I'd like to register my stolen car, please

Raymond Chen

On NPR‘s All Things Considered Robert Siegel reported on the curious status of legally stolen cars in Gaza.

Gaza license plates can be red for official, green for taxis, and white for private vehicles. The lower the number on the red plates, the higher the position of the official. The number 30 designates a truck. All this is pretty conventional stuff for licence plates. But then…

“And then the cars which are written in Arabic the letters M and F, those are the stolen cars. And then there is these plates with MHF, it is a stolen car, but working for the authorities. It is a stolen government car. There is also another kind, but it is the same plate, just the numbers are different. If the number starts with 25, then it is a stolen car, but it is allowed to work as a taxi.”

[Raymond is currently on vacation; this message was pre-recorded.]

Raymond Chen

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