Mohammad Nabil, a 28-year-old manager of his Ramallah family's agricultural products store, was able to sleep in on this early February morning. Instead of having to wake up at 3 a.m. to go to the West Jerusalem products market to sample and buy various fruits and vegetables and load them up on trucks that have official import permits from the Palestinian government, he had to do something else this morning.
He woke up at 6 a.m. and instead of going by truck, he and his nephew took their private car and drove to a designated location near the Palestinian town of al-Ram where they met with the driver of a truck carrying Israeli produce.