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"Commerce prospered and the city was flourishing," Sharif enthuses, in Arabic. "And we were also fighting terrorism. We started meeting with the Israeli army and solving all the problems at the table. At the weekends, Tul Karm was full of Israeli families who used to come and shop. Here everything is cheaper and better. The Jews would return home with wide smiles on their faces. The years from 1996 until 2000," when the intifada erupted, "were a golden era for us."

That tells it all! And not a word of thanks to Arafat, for starting his "intifada"!

Maybe the years from 2005 onwards will be the new golden era for them,,, We can only hope!

It's no secret that the second intifada impacted the majority of the palestinians more than anyone else. Many of them are living in abject poverty and misery. They can't get to the jobs that they had in Israel and they have no other source of income.

On the other hand there are the professional refugees who have been supported by the UN for three generations - for whom new flats are being built at the moment. These people have the most to lose if there is ever a palestinian state or a real peace in the Middle East.

A third group are those who have some mysterious source of income and have built themselves very comfortable villas during the past few years.