Should be titled - Separation Wall results in big improvement in Palestinians lives. EFL
Stoop-shouldered and bespectacled, Hader Abu Sheikh, a 33-year-old official for the Palestinian Legislative Council in Jenin, is hardly a party animal. But that did not stop him from noticing that "there is 70 percent more nightlife in Jenin than a year ago."
"I like the nightlife,
I like to disco,
I like to boogey,
Oh, woe woe woe!" |
"We are talking about the resumption of traditional Palestinian nightlife," explains Abu Sheikh. "Weddings, men sitting in cafes late at night, women visiting each other... The point is, people are no longer confined to their houses at night, because Israel has left the city."
"I'll be down to getcha in a taxi, honey!
Y'better be ready 'bout half past eight!
Now, honey, don't be late!
I wanna be there when the band starts playin'!" |
Nightlife, in Jenin? Rattled for three years by Israeli raids against local terrorists, Jenin is recovering – partly due to the controversial security fence that Israel credits with stopping Palestinian terrorism in its tracks. For few is the change as tangible as for Ziad Mifleh, director-general of the Jenin Chamber of Commerce – the man responsible, among other tasks, for distributing Israeli entry permits to locals. Whereas half a year ago the Civil Administration, the Israeli body that oversees life in the territories, doled out 100 permits to local merchants, Mifleh explained, it issued 1,000 this month. He signed 174 himself on Thursday, he noted proudly. In the past three months, "We have seen the beginning of a breakthrough," he said, absently nudging a stubbed cigarette. "There are positive business indicators, as people are starting to think of capital and investment and commerce again."
| Instead of thinking about exploding, y'mean? |
Over the past six months, as the number of "martyrdom operations" decreased, the number of permits increased, noted Mifleh.
Jenin’s markets are packed. Merchants complain that locals spend only on necessities and cheap trinkets, that the increased quiet and stability have yielded little or no economic dividend. The front displays at the jewelry shops on Abu Bakr Street brim with gold, yet the shelves inside the stores are entirely bare. Before the intifada, remittances from legal and illegal laborers in Israel (and a good deal of auto theft) fueled the local economy. But crossing into Israel illegally is now a thing of the past, a task too difficult and too dangerous. Back outside the Chamber of Commerce, marijuana and cigarette smoke mingled as several dozen men waited, some in vain, for permits. They hoped to gain permission to purchase or sell cheaply made clothes in Israel, or fruit, or anything that would put food on the table. In perfect Hebrew, the men there explained that stability had returned, but jobs remain elusive. It seemed like the town’s new mantra.
| I mean, it's been, what? A month? C'mon! Where're the results? |
Israel too has started to take pride in a city it used to call a "suicide capital." Instead of exporting dozens of suicide bombers, said Brig.-Gen. (res.) Baruch Spiegel, head of the Security Fence Team, a group appointed by Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz to administer Palestinian humanitarian needs regarding the security fence, "they are exporting cucumber farmers." Spiegel, a no-nonsense career officer who last served as the IDF’s deputy Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, adds that some 2,500 men are allowed to enter Israel to work "because of the quiet there. The decline in terror to a ’manageable’ level has enabled the IDF to remove an entire system of roadblocks and checkpoints within the Jenin Governorate." Fatah officials such as Palestinian Legislative Council member Sakhri Turkuman concede that by reducing terrorist attacks and, therefore, incursions, the security fence has "created some stability in Jenin." |