In her touching narrative of life in Gaza, Laila forgot to mention some other small but important aspects of the Gazan atmosphere: highly populated terrorist groups openly and formally calling for Israel's destruction; the Hamas government's running platform/charter, openly calling for Israel's annihilation; the high percentage of the Palestinian population thinking that suicide bombings are a legitimate resistance tactic; the full-population propoganda machine, most poignantly manifested by 12 yr old suicide wannabes and 2 yr olds dressed as shahids; the constant attempts to infiltrate Israel and perpetrate suicide attacks in not even debateably occupied areas such as Tel Aviv; the continuous attacks on the 'heinous, constricting crossings', particularly Rafah (I can't imagine why the Israeli government didn't grant them full control of it). What a convenient omission of several tiny but significant variables that might rightfully influence people's calculation of the Israeli-Palestinian equation. Oops.

why to blame israel for not planting autonomical feelings and responsibility in PA citizen's hearts?? Israel moved out - move your butts by yourself and do the job to feel free. Try doing something by yourself and stop USING Israel. That's why you have been left alone - that you could finally start taking care of your businesses by yourself. With NO HELP from Israel you hate so much. A good reason to be happy, no? So bugger off!!

to build your own damn hospitals. Then Palestinians don't have to come to Israeli hospitals for proper medical care. You could even start your own agriculture and become self-sufficient . . . . . oops, sorry, forgot : you destroyed the hothouses worth millions of dollars left to you intact by the Israeli's when they gave you back your land . . . . . . Palestinians: stop sitting in the dole line, waiting for handouts. This is pathetic. Take control of your destiny! I wonder who is pocketing the billions of dollars the Palestinians are receiving in aid (or as a reward for losing a son or daughter in a suicide bombing) from other Arab nations, the EU and other bodies, now that Arafat is no longer able to do so. Voting a terrorist organisation into government is not exactly a great move either . . . . . . what is it with you guys? You are forever in self-destruct mode.

Thank you for your talkback; I found it to be balanced and a reflection of what I and many of my friends feel regarding the Gaza issue. We live in one of the kibbutzim on the Gaza border. I look forward to reading more talkbacks from you.

I might be able to get access to Op-Eds by the heads of American Nazi Party and the KKK. Maybe Ynet should publish those as well?

You write: "By the way israel didn't reach what have reached now without the jewish money from all over the world, u receive each year billions and billions , i guess if the palestinian receive what u receive they could have done better than you." Suha Arafat lives better than virtually all Israelis. You're absolutely right, Ricardo. If a Palestinian receives billions of dollars it can do better.

This article so biased it makes me laugh really. Was it written by the Hamas PR team?? One simple honest question, is WHY? Not once did she say that Israel has to close the borders/airspace/Port. All of it is closed because if there were open borders look what would come into Gaza, exactly the same as Lebanon. Remember the Kharine A? Weapons from Iran, thats why Israel closes the borders and to stop the suicide bombers going into Israel and blow up civilians. If there could be peace, there would be. But the Palestinians arent interested in even building Gaza. Let alone the west bank. Israel left the greenhouses, lots of room for apartments and factories. So what do the Palestinians do? Launch rockets from the former settlements and turn the area into training camps for terror. I have no sympathy left for the Palestinians as all they do is shoot themselves in the foot. They had so much money from the world. and what do they do with it all? And the bombings / rockets / kidnappings / anti-semitism and plain racist calls means I have lost all sympathy. Perhaps, one day the writer should ask what can the Palestinians offer Israel if it does to decide to withdraw. Would they offer peace or rockets? Egypt offered peace and got it, Jordan offered peace and got it. What will the Palestinians offer?

Either you are woefully misinformed or you are an outright liar. Qassam rockets do kill, to date 4 Israelis have been murdered by these missiles.

So are you saying 4 israeli lives equal a 100 palestnians? cause if thats the case, The palestinian have a right to defend themselves, with whatever means they have. wake up world! the zionist movement has brain washed the ignorant.

I am amazed. Seriously, I would very much like some sort of an answer from Ynet regarding the decision to give a rabid anti-Israeli hate-filled propagandist a column. Can you please tell me and the other readers (see the comments for some measure of the disagreement with your decision to post this) what made you give the enemy a soapbox? Haaretz and the rest of the enemy mouthpieces do that aplenty. Thank you for your usually excellent reporting; And thank you ahead for the answer.

North Korea has four 250 mile wide CONSENTRATION CAMPS were political opponites are straved, have medical experments done upon them or outright murdered. You and your Palestinian Pulp friction are just tilting at windmills but you do have a knack delusional consprisy theories.

Pathetic how Ricardo and others like him love to punctuate their drivel with "everybody know that" or "everybody hates you," etc. etc. If you really believed it, you wouldn't be hacking here, trying to blind and deafen us to reality - or even more so, trying to convince yourselves.

Let me help youead since your reading of history seems lacking. Ever here of the Warsaw Gheto uprising? How about Sobeborg concentration camp escape. Try taking on the WWII Nazi army with small arms. Its like trying to take on a Rino with a pea shooter. For the most part, these people were unarmed. Ever notice how the Nazi soilders leading away the Jews have all the guns. Boy your're a big talker. I wonder if you're for gun control in the US or that silly UN initiative. The first thing Hitler and other facists do is take away the gun. Even the Soviet Union felt they couldn't invade the US during the cold war due to all the weapons held by the American citizentry. Notice how Israel is well armed for its own defense. Oh, but if we use them, it is called "disproortiionate" by the lolygaging liberal of the world led by Kofi the bleading heart kvetch. Telling people without a means for defense to have defended themselves shows even a lack of hindsight. Ever heard the phrase "never again!" Try learning some history before commenting.

Punished for not belonging to the religion of Islam, 10,000 Jews were forcibly ethnically cleansed from Gaza and northern Samaria in 2005. Muslims celebrated by desecrating and destroying sacred Gaza synagogues. The impoverished Jewish refugees are financially obligated to pay the mortgages on the homes Israel destroyed. Some of the refugees still live in tents. YNETNEWS (07.04.06, 14:48) Rise in suicide attempts among young Gaza evacuees Forum for Israel reports deterioration in situation of evacuated Gush Katif teenagers; teens dropping out of school; among adults heart diseases, divorce rise Ilan Marciano The Forum reported 12 suicide attempts among teenage settlers since the evacuation last August, and pointed to a rise in suicidal thoughts and eating disorders among teenagers. Social workers said teenagers find it difficult to develop relationships and increasingly abuse alcohol and drugs... The Forum also linked an increase in heart diseases among evacuated adults to the distress of the evacuation... Suicide attempts, heart attacks, and deterioration of family life are among the symptoms affecting the lives of former Gush Katif settlers evacuated from Gaza last summer... Nine settlers have been received in psychiatric hospitals... The committee heard that 30 percent of teenagers either failed to integrate in new schools or failed their final exams... The Forum said 50 divorce cases of settler couple have been disputed in the courts since August 2005, with most cases relate to financial hardship... About 51 percent of the evacuees are unemployed. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3271051,00.html

Action: Withdraw from Gaza to see how things will change, AND THEN SEE IF FURTHER FREEDOMS CAN BE GIVEN BASED ON GAZA'S RESPONSE AND A BACK-AND-FORTH COOPERATION as we work toward reconciliation.. Response: A Victory, a Victory! We drove them out! Now let's send 1,000 Qassams to hit residences within 1967 borders. Oh yeah, and after a year let's cross the 1967 borders and kill and kidnap soldiers. We can do it with our temporary friends the Shiites from the north! That'll show 'em that WE ARE FULL OF CRAP WHEN WE SAY '1967 BORDERS', because we really mean NOT ONE INCH TO THE JEWS. Action: Bombarding of Hisballah strongholds in south Lebanon Response: Constant bombardment of civilian population centers by Iranian-made Katyushas. Action: OK, we'll work w/you, at the 2000 Camp David, Israel will compromise, let's continue to work on it. Response: Crusader Arafat summarily withdraws from further negotiation and green-lights the current intifada, all the while stuffing his own pockets with aid money. Action: We just want to live as neighbors, everything else can work out if we put ourselves to the task. Let's reconcile and all live in peace Response: No, we will wipe Israel off map complete, make entire mideast Jew-free, make selves into permanent "refugees", never give an inch, turn our children into bombs. We will kill you and ourselves for generations upon generations, living in misery all the while, because no Jewish state can ever be tolerated by us or our tenuous allies anywhere in the Middle East.

While it is sad that the settlers kicked out of Gaza are having a hard time adjusting to their new lives... perhaps they shouldn't have decided to build settlements on other people's land!!!! You cannot forcibly steal someones land to build settlements and then cry when you get kicked out. Settlements in Gaza were a crime, and so are the ones in the West Bank. Stop stealing Palestinian land to build your settlements. How do you expect Palestinians not to hate you when you take their land or cut their land off from the rest of the world?

56 Muslim countries. Only one Jewish state. 22 HUGE, oil-wealthy Arab countries cover over six million square miles, over ten percent of the land surface of earth. TINY, over-crowded Israel, only one tenth of one percent of the Middle East. Stop the land grab of Jewish land! Radical Leftists, racists, human rights destroyers, IslamoFascist religious supremacists seek to deny Jews the right to live in their Biblical heartland of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, because they are Jews and not Muslims. Around 1948, Arabs violently ethnically cleansed one million Jews from Arab countries. Arab governments seized the land, homes, bank accounts, businesses and assets of the Jews. Most Jewish refugees fled to Israel where the religious terror war against Jews never stops. It is unacceptable to Muslims for Jews to have self-rule. A bloody jihad that spans the globe. It is essential Arab countries compensate the Jewish refugees and their descendants - half of Israel's Jewish population - in land and finances. This urgent human rights issue must be discussed constantly with Road Map architects - U.S. EU, UN and Russia, and in homes, schools, social activities, cultural events and synagogues.

Right of return is non-negotiable. All Jewish land stolen in the 1948 Islamic invasion must be returned. In 1948, Egypt invaded Gaza, ethnically cleansing all Jews. In 1948, Jordan invaded Judea, Samaria and east Jerusalem, ethnically cleansing all Jews. Jordan destroyed 58 sacred synagogues in Jerusalem. In 1967 when Israel won Islam's war of aggression against it, Jews returned to the areas of their homeland they had been ethnically cleansed from for 19 years. Fascists DECEITFULLY call this return "occupation". Under international law, territories are considered "occupied" only when taken in an act of aggression which does not apply to Israel. Judea, Samaria and Gaza are not 'occupied territories' according to international law because they were not taken from any foreign sovereign. The religious terror war against Jews never stops. It is unacceptable to Muslims for Jews to have self-rule in the tiny, re-born Jewish state. It is a bloody, global war to subjugate every nation to Islam, ruled by sharia law. The return to Jewish ownership of the land, homes, properties & businesses stolen from the Jews in the 1948 Islamic invasion is an urgent human rights issue requiring constant discussion with Road Map architects - U.S. EU, UN and Russia, and in homes, schools, social activities, cultural events and synagogues.

Why not indeed!? Because unlike the rest of the world, this is not their purpose in life. Terrorists live to kill others, and themselves - not build a better life. And of course - to kill Jews. This single fact trumps all others....

arabs stole your land!!!!! what a miss , u make me laugh, you should read history girl

There are peace loving Palestinians and there are trouble making Palis. The later would want the whole piece of Israel not just the occupied land. There is no such a thing as occupied land. You fought a war, you lost, that's it. You walk into a casino, you lost, you don't ask your money back. My point is no matter how Israel tried to make peace with Palestinians, it will never work. The only way for Israel to survive is to be tough, I mean real tough. The minute they saw signs of weakness, they will send missiles, human bombs into Israel.

I do not deny that Jews have lived in Palestine pre-1948, but the fact is that even in the early 1900s Jews made up only little more than 5% of the population. Now they control the vast majority of that area. So don't give this crap about Palestinians stealing land from Jews. It was obviously the other way around! Israel, sometimes forcefully, managed to get Palestinians to leave the villages they had lived in for centuries and sent them into exile. Go visit a Palestinian refugee camp were thousands of people are crammed into a small square kilometer. Then we'll talk about the real urgent human rights issue. btw... i don't believe Abraham and the Jewish people were the first ones to live in that area... Anyways, the Jewish people deserve a homeland in Israel, but the Palestinian people deserve at least all of Gaza and the West Bank.

many jews were refugees when they arrived in the netherlands and other countries in europe. Soon after their arrival the germans opened the hunt for them. The ones that survived were ridiculed for their lack of language by the same people that had gladly betrayed them to the nazis. They had no money, no place to stay. Did I grow up with complaining people? No, they never mentioned their hardships, they worked like crazy, they used all their creativity and energy to make enough money to send their kids to school. You can ask yourself why survivors never tried to bomb poland, or kill the dutch that stole all their possessions after sending them of to hell. The answer is simple; jews always choose life, even in great distress. They always put their energy and creativity in prolonging and continuing life, their own and of their children. They have often been victims but would always act as if in charge of their life. Hence the expressions " the people of Israel lives" and " lechaim" to live. Jews and israelis dont understand people that choose death. If the palestinians want to have a life, they must choose life in stead if death, both for themselves and for the israelis. From that moment on things will change.

and not giving up easily to improve their life-styles to better. Terror, bitterness, anger, killing, revenge, wrong interpretation of Islam can only bring sadness, pain and difficulties to yourself. Learn to put aside them, renew and rebuild yourself a good city for Gaza and learn to put yourself in trade competition with Israel.

The Palestinian refugees decided they wanted to return to the land from which they were forced. You can not deprive of them of their right to that make that choice. You can, on the other hand, deprive them of the right to exercise that choice, which is what the settler-colonial state of Israel has done for 60 years. Now I ask you: why did the Jews settle and then steal Palestine from the existing inhabitants? Why didn't they just become absorbed in Europe after WWII? Your crude logic can be used against you.

Just read the Haddads story of suffering, in between security sones and lack of free transportation in and out of Gaza. This story is likely to fill into a kind of "main stream" of similar stories, where the hen and the eggs seems twisted, as far as the pretext as well as the context is missing: Its terrible conditions in Gaza, but in the middle of the mess there are fanatic elements that continue a story of naked violence which expose the sivil inhabitants as shields, - in their ever lasting war against Israel. Its one way out of this: Stop terror, go for sivilized politics.

As Gaza is an open air prison, I wonder why last week, 3.000 Palestinian residents, blocked in Rafah, scrambled to reenter Gaza from Egypt. Is it a Woody Allen gag?

No matter what u all say, God knows that the Palestinians are right. Israel is just a young state, 60years b4, it hadn't even existed. Was just built up with bloodshed, bombing and occupation. You can say what u want, sooner or later u will all get payed for it :) byebye my friends..............

1. .if anything is crude logic it is blowing yourself up when you want to improve your life. 2.many jews were stateless. had nowhere to go back to 3. their former absorbtion in europe costed 6 milion lives. for many not an experience to repeat 4. jews have always been living in what is now called israel and are at least as indiginous as the palestinans. 5. by the way: their is nothing logic about choosing life after surviving a disaster: it just shows a spirit that would be very commendable to palestinians. It is people like you who encourage them to stay victims. Help them to overcome their experience in stead of helping them and future generations to drown in their victimisation.

it gives me the creeps to read from a german in munich who says to the israelis: bye bye, you will all die. I call this antisemitism.