The Helou family is so worried about getting expelled to Gaza by Israeli authorities that they're all but trapped in this West Bank town. They couldn't even leave to get their disabled son the best possible surgery to let him walk.
Some 20,000 Palestinians in the West Bank live under the same fear, because they hold residency papers from the Gaza Strip and Israeli authorities refuse to allow their papers to be updated - though they have lived in the West Bank for years.
Israel eased its blockade on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip this month by allowing more goods into the territory. But the embargo is just one of the many restrictions imposed on Palestinians and their movement - including rules effectively locking them into whichever of the two, widely separated territories they were born in, the West Bank or Gaza.
Fears of families like the Helous that they'll be thrown out of their homes have only increased since recent Israeli military rules branded those living in the territory without residency papers as "infiltrators" subject to prison or expulsion. The rules enshrine the military's on-and-off policy for the past decade.
Moving within the West Bank runs the risk of running into the more than 500 Israeli military checkpoints that carve up the tiny territory - about the size of Connecticut - and being discovered by soldiers.
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