After Month Under Own Authority, Gazans Find Things Working Out
The minister of finance needed a shave. His blue eyes spoke of exhaustion. And when a visitor joked that his open-necked shirt made him look like an Israeli official, he replied that doffing his tie was not just a matter of hot weather.</br></br>"It's because of the people outside!" said Mohammed Zuhdi Nashashibi, pointing to his door. "Daily, I have 30 to 40 people coming to me to solve their problems. So I have to be nervous!"</br></br>The transition from exiled revolutionaries to home-bound administrators has not been easy for Nashashibi and other members of the Palestinian Authority, sworn in a month ago. But both Israelis and Palestinians say that self-rule in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho has gone more smoothly than they had expected.</br></br>"So far, it works," said Israeli Health Minister Ephraim Sneh. "Not 100 percent well, but it's not a failure as some of our opposition people warned us would happen. There is a serious effort on the part of the Palestinian Authority."</br></br>Still, the jubilation with which Palestinians greeted their new government has shriveled in the face of a stubbornly weak economy that has failed to show a "peace dividend." Many shops along Gaza City's main thoroughfare are still closed, and a cleanup of Gaza's rubbish-strewn streets, soon to be launched with a grant from Japan, is sorely needed.