Fence cuts Palestinian cave dwellers off from wood

By Haitham Tamimi

SOUTH HEBRON HILLS, West Bank (Reuters) - Home sweet home for Suleiman Hawamdeh, a 73-year-old father of 10, is a deep cave in a barren West Bank hillside separated by a barbed-wire fence from a modern Jewish settlement.

Hawamdeh and 120 other Palestinians inhabit the cluster of caves known locally as Quina Foq, which straddles the so-called "Green Line" that separated the Jewish state and the West Bank before the 1967 Middle East war.

They draw their water from wells and gather wood for cooking much like their ancestors, who first settled here during Ottoman rule more than a century ago.

Quina Foq's inhabitants eke out a living farming and herding sheep in the rocky hills about 40 km (25 miles) south of the West Bank city of Hebron. Many of the children go to school in the nearest Palestinian town, As-Samu': an hour's donkey trek.

The cave dwellers share a satellite dish and a television set, which is powered a few hours each night by a car battery.

Israeli authorities prevent them from building on the land, and the barbed-wire fence, which separates Quina Foq from the Jewish settlement of Shani, limits their access to a nearby forested area where wood for cooking is plentiful.

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i guess they would be happy to be left alone. alas that is hard to do in the land of the three religions.

:sarcasm:

:grr:

I thought it said "Pennsylvanian cave dwellers". Who knew?

satellite dishes. I guess their doomed after all.