He
said thousands of new settlers come to Israel each year and, with the financial
support of the United States, are building large housing complexes. He is
concerned
about the settlements’ encroachment into what he views as Palestinian territory.
He sounded like the Palestinian leader in other ways, too. One of the comparisons
often made was that the Israelis were doing to the Palestinians what the Germans
had done to them. Like others in Palestine, he believed the Jews had considerable
world power and felt that their long-term goal was world domination.
Mohamad El-Tawil, a Canadian surgeon whose relatives live in Gaza, was traveling
with us. He summed up the sentiments of his kin.
" We have achieved a balance of terror, but not a balance of power," he
said. "Terror only fathers terror. The threat of terrorism is intended to
hold the Israelis in check and to slow the pace at which they take over our land,
our homes and our way of supporting ourselves. Men here in Gaza who have jobs
work with bombs strapped to their bodies so that if there is an Israeli attack
they can sacrifice themselves at great cost to the Israelis."
A Red Cross worker from England who had been working in Gaza for the last year
said, "I don’t understand what is going on here. The situation makes
no sense to me."
