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Gazans Locked in Despair and Plagued by Disunity

(New York Times) Michael Slackman and Ethan Bronner - As if the Palestinian people did not have enough trouble, they have not one government but two, the Fatah-dominated one in the West Bank city of Ramallah and the Hamas one in Gaza. The antagonism between them offers a depth of rivalry and rage that shows no sign of abating. In Gaza City, a stage was set up for a rally protesting the electricity shortage and speakers shook nearby windows with the anthems of Hamas. Boys in military camouflage goose-stepped. Young men carried posters of a man with vampire teeth biting into a bloodied baby. The vampire was not Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. It was Salam Fayyad, prime minister of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. "We stand today in this furious night to express our intense anger toward this damned policy by the illegitimate so-called Fayyad government," Ismail Radwan, a Hamas official, shouted. There is a paradox at work in Gaza: while Hamas has no competition for power, it also has a surprisingly small following. Dozens of interviews with all sorts of people found few willing to praise their government or that of its competitor. "They're both liars," Waleed Hassouna, a baker in Gaza City, said in a very common comment. Ask Gazans how to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the answer is mostly a reflexive call to drive Israel out. Yet while most here view Israel as the enemy, they want trade ties and to work there.
2010-07-14 09:12:47
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