Word: gaza
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...support a maze of security services. It is estimated that Arafat and his corrupt cronies pocketed almost half of the seven billion dollars in foreign aid contributed to the Palestinian Authority. Sadly, only ten percent of the Palestinian state budget ever reached the residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip who desperately need basic government services. While Fatah members fattened their wallets and drained the funds that were meant to build a country, Hamas filled the vacuum by providing healthcare, education, and social-welfare services. Whereas Fatah was corrupt and hollow, the Palestinian population began to see Hamas...
...long history of brutally murdering innocent civilians is capable of such fundamental change. However, to draw an incomplete parallel, at the start of Ariel Sharon’s term as Prime Minister of Israel, no one would have ever predicted that he would advocate an Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip. When asked how his political beliefs as Prime Minister had changed so drastically from his far-right days as founder of the Likud Party, Sharon replied, “things look different from here than they do from there.” Maybe Hamas will also see things differently...
...Likud's list of candidates, a reflection of his weakness in the party, Sharon made him Deputy Prime Minister. In that role Olmert acted as Sharon's foil, floating trial balloons before Sharon signed on to them--the most notable being the plan to evacuate settlers from the Gaza Strip last year, an idea first proposed by Olmert in a newspaper interview in 2003. But despite Olmert's loyalty, friends say, he never felt accepted by the Israeli leader. Sharon excluded Olmert from high-level meetings at his ranch in the Negev desert; a close ally of Olmert...
Olmert's desire to step out of his predecessor's shadow may have influenced his campaign pledge to initiate a withdrawal from parts of the West Bank by 2010. After the relative success of the Gaza pullout and the rise to power of Hamas in the Palestinian territories, many Israelis have abandoned faith in peace negotiations with the Palestinians in favor of unilateral moves. But withdrawing from the West Bank, which is home to 230,000 settlers, may prove more wrenching than it was in Gaza. "Sharon never meant to go as far as Olmert is proposing," says Natan Sharansky...
...USAID signs in the West Bank and Gaza portray American aid as a “gift from the American people to the Palestinian people.” If that aid is conditional on the way Palestinians vote, it is less a gift than a bribe...