In this way, a people is sundered from itself, and old communal bonds are eroded. The cousin who was once just down the road is walled off. What was once, in living memory, a long walk to court a potential wife in another village is transformed into an impossible obstacle course. And this is built upon the sundering that began in 1948—the sectioning off of Palestinians in Israel proper from those in East Jerusalem, and those in East Jerusalem from those in the West Bank, and those in the West Bank from those in Gaza, and those in Gaza from the world.
