http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22810367
In Gaza, a rush for food, TVs and sheep - 'Hamas has achieved a great victory
to allow people to get out' Hatem Omar / AP
Palestinians return with sheep from Egypt to the Gaza Strip after Hamas
militants blasted down most of the wall between Gaza and Egypt at the town of
Rafah on Wednesday.
By IBRAHIM BARZAK
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RAFAH, Egypt - Gaza is a small place, and news spread quickly Wednesday that
the border fence was knocked down before dawn. Pretty soon, I was caught up in
a traffic jam as people raced to Rafah in buses, cars, motorcycles. Some even
rode bicycles and donkey carts.
They were full of joy to get out of Gaza, after being cooped up for two years.
"Hamas has achieved a great victory to allow people to get out," declared one
young man, pointing at armed members of the Islamic militant group who stood
idly by as people poured over the border. The man, who is about to get married,
was buying a bedroom set.
Gazans have grown accustomed to seeing borders closed off by walls and
weapons, so I never thought I would see armed Egyptian security forces looking
on without interfering as huge crowds ran through a breach in the wall from
Gaza into Egypt.
As I walked at midmorning about 500 yards across the Israeli-built road that
separates Gaza's Rafah from Egypt's Rafah, I saw people already returning,
helping each other haul their purchases back into Gaza. They were carrying
food, fuel, cigarettes, shoes, furniture, car parts, even generators. Several
carried huge boxes of Toshiba-make TVs, ranging in price from $243 to $649.
Hamas rolls in
The big operators drove their 4-wheel-drive vehicles across the border and
loaded up with building materials like cement, which are in short supply in
Gaza. They drove the loads back to Gaza, then turned around and filled up again.
Hamas was in control. Even though there were several breaches in the border
wall, the militants were allowing people to go through only two of them.
Plainclothes security officers watched the crowd, stopping anyone they
thought looked suspicious. They confiscated drugs and weapons that people tried
to take back to Gaza.
Even men I recognized as former Fatah security officers before Fatah was
defeated by the Hamas militants who overran Gaza in June praised Hamas for
forcing open the border.
The merchants in Rafah couldn't believe their good luck. At one small
grocery, where maybe 10 or 20 people shop on most days, there were long lines
of hundreds of people fighting to get in, stripping everything off the shelves.
The shopkeepers were accepting all kinds of currency Israeli shekels, U.S.
dollars, euros, Egyptian pounds.
Price soar, fights break out
Prices started rising, and just went up and up until things were running out
and the merchants in Egypt began charging prices higher than in Gaza.
Cigarettes, which ordinarily sell for about $1.90 a pack in Gaza City,
soared from an initial 80 cents on the Egyptian side of Rafah to $2.70 at their
peak. As demand spiked, cartons of milk were selling for $9.50 in Rafah
compared to $8.10 in Gaza.
Then people got angry.
I saw a fight between a farmer who bought two sheep and the man who sold them
for twice the normal price.
It didn't take long until all the stores were empty, but people kept coming
from Gaza, even those who didn't need to buy anything. They just sat around
drinking tea and smoking water pipes, saying they were enjoying the first
feeling of freedom in memory.
They were there to prove to their relatives and possibly even themselves
that it was possible to get out.
---------------------------------------------
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22800452/
Palestinians excitedly buy cola, goats, phones - Thousands shop in Egypt,
happy to buy scarce goods after wall is smashed
Khaled Desouki / AFP - Getty Images
Palestinians from Gaza fill their petrol canisters with gasoline in Rafah on
Wednesday.
RAFAH, Egypt - Osama Hassan can finally get what he needs to wed his
fiancee, thanks to Palestinian militants who smashed the Gaza border wall
Wednesday and cleared the way for Hassan and tens of thousands of locked-up
Gazans to stock up in Egypt on basic supplies that are scarce at home.
Hassan, 25, and his 17-year-old fiancee Sarah hit home supplies stores in the
Egyptian border town of Rafah. He bought a specialty mattress for his injured
back and she assembled kitchen supplies.
The two had initially put off their wedding until July because they lacked
the basics for setting up a household. After Wednesday's shopping spree, they
plan to wed next week.
Hassan is a former Fatah fighter, but said he's grateful to rival Hamas for
opening the border. "I'm Fatah, but today, I wish I could see (Hamas prime
minister Ismail) Haniyeh and kiss his forehead, because without the gunmen
doing this, we would have been stuck in the Gaza Strip," Hassan said.
Egyptian shopkeepers took advantage of the sudden surge in customers, swiftly
raising prices of milk, taxi rides and cigarettes.
The price hikes didn't deter long-denied Gazans. They crowded into shops,
buying anything they could.
Children bought soft drinks and chocolate, women scooped up cheeses and
cleaning products and many men stocked up on cigarettes _ all expensive, or
simply unavailable in Gaza because of Israel's shutdown of cargo crossings in
June, after the Hamas' takeover.
Other Palestinians staggered into Gaza carrying televisions, and others
sported brand-new mobile phones.
Cigarette prices drop
In Gaza City, prices of cigarettes which had skyrocketed during the closure
started to drop. The price of Egyptian cigarettes fell by about 70 percent.
The dollar rose against the Israeli shekel, since
Gazans were using the U.S. currency for buying in Egypt.
Crowds waited at roadsides in Gaza City, trying to catch rides to the border.
Taxi driver Mahmoud Abu Ouda had made one trip to Rafah, but then stopped
because he had run out of fuel.
"The city is empty of cabs. They are all in Rafah," he said.
Rami al-Shawwa, a 23-year old falafel vendor, said he planned to head to
Egypt in the afternoon, after his brothers return from there. He is going to
buy waterpipe tobacco and just "smell some new air."
"We have been living in darkness for days, and closure before," he said,
adding that he is not concerned about getting stuck in Egypt. "For my 23 years
in Gaza, a year in Egypt will make up for it."
Even the sick had their day. Four Palestinians in wheelchairs were pushed to
the Egyptian side, where ambulances picked them up to take them for treatment
in Arish, a larger Egyptian town close to Gaza.
Egyptian police sat in armored vehicles, watching, but not disturbing the
Gazans who poured through the border on foot, with donkey carts and motorcycles.
Hamas gunmen controlled the Gaza side of the border, and plainclothes Hamas
militants mingled with the shoppers in Egypt, wary of them returning with
weapons or explosives _ which could potentially be used to battle the militant
group. Hamas police stopped one man and confiscated seven hand guns from him.
The shoppers depleted Rafah stores, prompting 32-year-old Ashraf el-Sayyid,
an Egyptian, to ride his motorbike into the Gaza Strip. "I need to buy bread
for my children," he said. "The Palestinians left us with nothing. It's true,
they are dear to us, but today, they were like locusts."
--------------------------------------------------------------
ONE MAN'S TERRORIST, ANOTHER'S FREEDOM FIGHTER
By Martin Fletcher, NBC News Correspondent and Tel Aviv Bureau Chief
NABLUS, West Bank It is hard for me to describe Ahmed Sanakreh as a
terrorist, although I know it's true. Hard, because I got to know him and his
family quite well, and when you understand people, it's hard to hate them:
Twenty-year-old Ahmed, baby-faced with black hair sticking up in gelled
spikes, and a passion for his Nokia 90 cell phone; and his elder brother, Alaa,
the intense, hollow-cheeked leader of the Palestinian al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades
in the Balata refugee camp in Nablus. They are the hard core of the hard core.
Although Alaa was the leader, Ahmed was the one Israel most wanted dead. I
often asked Alaa why his younger brother had so many bodyguards, and Alaa would
only smile mysteriously. But one day he confirmed Israel's claims: that Ahmed
blew up an Israeli officer, and was the bomb-maker behind other suicide bombers.
Samir Bazbaz / NBC News The last photo of Ahmed Sanakreh,
right, with NBCs Martin Fletcher, center, and his older brother, Alaa, left,
taken in his home in December 2007. He was killed by Israeli Army forces on
Jan. 18.
Alaa, Ahmed and their friend Nasser abu Aziz were my de facto guides to the
Palestinian side of the second Intifada (uprising). They were terrorists to the
Israelis, freedom fighters to their neighbors, and sources to me.
I quizzed them often about the latest developments. My NBC colleagues and I
met them in their safe houses, hid with them in the alleys, sat in their home
with their parents, and listened as their mother cried that she did not want
her boys to die.
I wrote about my relationship with this band of gunmen in my book, "Breaking
News," which comes out in New York on March 4. Now I'll have to update it.
Cat with nine lives
Ahmed was the cat with nine lives. He prowled the dusty alleys of the refugee
camp by night and slept by day. Nine separate times the Israelis shot him. He
had more than thirty bullet holes in his body. He was shot in the head, the
jaw, the chest, the back, the stomach, both legs, both arms and one hand. Once
he was left for dead, buried under tons of concrete rubble when the Israelis
bulldozed the Palestinian headquarters in Nablus. After two days of digging,
Alaa and Nasser found him, barely alive. Two fingers were shot off.
Once we were in his parents living room, sipping sweet tea, when Ahmed
stumbled in, supported by his bodyguards, with four bullets in the stomach.
Alaa had stolen him from the hospital minutes before Israelis soldiers raided
the place, hunting Ahmed.
Jeff Riggins / NBC News Alaa Sanakreh helps his younger
brother, Ahmed, after he was shot four times in the stomach in April 2007.
But Ahmed's luck ran out after shooting number nine on Jan. 18. Alaa phoned
him, as usual, at night to make sure he was OK.
"I'm fine, I'm with my friends," said Ahmed.
He was sleeping in one of his usual safe houses, with three bodyguards.
At 5 a.m., Alaa's phone woke him. It was Ahmed again. "He said, I'm wounded,
they've surrounded the house," Alaa told us at the funeral. "I said to him,
Listen to me, you must surrender! But he said, I can't, they will kill me.
And then the phone went dead."
A neighbor of the house where Ahmed was killed said that all four
Palestinians in the safe house were wounded. Three were arrested. She said that
the soldiers went into Ahmed's room, where he was lying on the ground. They
spoke to him and then, she said, they killed him. The Israeli Army says he was
killed in a shootout.
No way out
Either way, Ahmed always knew he would die in the end. Alaa, the commander of
the al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades in the refugee camp, had already accepted Israel's
offer of an amnesty before his brother was killed.
He is now a member of the Palestinian security forces with a salary of $400 a
month, and is also a student at Nablus University. For two years Alaa had been
telling me that he had had enough, that he just wanted to live at home, get
married and study. Since he was a boy he wanted to be an engineer, but he is
studying sports. "There's too much tension for me to study hard," he said.
"Sport is the easy option."
Ahmed wanted to stop fighting too, but the Israelis wouldn't give him an
amnesty. He made the bombs and sent the suicide bombers. There can be no peace
with people like him: that's Israel's logic.
Now that his brother is dead, Alaa is devastated, but helpless. He gave up
his gun months ago. "Arafat built us up," he said, "but Abu Mazen destroyed
us," (referring to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas).
Jeff Riggins / NBC News Ahmed Sanakreh takes a rest on a bed
after being shot in the stomach four times while his brother Alaa (standing on
far right) and a body guard look on.
Yesterdays men
Alaa, Ahmed and their friend, Nasser, are yesterday's men. They served a
purpose when the Palestinians needed a deniable hit team to fight the Israelis.
But now the Palestinian leaders have destroyed the militias on the West Bank,
their own as well as Hamas, and are building up their official security
services as a first step towards peace talks with Israel. About 80 former
al-Aksa fighters in Nablus are now policemen.
We left Ahmed's mother, Jamileh, wailing by the graves of Ahmed and his even
younger brother, Ibrahim, who was shot dead by Israeli soldiers a year ago.
"Bury me here," she cried, "next to them. My darling," she called to Ibrahim,
"your brother has come to you, he is only sick, look after him. I don't
believe it.
This is my home now, I want to be next to Ibrahim and Ahmed. I will sleep
here with you tonight."
A neighbor, whose son was also killed, said, "Israel took my home in Jaffa,
now they come and kill us here, and they say WE are the terrorists."
I thought, yes, but Ahmed sent the suicide bombers, he made the bombs.
What else would you call him? It's confusing when you get too close to the
story. My own children use the same buses and go to the same clubs that Ahmed
and his men wanted to blow up. Alaa, Nasser abu Aziz and the late Ahmed
Sanakreh were abandoned by their own leaders, sad young men, fighting for their
land, hung out to dry. Knowing both sides so well makes it hard, painful, to
witness this tragedy without end.
---------------------------------
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