshackles currency ahead of G20 meeting | Video 11:37am EDT Factbox: Winners and losers from a firmer yuan 4:14am EDT New Jersey battles over tax on millionaires 20 Jun 2010 Shot grizzly tied to hiker death near Yellowstone 20 Jun 2010 German student attacks Hell's Angels with puppy 15 Jun 2010 Wall Street rises as China move boosts resource shares | Video 10:10am EDT Facebook '09 revenue neared $800 million 18 Jun 2010 Witness: Writing on the walls in the Holy Land Mon Jun 21, 2010 8:56am EDT A nun walks in Jerusalem's Old City near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre March 31, 2010. Credit: Reuters/Ammar Awad Alastair Macdonald has been Reuters Bureau Chief in Israel and the Palestinian territories for the past three years. As a foreign correspondent over the past 20, he has previously been based in London, Paris, Moscow, Berlin and Baghdad. World As he ends his assignment in Jerusalem, he reflects in the following story, on how he has watched people in the region build an array of barriers, both physical and emotional, to cut themselves off from each other. By Alastair Macdonald JERUSALEM (Reuters) - With one last exit stamp in my passport, I end a three-year reporting assignment in the Holy Land that has been marked by images of frontiers, by a sense of walls going up and fewer and fewer people finding a way through. From the minefields of Israel's frontlines with Syria and Lebanon to the fortified fences around the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- much in this month's headlines -- to the walls, old and new, of Jerusalem, physical barriers shape the lives of the 12 million people cut off here in what was once called Palestine. But those lives, and millions more touched by events that reach far beyond these borders, are marked, too, by less visible internal frontiers -- religious, cultural, ethnic, political. What has struck me is seeing people locked in, and locked out, by a spreading labyrinth of boundaries and parallel worlds, all in an area just a third the size of my native Scotland. As a Reuters correspondent, I'm used to explaining what I see to people living a world away. In Israel and the Palestinian territories, I'm as often asked to describe lives being led only a few miles down the road, to neighbors who no longer meet. "Is it true their women can't go out in public now?" an Israeli soldier asked me over cappuccino at a shopping mall just outside the Gaza Strip after Hamas Islamists seized the enclave. The answer was 'no'. But the questions can be just as naive from Palestinians about an Israel many once knew quite well. As a foreigner and a journalist, I've had special privileges to cross these frontiers, whether the daunting maze and cages of Gaza's Erez Terminal or the once-walled, now invisible but still palpable, Green Line from Jerusalem's Arab east to Jewish west. Most locals cannot, or do not, make such journeys. Between Gaza and Israel, foreign journalists join just a few dozen aid workers each day and Palestinians heading to Israeli hospitals on a half-mile (700-meter) trek across no man's land. Normally, these days, it's a peaceful place, teeming with wildlife, a brief buffer zone between Gaza, an Arab city going backwards on donkey carts and embargoed scarcities, and the neat farms, hi-tech factories and shopping malls of southern Israel. ADRIFT IN THE MIDDLE EAST But Gaza is not the only island in this landlocked chain. Israel is essentially cut off too. I've stood on its borders with Lebanon and Syria, where mines and tanks and trenches mark frontlines that are still on alert. I've crossed its little-used transit points to Jordan and Egypt, signatories to a cold peace. From Israeli bases on the Golan Heights you can make out the lights of Damascus. From Jerusalem, the Jordanian capital Amman glows across the valley. Israel sits adrift from both. I've watched the estrangement between Palestinians of rival political camps leave Gaza and the West Bank virtually at war. I've seen Israelis grapple with divisions among themselves too -- between descendants of early European immigrants and later arrivals from the Middle East, Ethiopia and the Soviet Union. Ultra-Orthodox boys hauling barriers around their expanding neighborhoods in Jerusalem to protect their Sabbath observances from intrusion by secular Jews has also been a potent image. Inside the Old City's gates, Ottoman-era Quarters -- Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Armenian -- map communal rivalries still alive today. Small battlefields marked by razor wire, flags and hurled garbage show where Israelis are settling in Arab areas. As communities turn their backs on each other, I've seen the city's trilingual street signs defaced: Arabic is blacked out in the west, Hebrew erased in the east. (The English is ignored.) I've also watched smaller groups like the Christian Arabs slugging it out in turf wars, in the church around Jesus's tomb. WALLING OFF MEMORIES The most visible wall is the new one that snakes around greater Jerusalem -- protecting it, Israel says, from suicide bombers while cutting them off from their families, according to Palestinians. I've found myself describing to colleagues in Ramallah, just a 15-minute drive away for me, how the scenery of their native Jerusalem is changing. Like Israelis who reminisce to me fondly about trips to beachfront seafood restaurants in Gaza, for many Palestinians Jerusalem exists now in the mists of memory alone. They complain, too, that the barrier penning them into the West Bank is a frontier in one direction only. Half a million Israelis live there, in an archipelago of hilltop settlements, their red, pitched roofs an image of contrast to Arab villages. Other partitions and parallels abound. In Hebron, the shrine of Abraham, patriarch of both faiths, is divided into Jewish and Muslim sections, though that has not prevented bloodshed. Many argue all this wall-building is the only way to contain violence, though geography and demography hardly make it simple. Yet there are images that stay with me of those who reach over the walls. I've seen it in the Reuters journalists I worked with. Their professionalism is blind to being Palestinian or Israeli, even if partisan critics from all sides question that. But as borders have closed, ordinary folk who shake hands across them can find themselves shunned by their own community. Professional collaborations have grown rarer, too. I've seen it, still, in Israeli hospitals, where injuries and violence to colleagues have taken me. Staff and patients of all communities mingle easily, an extraordinary contrast to the world outside. So it's probably no coincidence it was a Gaza doctor, fluent in Hebrew, who inspired a rare outbreak of empathy across the frontiers last year, when Israeli television aired his plea for help after his children were killed during Israel's offensive. Sympathy for him among many Israelis and the doctor's own dignified refusal to bear grudges stood out for me, though they hardly began to offset bitterness the war left on either side. As I leave, passing yet another frontier checkpoint for a final time, I see little sign of any of these walls coming down. (Editing by Samia Nakhoul) World Add a Comment *We welcome comments that advance the story directly or with relevant tangential information. We try to block comments that use offensive language or appear to be spam and review comments frequently to ensure they meet our standards. If you see a comment that you believe is irrelevant or inappropriate, you can flag it to our editors by using the report abuse links. Views expressed in the comments do not represent those of Reuters. © Copyright 2010 Thomson Reuters Editorial Editions: Africa Arabic Argentina Brazil Canada China France Germany India Italy Japan Latin America Mexico Russia Spain United Kingdom United States Reuters Contact Us Advertise With Us Help Journalism Handbook Archive Site Index Video Index Reader Feedback Analyst Research Mobile Newsletters RSS Podcasts Widgets Your View Labs Thomson Reuters Copyright Disclaimer Privacy Professional Products Professional Products Support Financial Products About Thomson Reuters Careers Online Products Acquisitions Monthly Buyouts Venture Capital Journal International Financing Review Project Finance International PEhub.com PE Week FindLaw Thomson Reuters is the world's largest international multimedia news agency, providing investing news, world news, business news, technology news, headline news, small business news, news alerts, personal finance, stock market, and mutual funds information available on Reuters.com, video, mobile, and interactive television platforms. Thomson Reuters journalists are subject to an Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests. NYSE and AMEX quotes delayed by at least 20 minutes. Nasdaq delayed by at least 15 minutes. For a complete list of exchanges and delays, please click here.

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