Descriptive passage about West Bank settlement and road signage

area to settlements deep inside the northern half of the West Bank. Ramallah's skyline is barely discernible on a hazy day. Ateret, a red-gabled settlement of about 90 families that sits high above the Rawabi junction -- a community which would likely either be vacated or incorporated into a Palestinian state under a future peace agreement -- flickers in and out of view with every delirious knot in the road. Even a concrete pillbox looming over the highest point along the highway is abandoned, its connection to the territory's oddly invisible occupying army marked only by a tattered Israeli flag that no one has bothered to steal or replace. Last year was the first since 1973 in which no Israeli citizen was killed in a terrorist attack originating from the West Bank. As on the newly-pacified Gaza-Israel border, a tense quiet pervades things here, although a bright red sign at the junction reminds one category of motorist not to feel too complacent. "This road leads to Area 'A' Under the Palestinian Authority," it reads in Arabic, Hebrew, and broken English. "The entrance for Israeli citizens 1s forbidden, dangerous to your lives and is against the Israeli law." At the Rawabi junction these warnings of latent danger are almost comically off-base, partly because of the only other marker at the turnoff: a HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028705