The Palestinian people have been longing for freedom and sovereignty since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. In 1917, the British colonial power at the time dominated historical Palestine, where the Jewish state was merely a dream in Jews’ minds around the globe and the Ottoman Empire was drawing to an end, the factors that made the Palestinians hope they would eventually have their own sovereignty on their own soil. Yet, amid such great expectations by the Palestinians, the British colonial government had promised the Jews, for free, ‘a national Jewish homeland’ in another people’s land, making the Jewish immigrants also hope of practicing some kind of sovereignty. Read more about A Tale of Palestinian Sovereignty
The Israelis call it a war, but it is really a contemptible and cruel cat and mouse game, with the mouse firmly held under the cat’s paw or locked up in a cage to which the cat has free and easy access. A case in point is Israel’s death squad murder of six Palestinians in Jenin and Qabatiya last week. Yet despite the odds stacked against them, writes EI contributor Rima Merriman, Palestinians know they have no option but to hold fast and continue to demand their rights under international law, and to figure out a way to make Israel pay a moral and material price for the destruction and suffering it is wreaking on them. Read more about A cruel cat and mouse game
Today marks the 58th anniversary of the expulsion of Palestinians from their land, also known as the Nakba. With millions still living under occupation or in exile, the Nakba or the Palestinian catastrophe remains at the heart of their national identity, argues Karma Nabulsi. The predicament of life under military occupation is usually recognised in principle, but life in exile has its own characteristics, and continues to create its own bitter experience for Palestinians. Read more about From Generation to Generation
The phrase “democratic elections” can be misleading in its positive connotation, especially when the countries where the elections take place are embroiled in conflict. In the Middle East, during the past six months, we have witnessed three sets of elections. Each has further entangled an already complex situation. There were the Iraqi elections in December 2005, then the January 2006 elections for the Palestinian Authority (PA), and, in March, the Israeli elections. In the first two instances, the voting took place during or just after a bloody war; the elections aspired to usher in a new era of conflict resolution. Read more about Election Backlash: Iraq, Palestine and Israel
“Suppose I were to leave my office here in Chicago and walk the short distance to the kidney dialysis unit down the road and pull out the tubes to which four elderly patients were attached, making them seriously ill or killing them.” EI co-founder Ali Abunimah argues that this, effectively, is what the so-called international community is doing to Palestinians by cutting off aid in an attempt to blackmail Hamas into changing its policies. Reports from hospitals in Gaza say that at least four people have died due to lack of medicine due to Israeli closures and the EU aid cut off. Read more about Helping Israel kill Palestinians
While the Palestinians are manoeuvring feverishly in reaction to the latest developments dropped in their fishbowl, Israel quietly but forcefully continues its sustained policy of seizing and maintaining control over the West Bank, its land and natural resources. In face of this onslaught and international apathy and complicity, writes EI contributor Rima Merriman, pleading for fulfilment of international obligations to the Palestinians is pointless. Palestinians should put all their energies, instead, into finding ways to contain and reverse Israeli military practices that target their land and natural resources. Read more about Flattening the conflict
Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is playing a dangerous game, working at every level to undermine the democratically-elected Hamas administration in the Palestinian Authority. Hamas’ landslide election victory shocked the world and the Palestinian political establishment. Because Hamas won fair and square it has been hard for those unhappy with the result to overturn it outright. So a broad-based coalition of election result rejectionists presented Hamas with a long list of demands. That such a hostile siege and boycott should come from the usual suspects of Israel and its American and EU allies, as well as Kofi Annan’s discredited UN is no surprise in our unjust world. Read more about Abbas' Dangerous Game
“Europe has always been at the forefront in defending Palestinian national aspirations.” So says Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief. This used to be true, but Europe’s past record is now too threadbare to serve as a cloak for the scandalous bankruptcy of its present policies. The Palestinians are not in their predicament because of insufficient “technical assistance ” from EU bureaucrats, but because they live under a brutal foreign military occupation which they have few means to resist. True EU solidarity with the Palestinians, writes EI co-founder Ali Abunimah, would involve a total reversal of its current pro-Israeli approach. Read more about Yes Mr. Solana, the EU has abandoned the Palestinian people
Monday’s suicide bombing in Tel Aviv rightly drew international condemnation, yet criticism of Israel’s relentless shelling of civilian population centres in the occupied Gaza Strip has been blocked by the US at the UN Security Council. This month alone, Israeli forces have killed more than 30 Palestinians, including at least six children, and injured 130 others, while about 200 shells have been fired into the Gaza Strip every day. As Israel’s illegal settlement and wall construction on occupied Palestinian land continues, the possibility of establishing a viable, territorially contiguous Palestinian state is being destroyed. “Permanent borders cannot be drawn by one party alone,” writes Manuel Hassassian. Read more about Last chance for two states
Despite a practiced guise of objectivity, the US corporate media’s reporting on Israel/Palestine is dominated by the Israeli narrative. An April 16, 2006 feature article by Steven Erlanger, The New York Times’ Jerusalem Bureau Chief, “Jerusalem, Now” in the Times’ Sunday Travel section exemplifies how seemingly professional journalistic standards can mask insidious biases and misinform readers. Erlanger, guided around Jerusalem by Israelis, omits Israeli violence, stereotypes Palestinians, whitewashes Israeli settlements and covers up Israeli efforts to take over East Jerusalem. Read more about The New York Times Whitewashes the Israeli Takeover of East Jerusalem
