About two months after the army declared three Palestinian villages a closed military zone, several hundred of their residents haven’t received the Israeli permit they need in order to remain in their villages and their homes. The villages are Beit Iksa, Nabi Samwil and Khalaila, northwest of Jerusalem. On September 7, the head of IDF Central Command Avi Bluth declared them a “seam zone,” the area between the separation barrier and the Green Line, to which entry is forbidden to all Palestinians except its permanent residents.
