Posted on 10/29/2006 10:06:17 AM PST by SmithL
Jerusalem -- It would have been hard last week to imagine a more miserable place to celebrate the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr than the Gaza Strip.
"The feast was marked not by Palestinian children playing with fireworks, but the smell of burning tires in the streets and the flashes of bullets flying between Fatah and Hamas," Khaled Abu Toameh said in an interview, of the three-day festival marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan. Toameh, Palestinian commentator for the Jerusalem Post, added, "This was a very sad Eid."
More than a year after the historic destruction of Israel's settlements in Gaza and nine months after the elections that swept Hamas to power, the Palestinian economy is in ruins, rival militias are shooting each other in the streets, and Israeli troops are killing Palestinians almost daily as they try -- with conspicuous failure -- to end attacks against Israeli towns nearby and to stop arms smuggling from Egypt.
"We are starving. We want a solution, or else there will be a big explosion here," said Imad Abu Sabri, an officer in the Palestinian presidential guard Force 17, who celebrated the Eid festival with hundreds of colleagues by blocking streets and burning tires to protest the government's failure to pay its employees. "We live in one big prison surrounded by Israel, and we are beginning to get at each others' throats inside. Israel is killing Palestinians every day, and we are killing each other as well. We are headed toward self-destruction because of the economic crisis."
Naji Hussein, who works at the Palestinian Ministry of Communications, is one of approximately 140,000 civil servants whose salaries have not been paid for months.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
ping
Newsflash -- Agree that Israel has a right to exist, and to exist in peace. Stop the violence, and start arresting the violent.
Doesn't EVERY religion celebrate by burning tires and killing people??? ROP RIP.
140,000 Civil Servants! That would mean 10% of all people in the strip. If that included the West Bank's 2.1 Million, the govt worker rate would be 4%.
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Fixed it.
For a religion of peace, they don't seem very peaceful.
'Naji Hussein, who works at the Palestinian Ministry of Communications, is one of approximately 140,000 civil servants whose salaries have not been paid for months.'
140,000?!
I wonder how many 'civil servants' that is per square foot.
5 miles x 15 miles=75 square miles
75 / 140,000 = 1866 civil servants per square mile
They continue to blame outside forces for their problems. They are simply incapable of introspection and self criticism, possibly because of fear of reprisal. What you have here is a gang war fighting over control of the turf and its spoils.
The Palestinian violence problem is one of their own making. They legitimized violence as a first resort option to political problems long ago against Israel, and so violence is their natural inclination for internal political problems too, now that they have a political organization.
Having more or less money isn't the point or the problem - give them more money they will have more to fight over. They are already fighting over things such as who will control the graft at trade junctures, causing many closures due to security risk. Imagine how much fighting over western aid money earmarked for education, health, reconstruction etc.
They are not getting paid, true. But the reason they are not getting paid is because the aid money has dried up, because they are too busy fighting and unwilling to accept simple concepts that are in their current and long term interests. War with Israel may be in the interest of ideology, but ideology does not put food on the table or send your kids to college. So they are in no position to complain about their economic situation - they know exactly what they are doing and why. They do think that they can cry about their plight in order to get the aid money without having to give in on the ideology. Sadly, the west is trying very hard to allow them to play this game on us, finding ways to send money "indirectly". This only prolongues the inevitable choice and increases the odds of continued conflict.
Hey Abu. Look at a freaking map you idiot. You're not surrounded.
L
Sounds like the Arabs have turned their Palestine into a real celebration of Islam.
Even the Euros are sick of these dumbasses
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