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Settlement Looters Set Back Gaza Development Hopes

(Reuters) Nidal al-Mughrabi - Palestinian destruction of greenhouses in vacated Jewish settlements in Gaza has dented hopes of a quick economic windfall from Israel's withdrawal, Palestinian officials said on Wednesday. They had expected the settlement greenhouses left behind would provide thousands of jobs to boost a meager job market in Gaza. But looters converged on the area after Israel's army pulled out on Monday, stripping greenhouses of critical supplies from rubber hoses to water pumps and rendering many of them temporarily unusable. "These greenhouses were supposed to be used to feed the children of thousands of families," would-be farmer Abdullah Ali, 32, said of the damage in the former Ganei Tal settlement. Basil Jaber, chairman of the Palestine Economic Development Company, said looters had damaged about a third of the state-of-the-art hothouses left behind by Israel and donated to the Palestinians by Jewish-American philanthropists. Some Palestinians continued to pillage greenhouses on Wednesday in more isolated settlements, witnesses said.
2005-09-16 00:00:00
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