Word: nablus
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Matt Rees: This has been part of the Palestinian Authority's reaction to Tuesday's strike on Hamas leaders in Nablus. Four alleged collaborators were sentenced to death for cases that reach back as far as last December. Four more Palestinians accused of collaborating with the Israelis have also simply been killed in the past three days, one of them just this past lunchtime. And we're likely to see a lot more of these, because a major focus of Palestinian rage following the latest Israeli attacks has been the ideas that without the support of Palestinian collaborators, the Israelis...
...Domestically, his position is very tricky. I attended the funeral in Nablus earlier this week, and the images I saw - large numbers of gunmen, militiamen riding around in trucks and so on had more than a whiff of Lebanon in the 1970s. And that's a serious problem for Arafat. When you take that rising militancy together with the anger expressed at Arafat's own administration for not protecting Palestinians fighting intifiada, it appears that his control has been severely weakened. Early on in the intifada, I believe he could have stopped it immediately if he really wanted...
...floor. More than 800 feet above the dusty camp, on the lush peak of Mount Gerizim, a monumental structure is rising, half Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, half Taj Mahal. It is the new home of a leading member of the Masri family, the most powerful and wealthy clan in Nablus. It is a reminder, too, of the differences between the unruly refugee camp and the Palestinian metropolis in the West Bank, and a symbol of the extreme tensions that exist within Palestinian society, riven these days between rich and poor, Christian and Muslim and dozens of other fractures. Even...
Between Balata and Nablus, the road bumps down a mile-long stretch of chop shops where cars stolen from Israel are gutted for parts. Arafat's police don't dare touch these garages. "It's a free-trade zone," jokes Khader. Outside the door of his second-floor office, Nablus mayor Ghassan Shaka'a keeps two guards armed with Kalashnikovs. Smartly dressed in a checkered sports jacket, Shaka'a is a member of the executive committee of the P.L.O., a confidant of Arafat's. "Balata is not against me," he says, laughing dismissively. Out on the street, however, he rarely...
Balata and Nablus are not the only Palestinian communities torn by internal conflict. Tribal, social and regional enmities throughout the Palestinian territories grow more violent by the day. The intifadeh was supposed to free Palestinians from Israeli occupation, but it is fast pushing them into crime, poverty and gang war. Since the arrival of the Palestinian Authority seven years ago, the society of the West Bank and Gaza Strip has been cracking under the dual strains of Arafat's corrupt rule and continued occupation by Israel. The intifadeh took those fissures and blew them apart. This semi-anarchy has alarming...