Soon I find myself in a sophisticated robotics laboratory. A professor takes me through the equipment: there are police robots, bomb disposal robots, and tunnel robots, which are deployed in the weapons-smuggling tunnels between Gaza and Egypt, as well as in sewage infrastructure. He explains his and his colleagues' realisation that the human body is also essentially a tunnel system, and they are developing microscopic medical robots which are ingested, as well as operating robots which can be controlled remotely — even from another continent. From conversations with medical professionals back in the UK, I understand these developments are being watched with anticipation from abroad.

The professor lives in Hadera and commutes to Ariel. He has no personal qualms about working in the West Bank, and says that he is professionally unaffected, as most universities and academics abroad are keen to work with his department. The only drawback, he says, is funding, since the institution cannot apply for US or EU grants because of its location. Funding from the Israeli state is also difficult, the spokesperson adds, since such a substantial proportion of the budget goes to defence.

Looking around the laboratory and watching the students walking around campus with their satchels, as students do, and drinking at the coffee shops, Jews, Arabs and foreigners together, I find it difficult to imagine how and, indeed, why, such an institution could or should be "evacuated". This is not a tent or a caravan or even a house or an apartment block: it is a full-blown university that happens to be situated in a settlement. The notion that an academic institution that develops life-saving medical robots, that houses Israel's largest particle accelerator, that teaches Israelis and Arabs alongside one another, should be forced to close down, underscores the perversity of Middle Eastern geopolitics.

Back in the car, Naftali and I discuss the question of legality. At the international level, the issue is well-rehearsed: the Balfour Declaration which invited Jewish settlement throughout the area and which has not been superseded, the ambiguity of UN resolutions, dispute over the applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention, etc. But Naftali is more interested in the domestic situation.

When Jordan occupied the West Bank between 1949 and 1967, he relates, the government surveyed the area, noting which land was privately owned by Arabs, and designating the overwhelming majority of the territory, which was not privately owned, as state land. The Arabs tended to avoid building on hilltops, since the more elevated land is poorer. Hence, when the Israelis began building here following the Six-Day War, they built on top of the hills, not simply for strategic reasons but because that land was ownerless. And aside from isolated incidents, the settlers do not expropriate private Arab land. In any case, the Israeli government retains the power of eminent domain and also provides compensation, regardless of the identity of the owner. Moreover, only 6 per cent of the West Bank is even built up at all, so the notion of wholesale land theft seems dubious.