"On all sides, Bethlehem is also being surrounded by settler bypass roads and by concrete walls higher than those that divided Berlin in the cold war"

"For the people of Bethlehem up the road, Beit Skaria is a bleak example of what might yet happen to them. On all sides, Bethlehem is also being surrounded by settler bypass roads and by concrete walls higher than those that divided Berlin in the cold war. Earlier this month, Israel’s defence ministry confiscated the largest chunk of private Palestinian land in years on Bethlehem’s southern fringe to let smaller settlements, previously unauthorised by the Israeli government, expand. The population of Beitar Illit, an ultra-Orthodox settlement to the west of Bethlehem, in the Gush Etzion bloc, is set to grow from around 45,000 to 100,000 in the next six years."