BEIT LAHIYA, Gaza Strip, 8 May 2005 — Hundreds of Palestinians rejoiced in Gaza yesterday after receiving new homes funded by the United Arab Emirates to replace many Israel destroyed in raids to find militants in four years of violence.
UAE Prince Abdallah Bin Zayed presented the keys of 700 new apartments to Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip, which officials said cost $55 million to build. The new neighborhood also has a school, a park, a medical clinic and a mosque.
Palestinian Vice Premier Nabil Shaath said half the residents had their homes demolished in Israeli raids since the start of a Palestinian uprising in 2000.
Israel has said many of the houses had harbored militants who used them as gun nests. “Today is a happy occasion for every Palestinian whose home was destroyed and to every Palestinian who suffered the agonies of the occupation.”
The new neighborhood named “City of Sheikh Zayed” on the edge of Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza Strip is named after the late Gulf Emir, Sheikh Zayed Bin Al-Nahyan. Prince Zayed was received in Gaza by cheering crowds who rained flowers on him and his delegation.
He was flown to the site by a Jordanian helicopter after meeting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Israel’s tactic of demolishing homes, which is sometimes also used to clear paths for tanks during army incursions, has been condemned by Palestinians and many countries as collective punishment.
The army says it helps prevent anti-Israeli attacks. Israeli security sources said in February that Israel would stop the policy after a report found it insufficient to combat the Palestinian revolt in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and was offset by the violent resentment it spread among Palestinians.
The turnaround was part of a truce declared by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Abbas at a Feb. 8 peace summit in Egypt that aimed to end the uprising, officials on both sides said. Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said the army had bulldozed or dynamited 675 Palestinian dwellings since the outbreak of violence, leaving 4,239 people homeless.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian central elections commission yesterday began registering all voters whose names were not previously included on the electoral lists, ahead of legislative elections in July. Some 1,041 voter registration stations were opened across the Palestinian territories yesterday to register the names, a spokesman for the commission said. That includes two new stations, one at the entrance to the city of Rafah, in the Gaza Strip, and a second by the Allenby Bridge near the West Bank city of Jericho.
