Word: gaza
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...sons and brothers they had not seen in weeks and might not see again. The 13 gunmen most wanted by Israel were flown to Cyprus, on their way into exile in Europe and possibly Canada. Twenty-six others, considered less dangerous, were handed over to Palestinian authorities in the Gaza Strip, while the rest of the captives, excluding the clerics, were interrogated by the Israelis, then released...
...leave the church. "The men sent abroad were heartbroken and crying," says Mazin Hussain, 28, an officer in the Palestinian Authority's drug-prevention unit. "They sacrificed themselves so the siege could end, for the sake of the people of Bethlehem." When the group of 26 militants entered Gaza by bus, they were greeted like returning heroes by the crowd lining the streets. That evening, military intelligence's Shatara, 23, chatted by cell phone with his girlfriend back in Bethlehem. "Yes, I've had a bath," he told her. "Yes, yes, yes, I've had a bath...
...Oslo mandated the creation of a large armed Palestinian security force, both to maintain order and, to fulfill the agreement's requirement that the PA deploy its own forces to protect Israel's security from attack by Palestinians. Arafat ultimately created 12 separate security structures in Gaza and the West Bank, each answerable directly to himself. That allowed Arafat to play off potential rivals against one another and prevent the emergence of any significant challengers...
...political. The aging PLO leader and his inner circle are mostly products of decades of Palestinian exile, men brought Arafat back with him from Tunisia to staff the top tier of the PA. But in the course of their 1987-1991 intifada, the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza had evolved a strong local leadership, and many of these younger men were resentful at being overlooked in favor of the Tunisians. The grassroots Fatah leaders are generally more militant than those around Arafat, fiercely critical of the corruption and authoritarianism that became the hallmark of his administration, and impatient...
...four-year term limit, be prevented from engaging in Palestinian domestic politics and also from "having contact with the Israeli side without the consent of the Palestinian political leadership." Such an arrangement would certainly throw a spoke into current Israeli efforts to cultivate ties with favored strongmen, such as Gaza security chief Mohammed Dahlan. And it's a sign that the Israelis and Palestinians have very different expectations of how a reformed PA would behave. Another is the legislators' demand that Arafat close the State Security Court, a tribunal whose decisions can't be appealed. Israel and the U.S. have...