GAZA: INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT OPENS

Описание: (24 Nov 1998) English/Nat

Gaza International Airport is finally opened.

After years of negotiations, fund-raising and hope, the Palestinian people are moving one step closer to nationhood.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was to greet the first arrival, a plane carrying government officials from Cairo.

Last minute preparations and security checks were still being carried out hours before the first plane was due to arrive.

Gaza International Airport was officially opened by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as he welcomed the first plane to land.

Arafat will fly on his presidential plane for the first time out of his homeland to Paris to meet with French President Jacques Chirac.

Until now, Arafat has had to drive to Egypt, where his plane was kept, and fly on from there.

Palestine Airlines, with a small fleet that includes one Boeing 727, will begin direct flights to Jordan, Egypt and Morocco next week.

But for now all attention was on the Egypt Air plane - the first arrival at the new airport.

Despite its shortcomings, many Palestinians consider the airport a big step toward independence.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"This is a great day, a great achievement for all the Palestinian people."
SUPER CAPTION: Fayez Zaidan, chairman of Palestinian Civil Aviation Authority

But only hours before the first flights arrived, the control tower was still without controls, the check-in counter had no computers and the runway was missing flood lights for night
landings.

Until the floodlights arrive, there will be no night flights.

Palestinian officials said most for the equipment was being held up at the Israeli shipping port of Ashdod. The opening of their own seaport is next on the Palestinian wish list and was promised under the Wye agreement.

Civil aviation contracts with other carriers are in the works and expanded service plans include weekly flights to Cyprus and Japan.

The airport opening had been held up for two years because of disputes between Israel and Arafat's autonomous government over Israel's security role.

Israel will have a say over who and what enters Gaza, but the Israeli monitors will operate discretely, behind one-way mirrors, as they do now at two other crossings into autonomous Palestinian areas.

Israel will not interfere with departures from the airport.

The airport protocol was signed last week, as part of the Wye River peace deal signed last month by Israel and the Palestinians.

For those living in the small, overcrowded Gaza Strip, which is ringed by the Mediterranean on one side and by barbed wire on the other three, it may help ease the
ever-present feeling of being trapped.

In the past, Palestinians wanting to fly abroad needed permission to enter Israel and fly out of the international airport near Tel Aviv.

Israel rarely granted permission, however, forcing Palestinians to travel through Israeli-controlled land routes to Egypt or Jordan to catch flights.

West Bank Palestinians, separated from Gaza by Israel, will still need Israeli permission to travel to the Gaza airport.

Designed in an Oriental style with elaborate tiles imported from Morocco, the airport has one passenger terminal, a VIP lounge and a three-kilometre (two-mile)-long runway.

For the time being, Israelis will not be permitted to use the airport because of security concerns.

However, many believe Gaza International will eventually rival Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv.

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