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Steel Curtain in the Judean hills

EFRAT, ISRAEL — Walk with a camera and a notebook into The Scoop ice cream shop in Efrat — an Israeli town near Palestinian Bethlehem — and the locals promptly ask: "So, which side are you on?"

Today, these particular ice cream seekers happen to have ties to Baltimore and Pittsburgh, but they're not talking about the Steelers-Ravens rivalry. They're in a town of roughly 1,000 Jewish families living in a rocky region separated from stabbing-wracked Jerusalem by walled-off roads that wind around or tunnel under older Palestinian villages, flanked in places by guard towers and high walls.