NY Times reports: Tunneling KFC to Gazans Craving the World Outside

GAZA CITY — The French fries arrive soggy, the chicken having long since lost its crunch. A 12-piece bucket goes for about $27 here — more than twice the $11.50 it costs just across the border in Egypt.

And for fast-food delivery, it is anything but fast: it took more than four hours for the KFC meals to arrive here on a recent afternoon from the franchise where they were cooked in El Arish, Egypt, a journey that involved two taxis, an international border, a smuggling tunnel and a young entrepreneur coordinating it all from a small shop here called Yamama — Arabic for pigeon.

“It’s our right to enjoy that taste the other people all over the world enjoy,” said the entrepreneur, Khalil Efrangi, 31, who started Yamama a few years ago with a fleet of motorbikes ferrying food from Gaza restaurants, the first such delivery service here.

There are no name-brand fast-food franchises on this 140-square-mile coastal strip of 1.7 million Palestinians, where the entry and exit of goods and people remain restricted and the unemployment rate is about 32 percent. Passage into Egypt through the Rafah crossing is limited to about 800 people a day, with men 16 to 40 years old requiring special clearance. Traveling through the Erez crossing into Israel requires a permit and is generally allowed only for medical patients, businessmen and employees of international organizations.

Palestinians generally refer to Gaza as being under siege or blockade by Israel, and isolation from the world is among the most common complaints of people here. That can create an intense longing for what those outside Gaza see as mundane, or ordinary.

“The irregular circumstances in Gaza generate an irregular way of thinking,” explained Fadel Abu Heen, a professor of psychology at Al Aqsa University in Gaza City. “They think of anything that is just behind the border, exactly as the prisoner is thinking of anything beyond the bars.”

Professor Abu Heen noted that when Hamas, the militant Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip, breached the border with Egypt in 2008, during the height of the Israeli siege, thousands of Gazans flooded into El Arish and bought not just medicine and food staples but cigarettes, candy and things they did not need — just to show they had managed to bring something back from outside. Breaking the blockade, then and now, is seen as part of resisting the Israeli enemy, giving a sense of empowerment and control to people here, even if it comes in the form of fried chicken.

Even as Israel has relaxed restrictions on imports over the past few years, hundreds of illegal tunnels have flourished in Rafah. Weapons and people are smuggled underground, but so are luxury cars, construction materials and consumer goods like iPads and iPhones. And now: KFC.

Formerly called Kentucky Fried Chicken, a KFC franchise opened in El Arish, just over Gaza’s southern border, in 2011, and in the West Bank city of Ramallah last year. That, along with ubiquitous television advertisements for KFC and other fast-food favorites, has given Gazans a hankering for Colonel Sanders’s secret recipe.

Read more at NY Times.

Rocket explodes in open area in Sdot Negev Regional Council; no injuries reported; Israeli aircraft retaliate with attacks on terror facility, arms cache in southern Strip

A rocket fired by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza late Saturday night toward the Sdot Negev Regional Council exploded in an open area, near a local community, as Israelis were celebrating Lag B’Omer. There were no reports of injury or damage.

The exact landing site of the rocket has yet to be located. A few hours after the rocket attack, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit announced that Israeli aircraft attacked overnight Sunday a terror facility and a weapons cache in south Gaza. Direct hits were confirmed. The army said the aerial strikes came in response to the rocket fire from the Hamas-ruled territory.

More: Rocket Fired at Negev; IDF Strikes in Gaza - Israel News, Ynetnews

Israel launched an air strike on the Palestinian Gaza Strip on Tuesday, the first such attack since an eight-day war in November, Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the territory, and Israel’s military said.

“Occupation planes bombarded an open area in northern Gaza, there were no wounded,” a statement from the Hamas Interior Ministry said. An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed there had been a strike in Gaza, but gave no further details.

Israel and Hamas agreed to an Egyptian-mediated truce in November, after eight days of fighting, in which 170 Palestinians and six Israelis were killed.

Israel launched the 2012 offensive with the declared aim of ending Palestinian rocket fire into its territory.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Israeli military said Palestinians launched three rockets at Israel. Two landed in Gaza and one hit an open area in southern Israel, causing no damage or injuries.

No Palestinian group claimed responsibility for the rockets.

More: Israel Launches Air Strike on Gaza; First Since Truce

Mr. Obama was expected to tell the Palestinians that the creation of a Palestinian state remains a priority for his administration.

He was not bringing a new plan to relaunch peace talks, but in meetings with the Palestinians and a speech to Israeli students later in the day, he was to appeal to both sides to halt unilateral actions that make negotiations more difficult.

Those troublesome actions include continued construction of Jewish housing settlements on land claimed by the Palestinians and repeated Palestinian efforts to achieve recognition at the United Nations in the absence of a peace agreement.

On Wednesday, Mr. Obama reaffirmed the unwavering U.S. commitment to Israel’s security and noted there had been no fatal attacks on Israelis from the West Bank, which is controlled by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

That calm has not extended to Gaza, which is run by the militant Islamic Hamas movement.

As Mr. Obama began his program Thursday, Israeli police said militants in Gaza had fired two rockets at the southern town of Sderot.

One of the rockets exploded in the courtyard of a house in Sderot early in the morning, causing damage but no injuries, said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld. The other landed in an open field. Sirens wailed in Sderot shortly after the 7 a.m. rocket attack, forcing residents on their way to work or school to run to bomb shelters.

More: Obama in West Bank; Rockets Fired at Israel From Gaza

Military commanders have ordered troops to be on “high alert” after receiving information about plots for terrorist attacks in Sinai, an military source told Al-Masry Al-Youm.

The unnamed source added that “the Armed Forces received information about the intention of some elements to conduct terrorist attacks in Sinai against the army and the police.”

The source explained that the alert has nothing to do with the warning issued by Israel earlier last week, adding that the Armed Forces got the information from its own intelligence.

Last week, Israel’s counterterrorism bureau issued a warning to Israelis advising them not to travel to Sinai ahead of the Passover holidays. The warning also called on Israelis vacationing in Sinai to return to Israel as soon as possible.

Al-Masry Al-Youm quoted the military source as saying that military commanders has deployed some platoons on the highways of the peninsula and set up various checkpoints.

He also added that border patrol forces on the border with Gaza and Israel have recently intensified their efforts.

The state of alert was also confirmed on Saturday by Osama Ismail, deputy interior minister in Sinai, who confirmed receiving information about plots by jihadi groups to attack security targets.

More: Egypt’s Army on High Alert in Sinai

An Israeli holds up a national flag atop a building in Jerusalem’s Old City during a parade marking Jerusalem Day, on May 20, 2012. (Ronen Zvulun/Reuters)

As President Obama prepares to visit Israel later this month, reports from administration officials indicate that he does not intend to focus on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but rather to discuss regional threats such as Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and the continuing violence in Syria. But Obama should realize that Israel’s continued presence in the West Bank is an existential threat to its continuity as a democratic, Jewish state — and time is not on Israel’s side.

The urgency of this issue was illustrated by Sergio DellaPergola, a Hebrew University professor and an expert on Israeli population studies, in a presentation at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington last month. The statistics DellaPergola assembled are clear and their implications are frightening. Right now, the total number of Jews and Arabs living under Israeli rule in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza is just under 12 million people. At the moment, a shade under 50 percent of the population is Jewish. In other words, right now — not in five or ten years, but right now — only 50 percent of the people living in the Jewish state and in the areas under its control are Jews. The dreaded tipping point — which advocates of the two-solution have been warning about for years — has finally arrived.

Some argue that this ratio is irrelevant, that Israel’s current demographic balance should not be a source of concern, since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005. The international community doesn’t buy this argument, though, since they still see Gaza as occupied since Israel controls its airspace and sea space.

But taking Gaza out of the equation does not buy Israel much time, anyway.

More: Israel’s Dreaded Tipping Point Has Finally Arrived - S. Daniel Abraham - the Atlantic

UNRWA cancels the Third Gaza Marathon
March 5, 2013 | Jerusalem

UNRWA regrets to anounce that it has had to cancel the third UNRWA marathon which was to be held on 10 April. This disappointing decision follows discussions with the authorities in Gaza who have insisted that no women should participate.

Registered participants who still wish to come to Gaza are welcome. UNRWA is working on a programme of other events, which will be forwarded to those interested as soon as possible. UNRWA sincerely regrets the inconvenience this causes those who planned to participate in the marathon.

- Ends-

Background information

UNRWA is a United Nations agency established by the General Assembly in 1949 and is mandated to provide assistance and protection to a population of some 5 million registered Palestine refugees. Its mission is to help Palestine refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank and the Gaza Strip to achieve their full potential in human development, pending a just solution to their plight. UNRWA’s services encompass education, health care, relief and social services, camp infrastructure and improvement, and microfinance.

Financial support to UNRWA has not kept pace with an increased demand for services caused by growing numbers of registered refugees, expanding need, and deepening poverty. As a result, the Agency’s General Fund (GF), supporting UNRWA’s core activities and 97 per cent reliant on voluntary contributions, has begun each year with a large projected deficit. Currently the deficit stands at USD 66 million.

It’s with regret that we announce the cancellation of the #GazaMarathon. We’re truly grateful to all our runners. bit.ly/ZZKtii

— UNRWA (@UNRWA) March 5, 2013

DESPITE the widespread belief that ties between Israel and Turkey are virtually nonexistent, the Israeli and Turkish officials have, of late, held a series of meetings, the most recent three weeks ago, according to Israeli officials who confirmed media reports in both countries. The goal has been to find a formula for an apology acceptable to Ankara for the 2010 “Gaza flotilla affair” in which Israeli troops killed nine Turkish citizens during a violent clash on a ship trying to break the Israeli naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.

“There’s an ongoing dialogue and we’re speaking to them and trying to find a formula that they will accept,” a senior Israeli official said on condition of anonymity. “They’re upset with us and we believe that is not fair.”

The Turkish weekly Radikal reported that Israel may apologize to Turkey for “operational errors” during the raid on the Mavi Marmara in advance of President Barack Obama’s visit to the Middle East next month. He has pressed for reconciliation between the two American allies.

Turkey has demanded a formal apology for Israel’s conduct during the flotilla. In May 2010, Israeli naval commandos boarded the Turkish-flagged ship, which set out to break the blockade Israel implemented when Hamas took control of the Gaza in 2007 in order to prevent materials that could be used militarily from falling into Hamas’ hands. The soldiers encountered physical resistance and nine Turkish citizens were killed in the clashes that ensued. Turkey insists those killed were civilian passengers while Israel does not agrre. In addition to the apology, Turkey is demanding compensation for the families of those killed, and an end to Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza.

Israel has expressed “regret” that innocent civilians were killed but has refused to “apologize,” saying the soldiers were attacked when they boarded the ship. A United Nations commission also accused Israel of using disproportionate force.

More: Israel, Turkey Might Be Headed for Reconciliation

Central Command chief says Hamas mainly behind upsurge

Hamas and other Palestinian groups have made 18 attempts in the past four months to kidnap Israeli soldiers to use as bargaining chips for the release of Palestinian security prisoners, an Israeli general said Saturday.

Avi Mizrahi, outgoing commander of the IDF’s Central Command, said Hamas was behind most of the attempts.

The general, interviewed on Channel 2′s Meet the Press, was speaking amid a dramatic upsurge in violence surrounding Palestinian security prisoners, several of whom are hunger-striking.

Hamas leaders have repeatedly urged their followers to try to replicate the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit, an IDF soldier who was grabbed in a raid into Israel from Gaza in 2006, held hostage by Hamas in the Strip for five years, and released in October 2006 in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian security prisoners, including arch-terrorists.

I believe the kidnapping terrorist bandits of Gaza would probably refer to this as Hamas Pride.

Egyptian forces have flooded smuggling tunnels under the border with the Palestinian-ruled Gaza Strip in a campaign to shut them down, Egyptian and Palestinian officials said.

The network of tunnels is a vital lifeline for Gaza, bringing in an estimated 30 percent of all goods that reach the enclave and circumventing a blockade imposed by Israel for more than seven years.

Reuters reporters saw one tunnel being used to bring in cement and gravel suddenly fill with water on Sunday, sending workers rushing for safety. Locals said two other tunnels were likewise flooded, with Egyptians deliberately pumping in water.

“The Egyptians have opened the water to drown the tunnels,” said Abu Ghassan, who supervises the work of 30 men at one tunnel some 200 meters (yards) from the border fence.

An Egyptian security official in the Sinai told Reuters the campaign started five days ago.

More: Egypt Floods Gaza Tunnels to Cut Palestinian Lifeline