Halima, a widow with nine orphan children, stands barefoot in the rain. Her full name is Halima al-Hadhalin. She is a Palestinian who lives in an impoverished area in Umm al-Kheir, close to Carmel, the Jewish settlement on the south Hebron hills. Halimas life is shaken. A few months earlier the Israeli civil government sent bulldozers, guarded by soldiers, to destroy her shack. The reason: it had been built without a permit.

This might be so. But