DEIR DIBWAN, WEST BANK – The Jewish settler outpost of Or Meir is small. A handful of prefabricated white shelters, it sits at the end of a short dirt track on a hill leading up from Road 60, a major route that dissects the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Over time, similar modest dwellings have turned into sprawling Israeli housing developments, part of a plan that members of Israel’s Cabinet acknowledge they have implemented to prevent the birth of a Palestinian state.
The process can be violent. A Bedouin family said attackers who descended from Or Meir hurling Molotov cocktails drove them off Palestinian-owned land nearby last year. They fear they won’t ever be able to return.
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