Palestinians' Big Plans for Gaza, With a Bit of Doubt

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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/27/international/middleeast/27palestinians.html?th&emc=th

Palestinians' Big Plans for Gaza, With a Bit of Doubt


By JAMES BENNET
Published: August 27, 2005
GAZA, Aug. 25 - Where the Israeli settlement of Netzarim once drew rage and mortar fire, Palestinian planners envision a cultural center and museum. In place of the settlement of Morag they see an agricultural research facility.


The Day After Peace: Designing Palestine (May 15, 2005) Looking ahead 10 years after the Israeli departure from the Gaza Strip, they picture this isolated, conflict-blown strip of sand transformed into a tidy place linked internally by light rail and a coastal parkway and connected to the world by an airport and seaport.

Such is the outline sketched in an internal 10-year plan for the strip, obtained by The New York Times. The plan assumes that the population will grow by one million, to 2.3 million. It also assumes that the violence will not resume, that Israel will let Palestinian planes take off and that the governing Palestinian Authority will develop the land competently.

No one is more wary of such assumptions than the Palestinians themselves.
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