Where lines of demarcation are etched by deep disputes – think Kashmir, Cyprus, Northern Ireland, Gaza – a sense of “othering” can color life. Suspicion can flare into anger and violence, especially when regional powers decide to blow on the embers.

On another level, though, the natural order is generally something different. Taylor Luck reports today from a fertile valley that includes a sliver of at least nominally demilitarized land in Syria’s Daraa province. There he found people who simply want to farm, but who now feel pushed “to the point of Palestinians,” as one farmer says. It’s a rich study in human life, disrupted but determined, along a geopolitical fault line.