But, until as recently as this spring, apartments stood empty because negotiations failed with Israeli authorities over connecting the city to the country's water grid.
Senator Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, the Senate majority leader, expressed confidence that Medicare drug benefits would soon become a reality after "six years of empty promises, stalled negotiations and partisan gridlock".
Given four days of picketing outside largely empty schools, months of negotiations and a roller coaster of sharp and sometimes shifting talk from those involved in the negotiations, few here seemed quick to predict what will really come next.
In a second statement emailed earlier to Egyptian reporters, an interior ministry spokesman stressed that the clearance was carried out with restraint, and followed weeks of negotiations to empty the sites peacefully, and several warnings on the day of the killings itself.
Mr. Remes also faced fierce criticism within the governing Peronist party since his return empty-handed from negotiations in Washington over the weekend with the International Monetary Fund.
Mann, having chronicled many instances of the U.S. having emerged empty-handed from negotiations, isn't persuaded that playing nice in public gets results.
But there they are, in a pile of X-rays, the baggage handler whose left hand got caught in a conveyor belt, the passenger who did not believe a sign warning that rolling bags do not belong on escalators, the cabdriver whose rival for a fare thought the best method of negotiation involved an empty soda bottle and a closed fist.
The real crux of the negotiations is divvying up mostly empty real estate on the West Bank and putting in place genuine security measures to curb anti-Israel terrorism.
Catherine Trautmann, leader of the French Socialists, says: "We seek a negotiation, not the politics of the empty chair .Time to cut the CAPEuro-federalists say it would all be much easier if the EU could raise taxes directly.
U.S leadership has come empty-handed to the negotiations and continues to accuse China of holding up progress.
