In a recent article on the openDemocracy website, the rewritten Palestinian Authority policy document that replaced “muqawama” (resistance) with “popular struggle” was hailed as having “the potential to dramatically transform a conflict whose just resolution has continually eluded diplomats and militants.” EI contributor Ben White comments that the writer Maria Stephan may be admired for her optimism about the possibility of large-scale mobilization in the Occupied Palestinian Territories for a program of nonviolent resistance, but there is a twofold failure of contextualization that compromises her analysis. Read more about Nonviolent resistance a means, not the end 

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his lackeys are offering Palestinians a simple and false choice: either you are with “us” (i.e., the PA and Fatah) or you are with the “terrorists” (i.e., Hamas and Iran). In the United States, Abbas has been aided in this effort by the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP), a fledgling organization that professes to represent Palestinian-American interests. EI contributor Osamah Khalil finds the implications of these tactics on Palestinian advocacy and aspirations in the current political climate bear further scrutiny, as do the organizations and individuals which employ them. Read more about Politics of fear 

The clinking champagne glasses on Engage’s website said it all. The movement established to oppose the proposed boycott of Israeli academic institutions was celebrating a victory, as the British University and College Union (UCU) announced that to even discuss the boycott risked “infringing discrimination legislation.” The boycott of Israel, it seemed, had suffered a blow. Ben White comments on the seeming defeat for the Palestine solidarity movement. Read more about Only the beginning of the end 

“Getting inside the official Israeli mind is a worthwhile, if lurid, experience,” the late Edward Said wrote in his article “Dignity, Solidarity and the Penal Colony.” This is what it feels like when one is trying to understand the Middle East peace process that never seems to lead to anything. Observing this never ending saga, one can hardly help reaching the realization that peace is not a priority for Israel, and indeed Israeli governments have made no secret of the fact that a peace that precludes Israel’s complete control over historic Palestine is of no interest to them. Miko Peled comments. Read more about A crack in the wall 

For the sake of both Israel and the Palestinians, we must save Israel from itself. Living in South Africa under apartheid, I saw boycott efforts encourage public awareness, apply pressure and state disapproval for the government’s racist policies. Israeli historian Ilan Pappe has said boycotts “will not change positions in a day, but they will send a clear message to the Israeli public that these positions are racist and unacceptable … They would have to choose.” Angela Goldfrey-Goldstein comments. Read more about The tide is turning 

While largely unnoticed in American discourse on the topic, much has been said and written to debunk the sanctions regime imposed on Hamas government administrations since its resounding victory in the Palestinian Legislative Council elections of January 2006. These calls and reports show that the sanctions regime is wrong and misguided and that it is a reaction to the excessively intense pressure that the US administration has exercised over other nations. Political advisor to Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, Dr. Ahmed Yousef comments. Read more about Lift the siege on Hamas 

The Israeli cabinet has voted to declare the occupied Gaza Strip a “hostile entity,” thus in its own eyes permitting itself to cut off the already meagre supplies of food, water, electricity and fuel that it allows the Strip’s inmates to receive. The decision was quickly given backing by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Israel is the occupying power in the Gaza Strip, despite having removed its settlers in 2005 and transforming the area, home to 1.5 million mostly refugee Palestinians, into the world’s largest open-air prison which it besieges and fires into from the perimeter. Ali Abunimah comments. Read more about Dehumanizing the Palestinians 

In a 7 September speech delivered to Israelis who participated in the demonstration in the village of Bil’in after the decision by the Israeli High Court to alter the route of the wall in the village, representative of the Popular Committee of Bil’in, Basel Mansour stated: “Lovers of peace, friends of freedom and justice … our partners in the struggle and in the creation of this partial victory — I bless you in the name of our Palestinian people, in the name of the residents of Bil’in, who you came to know, and who came to know you, and whose sides you stood by ever since they began their opposition to the fence and the settlement that squats on a large part of their land.” Read more about A victory for the joint, popular struggle 

Two hundred thousand Palestinian children began school in the Gaza Strip this month without a full complement of textbooks. Why? Because Israel, which maintains a stranglehold over this small strip of land along the Mediterranean even after withdrawing its settlers from there in 2005, considers paper, ink and binding materials not to be “fundamental humanitarian needs.” George Bisharat comments. Read more about A double standard on academic freedom