Israel tastes bitter fruit of the Gaza settlements

[idontwantaname]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=644562

The eviction of settlers from the Gaza Strip has created a dilemma for the authorities: what to do with the farms they will be leaving behind. Donald Macintyre reports
06 June 2005

<snip>

For the PA, the houses, mainly, though not exclusively, large and in gated California-style communities, could prove a major headache; unconvertible into badly-needed high density housing, an obstacle to efficient land use, from extraction of desperately needed water-to promoting productive agriculture. (8,000 settlers and their military protectors occupy 17 per cent of the land; 1.3 million Palestinians occupy the rest).

<snip>

In effect, he says the international community is saying: "Prove you can make something out if it." If that is achieved, he suggests, Israel might finally come under real US pressure to return to negotiations. The corollary of that brutal international message is, "if you fail you don't deserve it." He adds: "I don't accept it but I have to deal with it."

[damntexdem]

1. Better to have the land and the water and try to make something of it.

Than to go on in deprivation. Palestinians lived on the land for centuries and managed to get by.