Excerpt
MARGARET WARNER (Newshour): This is not your typical after-school program. Called Futuwwa, or youth in Arabic, it's paramilitary training for Palestinian high school students in Gaza. It was instituted by Hamas, the militant Islamist movement ruling this impoverished district, which Israel withdrew from in 2005.
Gaza is home to 1.7 million Palestinians packed into an area the size of Atlanta.
MAN: I'm here to learn how the use weapons. The program teaches us to defend ourselves, to organize in school and everywhere.
MARGARET WARNER: Futuwwa is now offered in all of Gaza's high schools. It's further evidence of Hamas' entrenched grip on power here.
After winning a majority in Palestinian elections in 2006, Hamas violently expelled Fatah from Gaza. Fatah is the older established secular party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, which now runs Palestinian affairs on the West Bank.
As President Obama travels to Israel and the West Bank this week, he will be trying to assess whether a real opportunity exists for the United States to try to revive the long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process. But among ordinary Palestinians, he will find no expectations that the U.S. can or will do anything to change the situation.
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