March 28th’s Israeli elections saw the sudden rise of Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party to become the fourth largest Israeli party, advocating transferring some Palestinian towns in Israel to PA control, thus revoking the Israeli citizenship of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.  The results of a poll released last week showed that 68% of Israeli Jews would refuse to live in the same apartment building as a Palestinian citizen of Israel, and 40% of Israeli Jews believe the state needs to support the emigration of Palestinian citizens. However, because of the way Israel is portrayed in the mainstream US media, such blatant discrimination would likely surprise the US public. Read more about The New York Times Covers Up Discrimination against Palestinian Citizens of Israel 

Canada and the US are the first governments that have severed all ties with the Palestinian Authority. The US administration and Canada accordingly want Hamas to denounce violence, recognize Israel and accept previous agreements, including the Road Map. EI’s Arjan El Fassed argues that this move shows how inconsistent foreign policy is towards Palestine and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These governments have failed to denounce violence on the part of Israel, have not recognized Palestine themselves and have failed to ensure Israel’s for signed agreements. This latest move has formally exposed the bias of the Quartet. Read more about Asking Hamas for the moon: Severing ties illustrates flawed policy 

The current calls to emphasise the role of the PLO coming from Fatah and the other political factions cannot be very convincing to the Palestinian people. Fatah bears the bulk of responsibility in destroying the PLO and marginalizing it. Whichever the motives, Fatah and all Palestinians must recognise that trying to revive the PLO as it stands is not the answer. The structure and methodology is outdated. There is no other way but to build up a different political body to represent the Palestinians everywhere, writes Rifat Odeh Kassis. Read more about Fatah Chapter Closed: Creating a Palestinian National Congress 

Palestinian newspapers are full of the faces of the new Palestinian government, smart men and one woman, who will come in to lead an already impossible task. There is not one terrorist among them, but that makes no difference to the US which has already started undermining the new government in the name, outrageously, of promoting “the development of democratic institutions in areas under the administrative control of the Palestinian Authority, and for other purposes”. This is the language of an anti-Palestinian bill (H.R. 4681) just introduced in the US House of Representatives. Rima Merriman suggests a rewrite. Read more about Rewriting H.R. 4681 so that it actually produces peace 

In the last 25 years, many Palestinians and other Arabs, in the United States and in the Arab world, have been so awed by the power of the US pro-Israel lobby that any study, book, or journalistic article that exposes the inner workings, the substantial influence, and the financial and political power of this lobby have been greeted with ecstatic sighs of relief that Americans finally can see the “truth” and the “error” of their ways. “But,” asks Jospeh Massad, “when and in what context has the United States government ever supported national liberation in the Third World?” Read more about Blaming the lobby 

A few weeks after Ariel Sharon broke up his Likud party to form a new “centrist” faction, Kadima, his advisers conducted a poll to find out how potential voters would respond if its list of candidates included an Arab. The results were unequivocal: Kadima would lose votes equivalent to between five and seven seats in the 120-member Knesset from Israeli Jews worried that they might be helping to elect an Arab. Kadima appears to be on a winning streak. Separation of the crudest and most ruthless kind is now, as the polls all too clearly demonstrate, precisely what the Israeli consensus demands, writes Jonathan Cook. Read more about Israeli Elections: A Vote for Separation 

As the new Hamas government is sworn into power in the Palestinian Authority, we might ask: What would bring a people, the most secular of Arab populations with little history of religious fundamentalism, to vote Hamas? Mere protest at Fatah ineffectualness in negotiations and internal corruption doesn’t go far enough. While warning Hamas that their vote did not constitute a mandate for imposing an Iran-like theocracy on Palestine, the Palestinians took the only option left to a powerless people when all other avenues of redress have been closed to them: non-cooperation. Read more about The power of saying no 

Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinians are now facing an unprecedented food shortage due to systematic Israeli closures that have prevented the import of wheat, among other things, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinians Territories (OCHA) said today. “The situation is extremely serious. In the next day or so all bread supplies will dry up. There is very little else around in terms of rice, which is also short in supply. Bread is the staple diet for Palestinians. It is also the food the poorest people so if that’s not available people will start to go hungry,” David Shearer, OCHA’s head of operations, said. Read more about Gaza facing humanitarian crisis 

In observation of the third anniversary of her death, Palestine Solidarity Committee/ISM-Seattle and the Theatersquad presented sidewalk readings of passages from Rachel Corrie’s writings in downtown Seattle at rush hour. Many members of the community read passages, while others wore tears-of-blood masks and held up door and window frames from demolished homes, along with enlarged photos of Rachel Corrie facing Israeli bulldozers.  The event was part of the national Rachel’s Words campaign in protest of the cancellation of “My Name Is Rachel Corrie” at New York Theater Workshop. Read more about Photostory: Rachel Corrie remembered in Seattle