West Bank town becomes ‘big prison’ as Israel fences it in

A five-metre-high metal fence slices across the eastern edge of Sinjil, a Palestinian town in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Heavy steel gates and roadblocks seal off all but a single route in and out of the town, watched over by Israeli soldiers at guard posts. “Sinjil is now a big prison,” said Mousa Shabaneh, 52, a father of seven, watching on in resignation as workers erected the fence through the middle of the nursery on the edge of the town where he planted trees for sale, his sole source of income. “Of course, we’re now forbidden from going to the nursery. All the trees I had were burned and lost,” he said. “In the end, they cut off our livelihood.”