4th of July on the West Bank
I spent this past Friday night, otherwise known as the 4th of July, at a pleasant backyard barbecue, but this was not in a leafy U.S. suburb; rather it was in Beit Hanina, a Palestinian town that is incorporated as part of greater Jerusalem, and sits outside of Jerusalem proper on the sandy hills of the West Bank. Across the newish highway from Beit Hanina is a large Jewish neighborhood, Pisgat Ze'ev, also within the Jerusalem lines, but actually an expanding Jewish settlement that backs up to the settlement block that extends to Ramallah and its outlying villages, all of this within a few square miles.
