"That's my house," says the UN hospital administrator in Qalqilya, pointing at a squat concrete building that's abutting the compound. Qalqilya has the dubious distinction of being the Palestinian town that's entirely surrounded - and therefore potentially cut off from the outside world, like Gaza - by the Israeli security wall.

"Do you see that blue door?" she asks, pointing at a little metal door, perhaps about three feet tall, that's built into the hospital's wall. "I used to take that to get to work every day during the Israeli incursions at the time of the second intifada." "That must make it hard to get any rest." "Oh, yes, people would constantly knock on the door, even if I didn't answer my mobile phone, always needing things. I used to have to take the oxygen cylinders to Jerusalem to have them filled. Each trip would take three days!"


My commute doesn't seem so bad anymore...