Mr. David Heap:

I want to make two brief points. When the judgment was made in the Rachel Corrie case and the Israeli court found that it was a tragic accident and that no one was to blame, by a curious coincidence, on that same day, there were 16 demolitions of Palestinian homes throughout the West Bank. There had been none in the three or four weeks before that and there were none for a couple of weeks afterwards. It is the kind of Kafkaesque situation one comes across there quite often.

Deputy Crowe asked how people there still have hope. One of the jobs we did was to monitor agricultural gates where farmers have to get permits to access their own land and have to go through a military checkpoint. This is where the barrier has come inside the Green Line, the so-called seam zone. One farmer came to me and said, "We are very grateful when you are here; things go much more smoothly." I asked him the same kind of question the Deputy asked.

His reaction was to say frankly that all we have is hope, so all that we can do is hope.