Word: gaza
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...events didn't turn out quite that way; Abbas's departure underscores Arafat's continued centrality to the political process in the Palestinian Authority. If anything, the failure of the roadmap process to significantly alter the desperate plight of Palestinians living on the West Bank and Gaza actually restored and strengthened Arafat's standing among his own people...
...glacially slow progress of the road map was as responsible as anything for the breakdown. Palestinians, perhaps impatiently, had expected to see tangible improvement in their lives by signing on to the road map and the cease-fire. "We didn't agree to all this just to reopen the Gaza road," said a Hamas supporter a few weeks ago. Israelis, just as impatiently, expected the security forces of the Palestinian Authority, under Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, to arrest, disarm and dismantle Hamas and other militant bands. Neither side delivered, and each accused the other of purposefully stalemating progress...
...Palestinian Authority is in a jam. Gaza is up in arms, as angry at Abbas as at the Israelis. The targeted killing of a political leader--one considered rather moderate at that--outraged Palestinians in all factions and threatened to carry the violence to a terrible new level. A senior Israeli military official retorted that all Hamas leaders are equally at risk: "We don't distinguish between military and political levels in Hamas." Meanwhile, Hamas leaders went underground after calling for "Jewish blood to flood in the streets of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa." Alas, there is no road...
...calm, bearded 53-year-old I met at his Gaza home had bodyguards at his doors who impounded my cell phone before I got close to the boss. Abu Shanab was outspoken in his passionate support of violence. "The military wing is central to our resistance," he said. "They are more powerful than us, but we couldn't stand still to what Israel does to us without any reaction. We are sending the message that we are refusing to be occupied. Military victory is not possible, but the only alternative is surrender." When I asked how martyrdom advanced Hamas' aims...
...wondered how a man of his sophistication and education had come to such beliefs. "I was born in Gaza one year after my parents were expelled from their town," he answered. "From the day I opened my eyes, I faced Israeli threats all the time." Like most Palestinian men of his generation, he spent his formative years in Israel's prisons: eight years in an Ashkelon jail, two in a solitary cell underground. And like most of those exiled to the miseries of Gaza, he said he would never give up the right to return to his home village...