ABU DIS — Dr. Abdulkarim Ayyad is the chairman of the computer engineering department of Al-Quds, the Arab university in Jerusalem, but he expects to make his mark in the next Olympic Games, an unlikely ambition for a stocky scholar in his 50s.

"We Palestinians will take the gold, silver and bronze in ... what do you call it when you jump with a stick?" he asks.

Pole vaulting, I answer.

"Pole vaulting, pole vaulting." He commits the term to memory.

"The wall they are building here will be 9 meters high. The Olympic pole vaulting record is only 6 meters and something. We will practice every day."

Oh, that Palestinian humor.

The Israelis started bulldozing Abu Dis in August, paving the way for a kilometer-long section of the security fence that will slice this middle-class East Jerusalem suburb in half. For now, there's a makeshift wall, about 10 feet high, casually patrolled by Israeli soldiers.

Each morning the residents of Abu Dis knock over a few stone blocks to make a temporary path to their schools and businesses on the other side of the barrier. Step on a 10-gallon plastic bucket, hitch yourself up onto a rickety stone, jump across a 5-foot gap onto a teetering chunk of concrete, then another stone, sidestep the razor wire, finally an ankle-jarring drop onto a dirt path.

At least that was the way it was when I clambered over. It's different every day. Each morning the Palestinians blaze a new trail. Each evening the Israeli soldiers rebuild the wall, sometimes dispersing bystanders with tear gas.

Terry Boulata, headmistress of an elementary school, describes the process.

"They never put the stones back in the same place and the graffiti gets mixed up. We laugh every morning when we see how it's been rearranged. Some of the combinations are quite funny."

Oh, that Palestinian humor.

My trip over, in daylight, wasn't too bad. Returning in the dark was harder. A young man was there to give me a boost. When I thanked him, he shrugged.

"This is my assignment. I am here every night helping across the old women, the mothers and babies."

The soldiers could have stopped us, smashed our cameras, detained us, gassed us, shot us, called in a U.S.-made Apache helicopter or an F-16 and dropped bombs on us. They have that power, these teenaged guards armed with semi-automatic rifles.

They ignored us.

It's a funny sort of security with its ominous presence, but it rarely stops anyone from crossing. To the Palestinians, this confirms their belief that the wall is a land grab, not a security measure.

The Israelis, they all agree, intend to make life so impossible, so humiliating and so poor that Palestinians will pack up and leave in disgust or desperation. They point to a recently renovated hotel as a case in point.

According to the Israeli government, it straddles the line — a fuzzy line — between Israel and the West Bank. The Israelis tried to buy it and, when that failed, started "detaining" the owner, holder of a West Bank ID, when he wandered over to the newly designated Jerusalem side of his own building.

The big wall, despite the best efforts of the Palestinians' lawyer, will place the hotel on the Jerusalem side of Abu Dis. The owner will be forbidden to enter it. In a few years it will be declared abandoned, confiscated and sold to an Israeli.

The permanent wall is being built, 12 hours a day, six days a week. An ugly swath has been gouged through the middle of town. A graveyard of concrete slabs awaits assembly. Rolls of stacked accordion-folded razor wire will top the wall. Any day now life in Abu Dis will get worse.

The residents don't know yet whether there will be a gate in their town or whether they will have to travel miles out of their way to pass through a checkpoint. Even if there is a gate — the Palestinians place the odds at about 10 percent — it may be open intermittently and there is no guarantee of passage.

And for all the jokes about pole vaulting, the wall will not be easily circumvented. While we were eating lunch, a call came in to tell us an Israeli and an American were shot while attempting to cut the fence during a nonviolent protest in Qalqiliya. The people of Abu Dis don't want to get shot. They want to go to work, to school, to pray.

Terry's home will be on one side of the wall that will cut the heart out of Abu Dis. Her school is on the other. Will she be able to keep it open? Will her students make it to class? Her husband has a West Bank ID; hers is from Jerusalem. Will they be able to live as a family to raise their children?

As each 30-foot slab is put into place she watches in fury as her world crumbles.

There are three connected towns in the area: Abu Dis, Bethany and Sawahre, comprising about 50,000 people. There are no hospitals inside the wall, no emergency rooms and no fire department. Twelve schools to educate tens of thousands of children.

Terry takes us to Bethany, on the southern slope of the Mount of Olives, where Jesus hung out when he visited Jerusalem. It was here Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. It was in Bethany that Mary Magdalene anointed his feet with oil, where another Mary sat and listened while her sister, Martha, toiled away in the kitchen.

According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus started his triumphal journey to Jerusalem on a donkey from Bethany.

"As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, 'If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side.'"

Ramparts are being erected in Bethany, surrounding it, hemming it in on every side. It was once a bustling town, only a few minutes from East Jerusalem, attractive to bargain hunters. Now many shops are shuttered. The streets are empty.

Terry, a Christian, jokes that if Jesus lived in modern times he'd still be trying to get that donkey through the checkpoint.

Oh, that Palestinian humor. Jesus wept.

The Saturday before, our small band of San Antonio peacemakers joined Israeli and Palestinian peace groups in a protest and rally in Sawahre. The town sweeps down a glorious hill with a breathtaking vista of Abu Dis and Al-Quds University.

A week prior, bulldozers razed an olive grove in the center of town to make way for an Israeli settlement. Some of the protesters who tried to block the destruction were clubbed by police. One was hospitalized.

We are there to plant new saplings. We have a permit, but replanting the trees is illegal. Someone mentions tear gas. We are handed a slip of paper printed with a lawyer's phone number.

The settlement will be called Nof Zahav, Golden View. It will have 600 housing units, a hotel and a synagogue. It will cut the Palestinian town of 5,000 in half. High-speed roads, open only to Israelis, will connect the settlement to East Jerusalem. Soldiers will be deployed to protect the settlers from their Palestinian neighbors.

Our Israeli colleagues explain their government annexed East Jerusalem after the 1967 war but the international community considers it occupied territory. The road map to peace being promoted by the Bush administration explicitly forbids building Israeli settlements here.

Uri Bank, a leader in the pro-settlement movement, told the Christian Science Monitor last month, "We break up the Arab continuity and their claim to East Jerusalem by putting in isolated islands of Jewish presence in the areas of Arab population. ... Our eventual goal is Jewish continuity in all of Jerusalem."

Bank concluded, "All these areas belong, first and foremost, if not only, to the Jewish people."

The Palestinians are right. It's not about security, it's a land grab.

It rained torrents the day before. When we get back on the bus, the mud from the golden hillside clings to our boots.

Back in Abu Dis, Mustafa explains the turmoil caused by this 1-kilometer stretch of the wall is a microcosm of the problems throughout the West Bank. One hundred and ninety kilometers of wall. One hundred and ninety stories like Abu Dis.

He calls his town Ghetto Abu Dis. He is angry.

His daughter, a vibrant 13-year-old in a baby blue sweat suit, takes charge of our group. At lunch, she advises us to mix yogurt with the fragrant lamb and rice, refills our soft drinks, makes sure we have napkins and can find the bathroom.

She has her nose buried in a novel, the latest young-adult fantasy by Tamora Pierce.

"She's the best. I'd tell you what it's about, but I'd have to start with the first book in the series for it to make sense," she says.

It's about young women with magical powers who work to make the world a better place. I want to hug her.

Back on the bus she asks, "Will anyone who is not on the bus please raise their hands?"

She breaks into a wide grin, snickering at her own joke. We laugh with her.

As she exits the bus she peeks over her shoulder and says, beaming, "I know you will all miss me, but you'll get over it."

No, I won't get over it.

Jesus wept because they knew not the way that makes for peace. I wept too.

Susan Ives can be reached at suives@texas.net.