Prejudice and ignorance keep young Arabs and Jews apart on the West Bank and very few have any acquaintance let alone friends with the other side.

But 20 years of occupation and settlement are inexorably binding the land together. Nearly one third of the working population in the terrirories go to work in Israel each day, between them earning about a fifth of the region's wealth. Half as many again are estimated to work illegally in Israel, earning more than they can in the territories, but less than the minimum wage decreed in Israel.

The West Bank land scramble has become a scandal, with hundreds of cases of fraud under investigation after the 1979 decision to lift the ban on private Jewish land purchase in the territories. Jordan imposed the death penalty on any Arab selling land to a Jew, but with prices soaring to 8,000 dollars for a quarter of an acre many took the risk.

Some 30,000 acres have changed hands, of which about one fifth are thought to have been fraudulently acquired. Because Israel is less likely to appropriate land which has been built on, both Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization have made home loans available. Money has poured in from Palestinians working in the Gulf and America. The construction industry is booming. The built-up area of Hebron has grown by around 200 per cent since 1967; in Bethlehem by 150 per cent, and in Ramallah by 100 per cent.

‘No, no, no’: why Israel is still at war

On the eve of the 40th anniversary of the six-day war, stances taken back then still loom over the Middle East peace process

Background

• How the six-day war was reported

• Stolen Iraqi jet helped Israel win six-day war

• Conflict still on peak of anguish

• West Bank proves explosive legacy of Israeli victory

• Islam seeks unity against Israel

Related Internet Links

• 40th anniversary Six Day War section

In Hebron, the Arab building surge has been made the more urgent by the establishment in 1968 of the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba less than a mile from the Arab city centre. Mr Gary Cooperberg is one settler there, a New York Jew who wanted to rediscover his roots. He now walks each morning to pray at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the second holiest site in Judaism, now inside a mosque built in a converted Crusader church.

He walks to pray with a pistol in his pocket, but feels safer and happier than he did in New York. For him there is no question that the West Bank is anything but part of the land of Israel. He regards the Six-Day War as 'a miracle which our leaders at the time didn't recognize. They wrested defeat out of victory. The Arabs fled and we let them come back. They were realists and we were idealists. ' He sees that it would make no difference wherever he lived in the area. 'The presence of just one Jew in Tel Aviv would be too much for the Arabs. There still would not be peace. ' But he would happily live in peace among Arabs in the land, if they accepted it as a Jewish state in which they had no vote.

Amal Hamad, aged 20, who yearns for the vote, lives in Tulkarm and goes to university in Nablus. 'I am prevented from choosing my future and calling for the freedom of my people. There is no freedom without the land. ' Her father had told her of his fight years ago against British occupation, but she thinks the struggle is more difficult - 'the British had their own land to go back to. '

The resistance of youth is seen to be centred in the universities, frequently shut by the authorities. Mr Meron Benvenisti, a former deputy Mayor of Jerusalem and prophet of doom about the occupation, has defined the problem. 'While their elders are mostly taken up with financial worries and so avoid getting into confrontations, the young people, with their improved standard of living, have the time to broaden their education. 'The Arabs' strongest impulse in reaction to their status as a powerless minority seems to be to get an education.

The challenge of occupation and the phychological need not to give in to one's feeling of powerlessness have led to the paradox of a powerless Palestinian minority which is nonetheless a vibrant and increasingly cohesive community. ' Israeli doves see in this an inevitable explosion. According to General Shlomo Gazit, a former chief of military intelligence, 'the demonstrators have no illusions that their protests will drive the Army out. Theirs is an expression of popular rage and a fierce desire to feel as if they are doing something. 'If we don't find some way to halt, slow down, or even reverse present trends, then the fuse which has been lit on the powder keg of Jewish Israeli's relations with the Arabs will continue to burn down, consuming what little goodwill is left. The fuse keeps burning, growing shorter, inching closer and closer to detonation. '

The most obvious danger, however, is in population trends. Over the next 15 years the Central Bureau of Statistics estimates that the 1.3 million Arabs living in the territories will have increased to 2.4 million, with another million living inside Israel.

The two populations in the whole area are likely to be level a decade or so later. The father of a 20-year-old West Bank university student shot dead in a demonstration in November saw in this growth the salvation of his country. 'Israel must make peace now while she is young and strong,' he said. 'When she is older and weaker she will not be able to get the same peace. '

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