Word: deserts
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...Dabbagh has no doubt that if he builds it, they will come. The governor of the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA) is one of the brains behind King Abdullah Economic City, a $27 billion development rising out of the desert 100 km north of Jeddah, and he can already envision the arrival of its first residents. "It won't be long before it starts taking shape," he says, of the city that, when completed 20 years from now, will be roughly the size of Washington, D.C., with a population of more than 1.5 million...
...critics, the plan smacks of oil-fueled excess - of a piece with the mad dash across the Arabian peninsula, to build the tallest, biggest glitziest structures money can buy. Their coffers bulging with surpluses, many Persian Gulf states are turning their desert into one giant construction site. There's the City of Silk project in Kuwait, Dubailand in Dubai, and any number of ports, airports, universities and giant residential and industrial complexes coming up in Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and elsewhere. KAEC "is not a vanity project, but there is definitely a statement being made," says a Riyadh businessman...
When a contingent of U.S. soldiers opens a radar facility on a mountaintop in the Negev desert next month, Israel will for the first time in its 60-year history have a permanent foreign military base on its soil. And despite the early warning that the American radar would provide if Iran launches a missile attack on Israel, some senior Israeli officials are nonetheless wary about its presence. Complained one top official, "It's a like a pair of golden handcuffs on Israel...
...This is an act of banditry, not of terrorism.' EGYPTIAN TOURISM MINISTRY, in a statement after gunmen kidnapped 19 tourists and their guides during an Egyptian desert safari...
...That brings me to my second point. There are considerable difficulties in understanding it because of two false images, which are widespread. On the one hand we have the image of Muslims as barbarians, the traditional image of a Saracen riding out of the desert on horseback with a sword in one hand and a Koran in the other offering their victims a choice between the two. On the other hand we have Islam as a religion of love and peace, like the Quakers but without their aggressiveness. Both of these are, of course, nonsense. Both are wildly exaggerated...