Two native English-speaking families whose homes on a disputed West Bank hilltop have been slated for demolition in less than two months by Israel’s Supreme Court are expressing a range of emotions – from uncertainty, resignation and cautious optimism, to disappointment in a government and legal system they say has let them down.

“This isn’t a hilltop,” says Alex Traiman, a 32-year-old filmmaker from New York City, who politely but firmly corrects a reporter visiting their home in the Givat Ha’ulpana community of Beit El. “This is a neighborhood.”

Givat Ha’ulpana, adjacent to Ramallah, is just a stone’s throw from where it is believed the biblical patriarch Jacob dreamed of a ladder with ascending and descending angels. But its pastoral scene belies the tension that is brewing beneath the green gardens and rugged mountain terrain.

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Traveling up the idyllic mountain, with the 360-degree panoramic view of a smattering of Palestinian villages and Jewish communities, there’s no tangible sign that five two-story homes encased with facades of Jerusalem stone are at the heart of a bitter legal controversy threatening to destabilize the Likud government. As a result, the Supreme Court, which has ruled the structures were illegally built on Palestinian land, is now on a collision course with legislators in the Knesset and senior government ministers, who now plan to circumvent that ruling.

For more, go to Haaretz.com

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