Word: kalkilya
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...scars now remain in Kalkilya of that blistering June day in 1967 when Israel almost wiped it off the map. The old frontier is a rusting jumble of barbed wire and garbage, and the village has the same sleepy, slightly disheveled air that it had before. Men wearing the keffiyeh, the traditional black and white checkered headdress, sit around in circles drinking muddy Turkish coffee and playing shesh-besh (backgammon). The muezzin of the large Moslem mosque snoozes on a straw mat, waking periodically to give the wailing call to prayer...
Nonetheless, Kalkilya's residents have undergone profound social, economic and psychological changes since 1967. Although Israeli rule has been relatively unobtrusive, the grenade-proof headquarters of the military governor and his platoon of soldiers serves as an irritating reminder that Kalkilyans do not control their own destiny...
Still, the situation is not all bad. Kalkilya's economic links with Israel have brought the community a degree of prosperity that it has never known before. Early each morning, several thousand men assemble near the marketplace and pile on to scores of buses and trucks that take them to work in Israel. There they earn up to $17 a day in construction work and other manual-labor jobs-four or five times what they used to make in the citrus groves. So prized are the skilled Arab hands that some Jewish foremen in the nearby Israeli town...
Later in the morning there is a surge of traffic in the other direction as shoppers from Kfar Saba and other Israeli towns pour into the Kalkilya market to buy vegetables, fruit and textiles, which cost 20% less than comparable items in Israel. One Arab merchant, when asked if he had been able to make any Israeli friends, smiled and said: "Oh yes, I have many Israeli friends. They come and buy in my shops every week...
...this has resulted in a vastly improved standard of living for the people of Kalkilya. The town was tied into Israel's electricity grid last year after Kalkilya's old generators broke down and there was no way to get new ones from Jordan. And laborers can now afford such luxuries as television sets and gas stoves. About the only ones who have not profited are the citrus growers, who complain that they are unable to compete with Israeli industries in the high wage market. "If we speak sharply to the workers," complains Mustafa Hussein Nazzal, Kalkilya...