A diet of tomatoes and weeds fuels Gazan protests

GAZA CITY, GAZA STRIP – Spilling sweet, hot tea from the glass he is holding, Mustafa Hamarneh lurches up from sitting cross-legged on a piece of cardboard and stalks off. Suddenly he returns, displaying a brown plastic bag stuffed with the leaves and stalks of a cress-like plant that grows wild in the Gaza Strip. He plans to take the greens home to feed his family.
"Animals eat this," he growls.

An elderly man with bristly white stubble on his chin, Mr. Hamarneh sits down again, and all around him sweaty, scruffy men nod their heads in empathy. One offers a recipe for the cress: "You mix it with tomatoes."

The economic despair of the Palestinians has reached a new low: People are eating weeds.

Hamarneh and the others stand and sit under a green-and-white tarp stretched over a frame they have put up in an empty lot. Unemployed for nearly two years, these and other Gazan workers have begun to put their frustration on display, mounting demonstrations and spending their days in protest tents.

In most societies, economic angst this severe would guarantee political turmoil. But among the Palestinians, the dictum of the Clinton years needs a rewrite: it's the intifada, stupid.

While Hamarneh and his jobless brethren are angry with Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority (PA) for doing too little to help them, they insist their movement isn't political.