good post duff- the suicide was "simply stupid" Jan. 15,...

good post duff- the suicide was "simply stupid" Jan. 15, 2004
'It's simply stupid'
By MATTHEW GUTTMAN

Soldiers herded some 4,000 Palestinian workers into easily countable clumps of humanity.
Once in the groups, the Palestinians, all with permits allowing them to work in the Erez Palestinian-Israeli industrial zone, were ordered to sit on their haunches and await evacuation back to Gaza.

There was no explanation necessary for this particular procedure. Two hours earlier a female suicide bomber, the mother of two, had detonated herself in the Erez terminal, just meters from where the men squatted, killing herself, two soldiers, a border policeman, and an Israeli civilian.

"It's simply stupid," spat 40-year-old Ashur Salha. "Of course I'm angry at her [the bomber]. This is not only the place where we work, but our home."

Minutes after the bombing, a voice on the loudspeaker told the laborers, artisans, and factory workers that they would be sent home immediately.

"Whoever ordered the bombing," said Salha, who is among about 150 Palestinian factory owners at Erez, "must have known that 30,000 mouths depend on our employment here."

When bombers aren't exploding themselves, some 20,000 Palestinians pass through the Erez crossing daily. About 5,000 of them click through the turnstiles at the industrial zone, a joint Israeli-Palestinian venture, and the rest go to construction or mostly other menial labor jobs in Israel.

Looking somewhat bewildered, Salha said he could hardly understand the motivation of the bomber. "After all, this hurts us [the Palestinians] much more than it does the Israelis."

In order to be interviewed, Salha had to be taken from the group of waiting Palestinians. Col. Yoel Frik, commander of the northern section of the Gaza Strip, explained that had Salha, who owned a sewing workshop, been interviewed in front of the other laborers, "they might have felt the need to show off, and we would have had a riot on our hands."

The workers were packed into buses, driven past plastic bags brimming with bloody rags and hunks of flesh left over from the bombing, to an alternative entrance back into the Gaza Strip. It would take hours to file all the workers into the buses and process them back into Gaza, according to the Erez industrial zone manager, Itzik Amitay.

Amitay's closest aide at the site is a Palestinian from Khan Yunis named Malik. The slim, neatly dressed Malik works as the industrial zone's deputy manager, ensuring that buildings are kept clean and in running order.

Most of the workers earn a king's ransom compared to their earning power in the Gaza Strip. A working day bringing in NIS 100 is successful, and enough to feed the growing families of Gaza.
"The worst part is that she [the bomber] did not even work here. When people from the outside attack Erez, it gives the workers a bad name, all of us," said Malik.

Malik, 40, has worked with Amitay, a settler from Gush Katif, for the past 20 years. He pined for "the good old days," when there was no fence dividing Khan Yunis from Gush Katif's largest settlement, Neveh Dekalim. During those times, that settlement's residents would do all their chores – from buying fruit to taking driving lessons – in the Gaza Strip's second largest town.

Before the first intifada, recalls Malik, there were no checkpoints, and Palestinians could travel anywhere in Israel. "Not anymore, and today pretty much shows why." Malik had refused to give his full name, because, he said, "I have stayed off the Israeli Shin Bet's lists, and those of the PA's Mukhabarat, and I don't want that to change."

Besides being a beacon of cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians, the Erez industrial zone and the crossing terminal serve as a spying ground par excellence.

It is here that the Shin Bet recruits potential collaborators. It is often those very same collaborators whom the Palestinian terrorist organizations use as spies to brief their bosses on Israeli security installations.

And while the workers here on Wednesday denied any connection to the attack, the Shin Bet began immediately to investigate workers at Erez. It seemed too much like an inside job, according to Brig.-Gen. Gadi Shamni, commander of the Gaza Division.

Tikva, 52 – she would not give her last name – exchanged a wave with one of her employees on a bus headed out the industrial zone's front gate en route to the Erez Crossing. "It's funny," she said. "We are like the Palestinians. Like them, we can't do anything but come back, we have no choice."

Tikva, and her son, Moshe, from Holon, own and operate a furniture factory in the industrial zone, employing some 50 Palestinians. "It's like we are handcuffed to this place. On the one hand we are afraid to go to work. Our workers are OK, but you never know what will happen here, it is such an easy target."

But as their Palestinian workers have nowhere else to go, Tikva and Moshe feel they cannot sell the factory, the machinery, and the inventory and move on. "The fact is no one in their right mind would buy this place with bombers exploding every few months. We are stuck with each other."