I was interested to find Palestinians objecting to the settlements partly on aesthetic grounds: far uglier to look at than anything by Bovis or Wimpy, they ruin the hilltops they stand on. There is no word in Arabic for "landscape", but as every exile, refugee or returnee will tell you there is a profound feeling for scenic beauty, which to a Palestinian means not just almond blossom and olive groves but bare rock and empty skylines. The settler hill forts, with their watchtowers, lookout posts, security cameras, coiled wire and fortification, are an affront to indigenous taste.The use of Palestinian stoneworkers on low wages to build the settlements is another affront. But the deeper objection to the settlements is, of course, territorial. They encroach on land deemed, by international law, to be Palestinian.

When the Oslo accords were signed four years ago, there was an expectation not just that Israeli troops would have withdrawn from the West Bank by now but that the building of new settlements would have stopped But their number grows inexorably each year. And everywhere you look new settler-only roads are being bulldozered to link them, so that (the ultimate dream) a Jew might live here without ever having to see an Arab.I was surprised to find that there are also settlements throughout the Gaza Strip: 19 of them, the largest concentration occupying almost half the coastline. Though the settlers are few in number here, they have the benefit not only of space but of water: much of the limited water in Gaza goes to their homes, which creates a problem for the refugee camps, where water is scarce, the population density is among the highest in the world (21,142 people per sq km), and only 35 per cent of homes are connected to sewers.Because it is now controlled by the Palestinian National Authority, Gaza is much less tense than it was during the intifada, but the camps are little changed - there are still open drains, dirt roads, barefoot children. In one of the Middle Camps, I made an impromptu visit to a school. In the playground veiled girls in jeans and with platform heels were playing basketball.

Inside I asked two classes (50 or more pupils in each) about their lessons, and was told by one girl that she was learning English "in order to know the language of the enemy". Then the girls asked me questions: what did I think of the Balfour Declaration? Did people in Britain understand what conditions are like in Palestine? Could I promise to write something when I went back? The girls were 13 They weren't being "political". They were talking about the stuff of their daily lives.Among the rights denied to people in Gaza is that of being able to leave the strip in order to work, study, get medical treatment or visit relations in the West Bank. For me it was easy to leave, in a diplomatic car belonging to the British Council. But my driver was Palestinian, the car had to be searched and it took an hour. Standing there, among the surly troops with their clanking weaponry and mobile phones, I found the Oslo idea of preserving the "integrity" of Gaza and the West Bank, and of constructing free and "safe passages" between them, laughably remote.The settlements are like inner colonies, prisons within the prison. If Benjamin Netanyahu shows no sign of discouraging their growth, it's not surprising.

The settlements are a useful bargaining tool: thanks to them, he can offer to surrender cards that weren't in his hand in Oslo and up his bid for the ultimate prize: Jerusalem. When he succeeded Sir John as chairman in December he said: "I used to stand on the terraces dreaming of being the right-back, never the chairman."But, as he stepped into the retiring Sir John's shoes, he could not have dreamed in his worst nightmares that three months later the fans would want Fred out - and Douglas too. It never achieved its purported power-to-the-people aim - the public share issue it championed was an aborted embarrassment in 1990 - but it put Hall and his son in the boardroom, and Shepherd too. A former Gallowgate Ender whose family fortunes were made in the scrap- metal trade, Shepherd was - until last Sunday - invariably portrayed as Fred the Fan.