Word: gaza
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There is not much to Netzarim, the Jewish settlement in the heart of the Gaza Strip. Amid a neat grid of white cottages, a few patches of grass struggle against the native sand. There is a cluster of trailer homes, some chicken yards, hothouses for lettuce, and a patch of mango trees. Netzarim is a tiny community of just 32 families -- 180 people -- but it is the cause of great commotion. As the most vulnerable of the Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, Netzarim and the Israeli army contingent that guards it have become favorite targets for Palestinian militants. Over...
...something out of Israel, you have to sit down and talk." Under the limited self-rule agreement that Israel signed with Yasser Arafat, the fate of all the settlements is to be decided in negotiations, scheduled to begin by April 1996, on the final status of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank...
Unlike Gush Khatif, a block of Jewish communities at the southern fringe of the Gaza Strip, home to most of the 4,000 Israeli settlers in the zone, Netzarim is in an area of dense Arab population on the outskirts of Gaza City. Down the road sits the Palestinian village of al-Mograka, whose residents chafe at the restrictions that Netzarim's presence imposes on them. "People will never accept the settlement here," says Nasr Azzam, who runs the local general store. "It is a strange body and a symbol of the occupation...
...graffiti that covered the white concrete walls of Gaza City during the Israeli occupation are back. Freshly scrawled slogans denounce and threaten in language as bloodcurdling as that used during the intifadeh -- only this time Palestinians are cursing one another, not Israel. RATS, RETURN TO YOUR HOLES, OR ELSE, the Fatah faction warns the more militant Hamas group, which replies, A TRAITOR IS HE WHO FIRED AT OUR PEOPLE. On another wall is the vow FATAH ZEALOTS WILL CHOP OFF THE HEADS OF CONSPIRATORS. Hamas' counterwarning: THE RETRIBUTION WILL COME WITHOUT YOU EVEN HEARING...
...much for the notion of Palestinian unity. Bloody Friday took care of that the day two weeks ago when the security forces of Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority opened fire on Hamas supporters and the Islamic Jihad rioting outside the Palestine Mosque in Gaza City and provoked street battles that killed 13 people and left 200 wounded. A few days later, in a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon, Arafat loyalists were fighting other opponents of the peace deal with Israel, this time dissidents within Fatah. While infighting in Lebanon is an old phenomenon, in the Gaza Strip...