Word: rafah
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...When she joined the talks, Israel was insisting that its own security personnel continue to screen the gateways, particularly the currently closed Rafah crossing linking Gaza to Egypt. The Israelis wanted to post surveillance cameras at the crossing to screen for suspicious individuals, weapons and even large sums of cash that could finance terror cells. But the Palestinians balked, arguing that this amounted to occupation by proxy...
Jamal Abu Samhadana meets visitors in a narrow first-floor room in the Gaza Strip town of Rafah, in a dwelling lit only by a small, battery-powered fluorescent strip. He proffers a misshapen right hand for a shake. Shrapnel from an Israeli tank shell broke Abu Samhadana's forearm in 2001. His hand looks caved in, his wrist bends grotesquely and his skin is unnaturally smooth and hairless, as though the limbs had been melted. For a tough guy like Abu Samhadana, such disfigurements are badges of authenticity. "Luckily," he says, "I shoot with my left hand...
...gain sinecures for his men in the Palestinian Authority's security forces. So far, he has been offered jobs for 500. That's not enough, he says, and complains that the remaining 1,500 "will be like the rest of the Palestinian people--unemployed." The town of Rafah is particularly desperate: it has a 66% unemployment rate, compared with 25% among Palestinians in general, and 81% of its residents live in poverty. Israel demolished thousands of homes near the border to prevent militants from digging tunnels beneath them that could be used to smuggle weapons into Gaza. The meager refugee...
...Israeli missile attack in February last year. Eight kids wearing green Hamas baseball caps jog out of the biggest settlement, Neveh Dekalim, dragging a looted telephone pole. At the gate of the southernmost settlement, Rafiah Yam, a youth pulls an uprooted banana tree toward his home in neighboring Rafah...
...disarm the fighters. Moving Again MIDDLE EAST Israel reopened a border crossing between Egypt and Gaza after having stranded thousands of Palestinians in the desert for three weeks. The Israelis closed the crossing on July 18 because of intelligence indicating that one of the Palestinian militant groups in Rafah intended to tunnel beneath it. About 20 tunnels, used to smuggle weapons between Rafah and Egypt, have been uncovered this year. One Tiny Step SAUDI ARABIA Government officials in Riyadh announced the country's first-ever nationwide elections, to choose half the members of 178 municipal councils, in three stages between...