Word: erez
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...Erez Crossing looks like the empty set of a sci-fi film, an alien spaceship that crashed into a field of rubble. This gleaming metal structure is the sole entry and exit point for human traffic between Israel and Gaza, a territory of 1.5 million Palestinians held by Hamas Islamic militants. Erez was built in more optimistic times, when it was envisioned that every day 30,000 Palestinian laborers, merchants and students would be flowing in and out of Israel...
...Today, Erez operates in a political twilight zone. Hamas and Israel seek each other's destruction, and the devastated landscape of blasted-out buildings and shell craters around Erez bears the scars of this conflict. As one Erez security official says: "We're the last line of defense against the suicide bomber coming into Israel...
...commander of the unit, there have been fewer collaborators spying on Hamas for Israel, and Israeli strikes have hence dwindled. Qassam Brigade soldiers have been able to operate with relative impunity. Later Abu Ahmed takes me to a Qassam Brigade position a couple of hundred yards from the Erez crossing into Israel. Soon an Israeli surveillance drone starts buzzing overhead, and we leave quickly, back over the sand dunes into Gaza City. On the streets patrolled by Mushtaha and his men, all may seem peaceful. But at night, the war between Hamas and Israel continues...
...burn victim from Gaza, went routinely to an Israeli hospital where she received free medical treatment as a humanitarian gesture. Militants convinced her and her family that since she was disfigured she would never get married and that she was better off becoming a martyr. A surveillance camera at Erez checkpoint captured al-Biss's anguish and desperation when her suicide belt failed to go off. Later, crying, she told journalists, "Maybe I have been used" by the recruiters. Al-Biss intended to blow up the very doctors and nurses who had been treating her burns...
Expect nothing to come of the latest proposed Israeli-Palestinian talks, and you're unlikely to be disappointed. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres are scheduled to meet sometime this week, probably at the Erez border crossing between Israel and Gaza. And that prompted Palestinian militants at the weekend to repeat a familiar pattern of launching a frenzy of attacks as a form of "veto" over any new moves towards a cease-fire. Five Israelis were killed and 80 wounded in two separate suicide bombings and a drive-by shooting on Saturday, and Israel responded Sunday...