Travel Brings Surprises to Gazans

And travel brings surprises to Egyptians who were in Gaza, and found no one starving. From Travel Brings Surprises to Gazans:

A little travel has gone a long way toward changing perceptions in Gaza. Many Gazans who visited Egypt remarked on the discrepancy between their more glamorous image of urban Egypt - derived mostly from movies - and the run-down border region of unpaved streets and small houses they encountered.

A trickle of Egyptians also made it into Gaza. Mohammed, an Egyptian truck driver who rented his truck to Palestinians to ferry goods into Gaza, pointed to cars crowding a nearby street and said: "I thought conditions here would be harder than this. I thought people would be starving."

The speed with which Gazans bought up Egyptian goods prompted comments that Gaza is well on its way to colonizing Egypt.

One Palestinian cartoon passed around by e-mail shows a Gazan throwing a rope over the Sphinx, trying to drag it into Gaza.