[ilds] "you might be in Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria"

[Charles Sligh]

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10573
> *Prospect Magazine
> Issue 154 , January 2009
> Gaza's brief honeymoon
> by Trevor Mostyn
> What might have happened to Gaza had Israel granted it real 
> independence after its withdrawal
> *
> To some of us, Israel’s recent actions in Gaza have actually served as 
> a poignant reminder of the ways things could have been. *Look at a 
> photograph of Gaza in the 1940s and you might be in Lawrence Durrell’s 
> Alexandria, with its palm-lined beaches and pretty, belle époque 
> buildings. *After the first Israeli withdrawal from Gaza City in 1994, 
> both the West Bank and Gaza indulged in a brief honeymoon. The Oslo 
> accords had been signed a year earlier and Arafat had returned to 
> Gaza. I remember sitting under parasols on the beach drinking coffee 
> with local journalists. Gazans had not been allowed on the beaches for 
> years and suddenly the atmosphere was one of carnival. Israeli 
> settlements were still in place but the Israeli army was rarely seen.


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Charles L. Sligh
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
charles-sligh at utc.edu
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