Palestine diary: Israel and the west are forcing Palestinians towards Hamas (continued, 3)

Socialist Resistance no35 | page 13-14

This is scanned newsprint, not web text. The original PDFs carried no text layer at all, so every word here was read off the page by OCR. Expect dropped opening letters, run-together words and wrong characters. There was no contents page to cut the paper up by, so the articles were found from the size of their headlines: a headline may carry its kicker, and where an article ran beside a boxed panel a few lines of the neighbour can appear. The scanned issue is the authority; this text is here so the words can be found at all.

Youth, and Social Work. They help youth clubs, social clubs and women's societies. They run mobile clinics, one day a week in each village, with a doctor.

The British

governmenl recently stopped a £500,000 project because the NGOs won't sign an anti terrorism statement. 'We ale under occupation, it is not for us to sign,' they say

They are looking for help for small projects, plus volunteers could go with medical Lcallls.

Nassif is strongly in favour of twinning, and would help facilitate it.

I then met Mohammed Abu Zaid, from the union representing University Teachers, and workers. They have had a strong campaign, including strikes, for increased pay. He has met the new Minister For Education, who although Hamas, is sympathetic. as he used to be a union member in Al Najaf University in Nablus (as did several of the other Hamas Ministers).

But there is no money.

While the staff at Bir Zeit are strongly secular, Hamas is getting more and more support amongst statt in other universities. They are acting smartly, their students didn't celebrate inside Bir Zeit, but in Ramallah, thus avoiding clashes. Jerusalem 21-04

Met Italian freelance reporter, who went to the