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"No matter what was promised in Annapolis, a Two State Solution for Israel and Palestine now seems utterly impossible, judging from what I have just seen during a 3-week visit to the West Bank.

Its hills, terraced with olive groves, are now totally dissected by fortified highways and crowned by luxurious illegal housing developments – the latter occupied by nearly a half a million Israelis. Seized Arab land has clearly provided a bonanza for investors who think their money secure. What remains is a shredded West Bank from which it will be near impossible, in my view, to construct anything truly independent of Israel.

I went to the West Bank at the invitation of a Fair Trade Palestinian olive oil company, Zaytoun. I expected a healthy break from chilly English weather; to pick olives, eat with farmers and learn from them how 60 years of military occupation has affected their lives. But it turned out to be far more dramatic a visit than ever I had envisioned.

One morning I went with three olive pickers to help Omar, a Palestinian who farms in the northern part of the West Bank. Leaving our car on what was then a quiet main road, we met him on the farm on which he had 250 olive trees. The police just evicted the Israeli settlers who had illegally occupied it. They had done so at the behest of a judge who ruled in favour of the Palestinian owners of this farm of fig, olive and almond trees. It is managed for her family by the 61-year-old Dadriya Amar who lives, as does Omar, in the local Palestinian village of Kafr Qaddum. She had filed her complaint when the settlers first occupied the farm in October. This led to the eviction of the settlers by the army – not once but three times. But every time they were expelled, the army did not stop them from returning hours later. When she came to pick the olives, the settlers had chased her away with stones.

We had not yet started picking the olives when suddenly a large armoured army truck arrived and soldiers massed by the farmhouse. They clearly had foreknowledge of something about to happen - and sure enough, a bus load of Israeli settlers minutes later disembarked and charged to the farmhouse. However it was a gentle, almost ritual, clash. No tear gas, no arrests. The settlers retired after some pushing and chatting with the soldiers. The army then declared the farm a ‘closed military zone’ and we had to leave."

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