イスラエル／パレスチナ和平

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 ミ from buying fruit to taking driving lessons ミ 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 ミ she would not give her last name ミ 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."