Gaza Strip

AFTER reading the article "Palestinians tear into Gaza Strip," I can appreciate their happiness that they are getting their own land and state. I do, however, think it is horrible that they set synagogues on fire. This show of barbarianism in the final phase of Gaza withdrawal makes me have grave concerns for their future success. The Palestinian police did nothing to control their people or protect the buildings. I hope that these uncontrolled and terrorist-like actions were not a foreshadowing of the future because any aspirations of a healthy Palestinian state will also go up in smoke, like the synagogues.

In the darkness, an hour before the dawn, Mohammad Said Ali, 30 years old and the father of six, is standing by the side of the road, waiting for the bus that will take him to work at a construction site, across the border in Israel. For years, he has been making the grueling, daily journey to Israel from the occupied Gaza strip, waking at 3 in the morning, returning at 6 in the evening, taking home $15 a day or so after taxes and transportation. He has considered himself fortunate, compared to his neighbors in the Jabaliya refugee camp, where 80,000 people, most of them children, are crammed into an area of less than two square miles, without benefit of sewers.

An American relief worker kidnapped by suspected Palestinian extremists in the Gaza Strip was freed today, about 30 hours after he was taken hostage, Arab reporters said. Christopher George, 37, director of the Save the Children Federation for the West Bank and Gaza Strip, was abducted from his office in broad daylight yesterday by Arabs demanding the release of prisoners arrested during the Palestinian uprising. "He was released unharmed. He's fine and he's gone off with American diplomats," a U.N. official said.

The Israeli army imposed a dawn-to-dusk curfew yesterday on a town in the occupied Gaza strip after police clashed with Palestinians at the funeral of a student killed by Israeli troops. In the occupied West Bank, anti-Israeli protests continued for a second day as demonstrators chanting "Israel No! PLO!" hurled rocks at Israeli troops in Ramallah, Bethlehem and Tulkarem. Army spokesmen said that in some areas protesters set up roadblocks and burned gasoline-soaked tires. No injuries or arrests were reported.

The Israeli army ended a travel ban between the Gaza strip and Israel yesterday, allowing thousands of Arabs to cross into Israel from the occupied territory, on a day described by an army spokesman as one of the quietest of the five-month-old Palestinian uprising. But an Arab reporter, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said four Arab protesters were clubbed by Israeli soldiers and then dumped along Gaza's main highway yesterday. The reporter said the four, ranging in age from 16 to 22, said they were detained during protests in Gaza City, then beaten and thrown out of a truck several miles away.

The two soldiers, one Israeli, one Palestinian, share their meals, spreading the contents of their roadside lunches onto a makeshift wooden table converted from an industrial cable spool. As usual, Israeli Lt. Roy Beckerman snatches the flat Arabic bread brought by his counterpart, preferring it to his own sliced bread. Palestinian Officer Abu Tariq grabs the Western bread he has come to enjoy. Over the last two years, the men's sun-bleached tent has been a laboratory for a radical experiment in cooperation.

Mustafa Elkhir remembers when he used to get up at 3 a.m., load his refrigerated van with a fresh catch of red mullet and grouper, and earn $1,000 selling the fish to Tel Aviv restaurants and hotels. These days, though, he can sleep late. Confined to Gaza by electric fences and armed Israeli and Palestinian troops, Elkhir, 40, a fishmonger, must content himself with a small stall buzzing with flies in impoverished Gaza's fish market. "There are days lately that I'm selling 50 shekels' [$12]

Sitting alone amid a sea of resentful Palestinians, Netzarim, Israel's most isolated Gaza Strip settlement, is accessible only by joining an armored military convoy that rolls hourly over two lanes of broken blacktop that are swept each morning for roadside bombs. The dusty road west from Israel to the 625-acre settlement crosses parched, skillet-flat farm fields, then enters the Gaza Strip through a gated, electrified fence. It swings south past dilapidated Palestinian houses, then west again at barren Netzarim Junction, where an early battle of the intifadah produced the searing image of Palestinian boy shot dead as his father tried to shield him. It's near the spot where the first Israeli soldier killed in the uprising fell.

REIM MILITARY BASE, Israel - Weeks after a new round of fighting with Gaza militants subsided, a senior Israeli military official said Sunday that Israel was ready and able to topple the territory's Hamas government, though it has no immediate plans to do so. The official also said Gaza militants have steadily built up an already formidable arsenal, in part with weapons smuggled out of Libya, and now have rockets capable of striking Tel Aviv,...

Israeli soldiers fired tear gas grenades at Palestinian protesters in the Gaza Strip today, and a 3-year-old girl who inhaled the gas died, Arab reports and Israel radio said. The army command confirmed the child's death but said the cause could not exactly be determined. Also today, two Palestinian teen-agers shot by Israeli soldiers during clashes in the occupied West Bank died, hospital officials and Israel radio said. A 14-year-old youth, Amin Rajab Abu Radaha, died at Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital of a wound to his head suffered Wednesday during a protest in the West Bank refugee camp of Jalazone, Israel radio and Arab reports said.

Gaza leader leaves for Muslim states GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh left the territory Sunday on his first trip abroad since his Hamas movement seized power in 2007, hoping to improve ties with Muslim countries swept up in the uprisings convulsing the Arab world. His deputy, Mohammed Awwad, said Haniyeh would visit Egypt, Sudan, Qatar, Bahrain, Tunisia, and Turkey. He said Haniyeh would discuss possible development projects for Gaza and the West Bank, as well as Israeli construction in disputed Jerusalem and progress toward reconciling the dueling governments of the two Palestinian territories.

JERUSALEM - Palestinian extremists fired at least 11 rockets into Israel on Friday after an airstrike against a Hamas target in the Gaza Strip killed a Palestinian civilian and his 12-year-old son. The rockets landed in Israeli territory but caused no casualties, Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. Earlier Friday, Israel carried out multiple airstrikes against Hamas facilities in Gaza. One damaged a house next to a targeted site, killing a civilian, Bahajat Zaalan, 42, and wounding several members of his family, according to Gaza health official Adham Abu Salmia.

REIM MILITARY BASE, Israel - Weeks after a new round of fighting with Gaza militants subsided, a senior Israeli military official said Sunday that Israel was ready and able to topple the territory's Hamas government, though it has no immediate plans to do so. The official also said Gaza militants have steadily built up an already formidable arsenal, in part with weapons smuggled out of Libya, and now have rockets capable of striking Tel Aviv,...

RAMALLAH, West Bank - The Palestinian president said Friday he would ask the U.N. Security Council next week to endorse his people's decades-long quest for statehood but emphasized that he did not seek to isolate or delegitimize Israel. Mahmoud Abbas' plan to seek full membership at United Nations and bypass negotiations with Israel sets the stage for a diplomatic confrontation with Israel and the United States, which has indicated it would veto the measure in the Security Council.

EILAT, ISRAEL - Gunmen who crossed from the Egyptian desert launched a series of attacks yesterday in southern Israel, killing eight people and threatening to destabilize a volatile border region that includes the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip and the increasingly lawless Sinai Peninsula. Israel blamed an armed Palestinian group from neighboring Gaza. Israeli forces killed five of the gunmen along the border with Egypt, the military said, and later launched an air strike inside Gaza that killed five other militants from the same group as well as a child.

JERUSALEM - Israeli naval vessels on Tuesday seized a French-flagged protest boat carrying 16 pro-Palestinian passengers as it tried to break through Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip. Israeli officials said the takeover occurred without the kind of violence and bloodshed that erupted more than a year ago, when nine Turkish activists on a similar protest flotilla were shot and killed by Israeli commandos who came under attack by passengers as the troops dropped onto the vessel from military helicopters.

Israel wants safety, not expansion A letter on July 3 ("What Israel and U.S. have in common") accused Israel of using the Gaza Strip in the way the United States used Native American reservations. But Israel would not have locked down the Gaza Strip if its inhabitants were not firing rockets into Israel on a regular basis. Moreover, Israel does not share the idea of manifest destiny with the United States. Manifest destiny is defined as "the 19th-century American belief that the United States was destined to expand across the North American continent, from the Atlantic Seaboard to the Pacific Ocean.

ATHENS, Greece - Organizers of a flotilla to challenge Israel's sea blockade of the Gaza Strip say they'll sail any day now, but they are struggling to overcome delays that they attribute to Israeli pressure. They have held regular news conferences to talk up their campaign, but they are so cautious that they will not say where their boats are docked. Dire warnings and diplomatic sensitivities shadow the politically charged plan to deliver aid to the Palestinian territory. The fear is a reprise of a similar mission a year ago that ended when nine activists on a Turkish vessel died in a raid by Israeli commandos.