Word: gaza
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...Tunisia. The fact of his imprisonment by Israel after being convicted of terrorism - he didn't bother to defend himself, dismissing not only the charges but the court's right to try him - has done nothing to diminish his allure on the streets of the West Bank and Gaza, where Abbas and his fellow "Old Guard" leaders are widely viewed with suspicion, if not outright hostility...
...hoping he might accept. Indeed, nothing has hurt Abbas quite as much in the eyes of the Palestinian electorate as the poorly disguised enthusiasm for the Palestinian moderate on the part of the Bush administration - anti-American sentiment is as high, if not higher, in the West Bank and Gaza as it is in most other parts of the Arab world...
...patronage to run the Palestinian Authority. It was the first intifadah, which raged from 1987 to 1991, that did more than anything else to ensure Arafat's triumphant return to the West Bank under the Oslo agreements, but the local leadership of Fatah in the West Bank and Gaza, who had risked and sacrificed the most to wage that struggle, were largely overlooked when Arafat staffed the new administration with cronies from Tunis, who in many cases conspicuously used their new positions to enrich themselves...
...allowed him to restore his standing as the symbolic personification of Palestinian nationalism, which put him beyond reproach by the militants pressing for changes in the PA. But his heirs among the "Tunisians" enjoy no such immunity, and widespread resentment over corruption and cronyism in the West Bank and Gaza tends to play to the political advantage of the militants - and even of Hamas, which is viewed as more incorruptible than the PA leadership - and against Abbas and his backers. Indeed, a Barghouti candidacy, had it been announced earlier, may have tempted Hamas to support him rather than boycott...
...growing anxieties about whether Abbas, a moderate who took over as chairman of the P.L.O. after Arafat's death, can survive the runup to the election for a new President, scheduled for Jan. 9. Two days after Arafat's funeral, gunmen opened fire inside a mourning tent in Gaza where Abbas was appearing, killing two of his bodyguards. Senior officials from Fatah, the main faction of the P.L.O., told TIME they are worried that more attempts to kill Abbas will be staged by groups within Fatah opposed to his election. Then there is the issue of the election's legitimacy...