MIDDLE EAST: Nuala Haughey on the Israelis who fear being hemmed in on the Arab side of the disputed wall
Jaacov Saadu stands at a viewing deck on the highest point of his hilltop West Bank settlement of Imanuel. "This is the most beautiful place in all this area," says the former aluminium salesman, gesturing to the horizon of stony hills speckled with green.
But the 63-year-old Israeli wants to quit this gated community which he moved to 16 years ago, attracted primarily by the generous financial assistance of the Jewish state. He is prepared to live anywhere else, as long as it is not in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967 and where Palestinians want to build a future state.
Saadu, a divorcee, is among a growing number of settlers clamouring to leave the West Bank because they find themselves hemmed in by the controversial barrier which Israel says is designed to keep its citizens safe from attack by Palestinian militants.
Once the 670km separation fence is completed, some 80,000 Israelis in 68 settlements will be stuck on the eastern or "Palestinian side" of what many perceive will become Israel's future political border.
Having seen fellow-settlers uprooted from the Gaza Strip and a nearby small pocket of the northern West Bank last August, Saadu and others like him fear they will be next. But Saadu is stuck in his rundown enclave, which has twice been the target of Palestinian bombers and where almost every second whitewashed house appears to have been abandoned. Unemployed, he cannot raise enough money to buy a house at full market rates on the other side of the Green Line, the 1949 armistice boundary separating Israel from the West Bank.
Saadu wants his government, which gave him a generous loan and tax cuts to move here in the first place, to now pay him to move out, just as it did for Gaza's displaced settlers.
"With the intifada, many people began leaving, and house prices have gone down. I'm going back, not forward," he says as he gazes at a distant Arab village.
Saadu has joined a new movement, One Home, which is leading a small revolt within several settler communities where talk of leaving is met with hostility by religious residents who believe the land is their biblical patrimony.
A quarter of West Bank settlers living east of the separation barrier recently told a One Home survey they would leave immediately if compensated, and the group expects more people would join once an outflow began, breaking the stigma.
Benny Raz (51) from the neighbouring leafy settlement of Karnei Shomron is one of the driving forces behind the initiative, which has the backing of several left-leaning members of parliament, who have drafted a Bill setting out compensation terms for voluntary evacuees.
Karnei Shomron, some 40km northwest of Tel Aviv, also falls outside Israel's planned barrier, which will penetrate deep into Palestinian territory in other places to take on to its western or "Israeli" side several larger settlements such as Ariel in the north and the Gush Etzion bloc in the south.
Raz, a father of four, bought his two-storey house for $130,000 (€111,000) seven years ago, before the Palestinian uprising began and it was still considered safe to shop for cheap produce in local Arab villages.
In 2002 a Palestinian suicide bomber attacked the shopping mall here, killing three children. The value of Raz's house has plummeted to $25,000 (€21,400). That's if anyone would even buy it.
"I have become a hostage, a pawn in the game. I don't know what my future will be," he says. "I don't want to end up like the people in Gaza, getting a knock on my door some time in the future and being told I have to leave."
With Israel facing snap elections next March, it is not certain whether Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will be re-elected as head of his newly formed party to realise his stated plan to set permanent borders between Israel and the Palestinians, which is likely to mean the dismantling of more settlements.
The relative ease with which Israel was able to pull its settlers from the Gaza Strip after 38 years of occupation has certainly put the issue of fresh withdrawals for the sake of peace and the creation of a Palestinian state firmly on the political agenda.
Back in Karnei Shomron, Raz acknowledges that he volunteered for the settler lifestyle and all the risks and benefits that went with it. "I know I'm responsible for my fate, but I wouldn't have moved here unless my government had given me the conditions to do so."