Contrary to their cajoling speeches the foreign policies of these leaders have encouraged the erection of these walls. Their political support and their citizens’ tax money had encouraged rogue Israel to violate international laws and to keep constructing its separation wall. The erection of the Baghdad concrete wall, similar to Berlin Wall, exposes the hollow rhetoric of Obama and Hillary

In 2004 the International Court of Justice (ICJ) had ruled the Israeli wall as a flagrant violation of international laws. Fourteen out of the fifteen judges in the ICJ voted against the Israeli wall. The sole backer of the wall was US judge Thomas Buerghenthal, who echoed the sentiments of then US president Bush and the presidential candidate John Kerry.

Occupational governments, who erect such walls, claim that walls are needed to ensure security. One should notice that these walls are built to divide countries and cities into halves, to separate members of same family in order to disintegrate their social structure, to separate people from their farmland in order to destroy their economy, and to separate people, who had shared same culture and history for thousands of years, in order to destroy a nation.

The separation walls are symbols that show how governments can separate and alienate people in order to create misunderstanding and hatred. History shows us how governments had divided same people; e.g., Germany was divided into east and west; Korea was divided into south and north; great India was divided into Pakistan, Kashmir, and India; Yugoslavia was divided into many segments such as Kosovo, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina; the Arab world was divided into 22 separate countries; and lately Iraq was divided into three separate segments: Kurdish, Shiites, and Sunnis.

The Israeli separation and imprisoning wall is a unique phenomenon and is unlike all other walls. It cuts down a whole country and extends from one end to its other end. In the West Bank the wall extends 730km and 8-9 meters high. This is five times longer and three times higher than the Berlin Wall. It has armed watchtowers with snipers every 400 meters, and a military buffer zone 30-100 meters wide in many areas. In other areas it consists of electric fences, trace paths, barbed wires, cameras and deep trenches. In yet other areas it cuts through the hearts of Palestinian towns separating families from their very neighbors.

While Berlin Wall was only in Berlin City, the Israeli wall is all over the West Bank of Palestine encircling many major cities such as Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Tulkarem, Qalqiliya and Nablus. Some of these cities are completely surrounded by the wall on all directions with a single military checkpoint serving as the only exit/entrance gate to the city.

The whole Gaza Strip is surrounded with the wall on all three directions, while the fourth is faced with a sea patrolled by Israeli torpedo boats. The Gaza economical siege and the last December Israeli military onslaught demonstrate the devastating effects of the wall on the people.

Israel is building its separation wall not for security reasons as its leaders keep claiming. In reality it is an isolation wall erected with the hidden agenda of creating an atmosphere of silent “voluntary” transfer of Palestinians out of their communities. Its purpose is to imprison whole Palestinian communities in a large open prison within a wall disrupting peoples’ lives and separating them from their farm land, from schools, from hospitals, from jobs and from all the social services in the neighboring cities, thus exacerbating poverty and unemployment that would, Israelis hope, drive Palestinians out of their home towns to search for better livelihoods.

The wall is a massive land grab that has annexed 47% of the West Bank, which constitutes 22% of the whole Palestine proper leaving even smaller disconnected patches of land for the proposed Palestinian state. Its construction is a great crime against mother earth herself since Israel has razed the fertile layer of the confiscated farm land, and has uprooted hundreds of thousands of fruit trees especially one-thousand-years old olive trees. Many of these trees are protected under international cultural heritage laws.

The wall has also cut off all Palestinian cities from Jerusalem, the proposed capital of Palestinian state, and has destroyed the city’s historical and cultural characters. It has thus encroached on and violated Palestinians’ religious rights since they are cut off from their Christian and Islamic religious sites in the city.

Palestinians opposed the construction of the wall since its beginning in 2002. They have organized peaceful demonstrations and rallies against the wall. Weekly peaceful demonstrations are carried in the path of the wall, the most known are carried in the villages of Bi’lin and Ni’lin, where Palestinians are joined by many international and even Israeli peace activists. These demonstrations are usually faced violently by Israeli soldiers shooting live bullets, rubber-coated bullets, tear gas and sound grenades, arrests and savage beatings.

Palestinians had also taken the issue to the streets of major American and European cities leading to the establishment of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) with western peace activists, who expressed solidarity with the Palestinians verbally and actively. Many ISM members traveled to Palestine to help Palestinian farmers harvest their crops peacefully, to protect Palestinian homes from demolition, and to join in demonstrations against Israeli separation wall.

Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes against mother earth, and violations of international laws have shocked even the average western citizen. An anti-Israeli apartheid movement has begun to take shape and is gaining momentum. Boycott campaigns against Israel have been launched worldwide. Israeli goods are being boycotted in many European countries. Academic and sports boycotts are also gaining ground. Divestment campaigns are spreading within university campuses, churches, city councils, and many other organizations.

In the 20th anniversary of the dismantling of Berlin Wall Palestinians, with the help of international peace activists, have planned ten days (Nov. 9-18) of demonstrations, meetings, discussion groups, and information centers to bring people’s attention to Israeli crimes and to the inhumane Israeli separation wall. Demonstrations against the wall are planned in many countries such as Argentina, Australia, Austria, Basque Country, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Quebec, Scotland, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States and Venezuela.

In the occupied West Bank Palestinians led demonstrations against the wall. In a symbolic gesture and despite Israeli tear gas and rubber bullets, Palestinians with international activists in the village of Ni’lin and Qalandia refugee camp had toppled down one of the concrete slabs of the wall.

It took twenty years to topple down the Berlin Wall. But with such Palestinian resolve and international support the Israeli separation wall would, definitely, take shorter time to fall.

Let us remember, here, that the UN has illegally and immorally created and sponsored the terrorist state of Israel in Palestine; the heart of the Arab World. One should understand that the UN, with all its organizations, was established mainly by WWII victorious Western countries as a tool to serve their interests and to expand their authority on the expense of other weaker and poorer countries.

It is so obvious that the UN has no interest in solving the Israeli/Arab conflict in any way. Since its establishment in 1948 Israel has perpetrated a pre-meditated genocide against Palestinians, uprooted the whole population from their country and driven them into refugee camps into the desert, wiped Palestine off the map and is building the rogue terrorist state of Israel in its place. In this process, during the last 61 years, Israel had committed many war crimes, violated all international laws and all humanitarian laws, had broken hundreds of UN resolutions, and even murdered UN personnel and destroyed its facilities. Yet the UN did not lift one finger against Israeli crimes, and did not send its troops to protect Palestinians the way it sent its troops into old Yugoslavia (Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Slovenia), Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, and Sudan. The UN’s disregard of Palestinian life was reflected in the visit of the Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, to Gaza last January to inspect only the damage Israel inflicted on UN buildings, and did not take even one single look at the human sufferings of Palestinians.

In the few incidents the UN was pressured to deal with the Israeli/Arab conflict (Israeli occupation of Palestine) it had sent investigating committees usually led by a pro-Zionist or a Zionist Jewish officials. The latest such officials was the Zionist Jewish Judge Richard Goldstone (Goldstein). His daughter Nicole describes him as a “Zionist who loves Israel.” When the UN Human Rights Council asked Goldstone to chair the mission with the mandate to investigate Israel’s crime during its onslaught on Gaza last December 2008, Goldstone, as a good Zionist, refused the offer unless the mandate is modified to include “crimes on all sides”; a clear pre-biased assumption that Palestinians had also committed war crimes rather than defending themselves.

Goldstone is a well known official with a long international judicial history. He also serves on the Board of Directors of several nonprofit organizations, has affiliations with famous American universities (Harvard, Fordham, and New York University Schools of Law), and he is a trustee in the board of directors of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. With the many clear evidences of Israeli war crimes in Gaza broadcast by all televised media (except American media), and with the Israeli objections against such investigation calling it pre-biased, one could not but raise the question why would a well-known Zionist Jewish supporter of Israel accept such a mission knowing very well that his reputation would be attacked and smeared by all Zionists and Jewish organizations the same way they did to Jimmy Carter for just criticizing Israel?

Goldstone, like many other misguided Zionist Jews with blind loyalty to Israel, who sacrificed everything they had, even their own lives, for the sake of Israel (God’s chosen people) might have thought that he could reduce the damage to Israel’s reputation, and use his well-known reputation and judicial expertise to induce, in the report, some legal loopholes to divide the blame, and to give Israel a chance to blame Palestinians, or even some “few rotten apples” in the “most moral” Israeli army, and to justify her massacres in Gaza as some type of self-defense, although disproportionate. And that he did.

Goldstone’s report aimed to annul the many previous investigative reports done by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and many other Israeli and international human rights organizations. Such reports incriminated only Israel. Goldstone’s report sought to incriminate both parties.

Goldstone’s investigations were launched with the false perspective that there was a war between Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Authority, and his report was thus restricted in the language of violations of the international laws of war. It equated the poor, bankrupt, besieged, hungry, thirsty, unjustly ignored and persecuted by the international political system, and unarmed Gaza Authority with limited security forces plus the few hundreds lightly armed, barely trained militia cadres of the resistance groups on one side, with the well trained, well armed with the most technologically advanced (American) weapons, well supported, and well financed Israeli army on the other side.

The report states, “The Israeli armed forces are, in technological terms, among the most advanced in the world”, “… have an elaborate legal advice and training system in place … possess very advanced hardware and a market leader in production of the most advanced pieces of military technology available, including UAVs … have a very significant capacity for precision strikes…”

It was not war that happened in Gaza. It was a pre-meditated Israeli onslaught against all kinds of lives in Gaza; humans, animals, and plants. It was genocide; a burning holocaust with nuclear (DU) weapons producing 5,000 degrees of burning heat equals to the heat of the sun according to Dy Williams; the British weapons expert on Al-Jazeera. It was an immediate and long term destruction of life, and contamination and destruction of mother earth. The report stated in this regard:

“Taking into account the ability to plan, the means to execute plans with the most developed technology available [weapons], and statements by the Israeli military that almost no errors occurred, the Mission finds that the incidents and patterns of events [genocide, holocaust] considered in the report are the result of deliberate planning and policy decisions.”

Although Goldstone’s mission was to investigate Israeli war crimes his mission chose not to investigate the weapons of the crime. His report states: “This chapter does not intend to present a comprehensive analysis of all the aspects raised on the kinds of weaponry used during the military operations. It is rather a summary of the Missions’s views”.

While the Mission did not exclude the use of nuclear DU bombs by Israel “the Mission decided not to investigate the matter further”. The report justified Israel’s use of white phosphorous, flechette missiles, and DIME munitions as “not prohibited under international law”.

While sidelining the holocaustal Israeli weapons Goldstone’s report found the time and the expertise to describe in details and in numbers the types of rudimentary home-made missiles the Palestinians fired at the Israeli colonies.

Although Goldstone’s report accused the Israeli army of bombing civilian infrastructure; homes, schools, hospitals, mosques, and UN facilities, it did not “…discount the possibility that Palestinian armed groups were active in the vicinity … launched attacks close to civilian protected buildings, unnecessarily exposed civilian population of Gaza to danger”. The report stated that Israel showed concern about civilian lives by sending warnings before bombing the area; the mission “accepts that Israel dropped leaflets, made phone calls, left recorded messages and dropped smaller explosives on roofs as stated by the Israeli Government.”

Goldstone’s report gave Israelis the best justification of their attack (holocaust) on Gaza when it considered Palestinian launching missiles at Israeli communities as terror attacks. “The Mission finds that there is significant evidence to suggest that one of the primary purposes of the rocket and mortar attacks is to spread terror amongst the Israeli civilian population, a violation of international law”. It explains further the economical and social disruptions and the psychological trauma suffered by populations in the Israeli communities of Sderot, Netivot, Beer Sheba and others by those missiles.

Goldstone here ignores historical events and distorts the facts by switching them to the opposite direction. He ignored the fact that Israel had occupied Palestine since 1948, and that the southern Israeli communities such as Sderot, Netivot, Ashdod, and others are not Israeli towns, rather are Zionist colonies built on stolen Palestinian land. He also ignored the fact that these colonizers in these communities are usually armed and hostile against neighboring Palestinian town, many of them are either on military active duty or on military reserve.

These Zionist occupiers are like an enemy, who occupy your own house, imprison you and your family in one room and deny you all means of existence. Thus it becomes your duty and your human obligation to defend yourself and your family. The mere existence of such Zionist colonies on occupied Palestine is an act or war. The Israeli wall surrounding Gaza Strip and the military siege are acts of genocide that break all humanitarian and all international laws. Genocide is not only the use of weapon to murder people; it is also depriving them from all means of living.

Goldstone faults Palestinians for resisting Israeli aggression from within Palestinian civilian areas, yet he neglects to mention that Israel has a history of attacking civilian areas, and thus would face resistance from within these civilian areas.

In an attempt to portray Palestinians as violent people, even against their own citizens, Goldstone faults the intra-Palestinian conflict between Ramallah’s authority, dominated by rogue small faction of Fatah, and Gaza’s authority, dominated mainly by Hamas faction. What he ignored is the fact that such conflict was planned, orchestrated, and fed by previous American Bush administration, as reported by Vanity Fair, in order to topple down the democratically elected Hamas government.

To maintain credibility Goldstone’s report could not but criticize the obvious blatant Israeli crimes witnessed by the whole world. Yet it did not spare any opportunity to fault Palestinians themselves, deny them the right of self-defense, and even call them violent and terrorists. For defending their lives and the lives of their children the report is accusing the victims (the Palestinians) of the crime inflicted on them by the criminals (occupying Zionist Israelis), who claim to protect the lives of their own children. Israel’s rejection and the pro-Zionists’ harsh criticism of the report meant only to divert the attention away from these facts.

In conclusion, Goldstone’s mission proposes the following major recommendations, among others: that the UNHRC (United Nations Human Rights Council) brings the report to the UN Security Council in order to require both parties to launch appropriate independent investigations, establish an independent committee of experts to monitor such investigation, and refer the situation in Gaza to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.

The report also recommends that Israel ceases border closure and blockading access to sea, and pays reparations into a special fund to compensate Palestinians, although the Mission views “the current constitutional structure and legislation in Israel leaves very limited room, if any, for Palestinians to seek compensation.” Therefore the report urges international aid providers to step up financial and technical assistance for organizations providing aid to Palestinian (paying for Israel’s crimes).

The report recommends the Palestinian armed groups renounce attacks on Israeli civilians (indirectly calling their self-defense terror), yet it did not recommend Israel to do the same.

Finally, knowing the UN’s ineffective history in dealing with the Israeli occupation of Palestine, one wonders whether the Security Council would respond seriously, this time, to the report, given the fact that the powerful members of the Council are now busy with what they consider the Iranian nuclear threat.

The Israeli moves

In their annual meeting, on February 18th 2009, The Israeli military leaders had officially declared Iran as their number one strategic enemy in the region, and that the alleged Iranian nuclear arms program constitutes an “existential threat” to the state of Israel. They declared the elimination of the Iranian nuclear threat a top priority for the Israeli military and political leaderships.

Yet the Israelis seem to differ in the method of dealing with the Iranian threat. One group, represented by Barak, Netanyahu, Olmert, and Lieberman, called for a military strike on the Iranian nuclear facilities. Such strike, they claim, would at least set the Iranian nuclear program back by ten years. They site Israel’s bombing of Iraq’s Osirak nuclear facility in June 1981, and the bombing of alleged Syrian Al-Kibar nuclear facility in September 2007 as safe and effective solution to any nuclear threat. They claim that since Western countries, especially US, and the neighboring Arab states are opposed to Iran’s nuclear program, Israel’s attack would receive tacit approval, and similar to Iraqi and Syrian bombings Israel would not face any military or political consequences.

The second group, represented by the Israeli intelligence agencies, warns that Israel, alone, is not capable of dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat, and is in dire need of American help. They remind the Israelis of the events of previous wars such as 1973 war against Egypt and 1982 and 2006 wars against Lebanon, both countries are not as strong as Iran. They recommend that Israel should be only a partner in a joint military strike against Iran.

Third group, represented by Israeli President Shimon Perez, seemingly wants a political solution. Perez stated to George Mitchell, the American special envoy to the Middle East, last April 2009 that Israel has no plans to strike Iran. He urged for an international alliance against Iran to be formed in order to politically deal with the Iranian nuclear program.

Despite Perez’s seemingly political approach the Israeli military leaders are preping the army for a coming strike against Iran. They have purchased and acquired the most sophisticated American fighter planes, 100 advanced LJDAM (Laser Joint Direct Attack Munition) smart bombs, and small tactical (nuclear) bombs. The Israeli army has been testing the Arrow interceptor missile defensive shield in the Mediterranean Sea as well as in the American missile range in the Pacific Ocean west of California. The Israeli air forces sent their F16C fighter jets to participate with the Americans in war exercises, named Red Flag, at American Nillis Air Force base in Nevada, and their C130 Hercules aircraft to compete in the Rodeo 2009 competition at McChord Air Force base in Washington.

The Israeli navy has sent one of its six Dolphin class nuclear missiles carrier submarines accompanied by two Saar class missile boats through Suez Canal ostensibly heading towards the Persian Gulf.

Israeli leaders are crying wolf everywhere they go. Distorting Ahmadinejad’s speeches they declared him the new Hitler, who wants to wipe Israel off the map. They accused Iran of sponsoring terror by arming Hezbollah and Hamas. They keep claiming that Iran is only few months away from building its first nuclear bomb and such a weapon in the hands of the mad Mullahs is an existential threat to Israel. Such a threat, they keep claiming, endangers the whole region including the oil producing Gulf States, and could expand to endanger the rest of the world.

The American moves

The American administration, on the other hand, seems to favor a diplomatic solution for now. Yet like the previous Bush administration the Obama administration has also declared that all options, including a nuclear military strike, are still on the table if Iran did not respond positively to the diplomatic solution. Obama is also pressuring Israel to freeze its illegal settlements in Palestinian occupied territory, at least for the time being, in order to gain the support of Arab countries (Egypt, Jordan, and Gulf States). Putting Israel, the American watchdog in the region, on a leach has always worked to garner the Arab support for attacking a neighboring country.

Although a US National Intelligence Estimate of 2007 concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear arms research program in 2003, Obama issued a deadline of mid September for Iran to respond to the American offer. He had also warned Israel not to surprise his administration with a strike against Iran that might sabotage his diplomatic approach, and could drive the whole region into wider conflict.

At the same time Obama’s administration had sent Iran many hostile messages such as American determination not to allow Iran to build its bomb, expressing America’s strong support and commitment to the security of Israel, supplying Israel with the most advanced weapons and fighter planes, conducting joint military training with the Israelis in preparation for possible strike, having many congressmen and military experts stating openly that an Israeli strike is the only and best solution, sending American aircraft carriers to the Persian Gulf to flex its muscles in war games, and openly broadcasting America’s own military preparation to strike Iran such as accelerating the development of the largest bomb ever dubbed “MOP”; Massive Ordnance Penetrator. With its 20 feet long, 30,000 pounds weight, and 5,300 pounds of explosives this bomb is designed to penetrate through 200 feet of hardened surfaces before detonation in order to destroy underground structures such as the Iranian Natanz nuclear facility.

The Iranian moves

Iran, on the opposite side, is adamant on exercising its own legal right of developing its own peaceful nuclear program similar to any other nuclear member countries in the NPT. Since 2003 Iran had been harassed by the Bush Administration over its nuclear program. Being a member of the NPT the IAEA was sent several times to inspect Iran’s nuclear facilities, but found no evidence of a nuclear weapons program. Refusing to accept the outcome the Bush administration pushed the UN to impose economical sanction on Iran until it suspends its nuclear program.

In order to address any concern about its nuclear program Iran offered to place additional restrictions on its enrichment program including ratifying the Additional Protocol to allow more stringent inspections by the IAEA, open its nuclear program to foreign private and public participation, and allow the participation of foreign representatives within its Natanz facility among others. But the Bush administration rejected the Iranian offer, pushed the UN to impose the sanctions, and in a threatening move sent American military fleet into the Persian Gulf.

Putting Iran under real existential threat, being surrounded on the four sides by American troops, and continually being threatened by the Israelis and the Americans of being hit by nuclear bombs, Iranians had no choice but to exhibit their deterring muscles through their own war games on land, sea, and air. They also purchased the most sophisticated Russian missiles, and recently had joined the Russian navy in their military maneuvers in the Caspian Sea dubbed “Regional Collaboration for a Secure and Clean Caspian”.

Besides Russia the Iranians formed an alliance with Syria and Turkey, and gained the support of the Non-Aligned countries, and lately signaled its readiness to improve cooperation with North Korea.

As for the threat of the Israeli strike the Iranians warned that such a strike would only come as a joint effort with the US, and that Iran’s “firm and precise” response would reach all American assets in the Gulf region and the Israeli nuclear sites.

The real intentions behind the moves

Israelis know very well that they cannot strike Iran. They fully recognize that decisions concerning the Iranian issue are exclusively American due to Iran’s strength and geopolitical importance in the region. Iran is a large and a strong military country. Economic sanctions did nothing but helped Iranian rely on their own resources. The threats of possible attacks forced the Iranians to strengthen their military forces. Netanyahu’s “Iran first”, “Israel’s existential threat”, and “striking Iran” messages are directed towards the international political community first and towards the Israeli population second.

With the convening of the UN General Assembly this September, Netanyahu is trying to divert and engage the Assembly’s attention into the alleged Iranian nuclear threat. He hopes that such diversion would not give the Assembly enough time to discuss Israel’s war crimes and human rights violations in Palestine and especially in Gaza Strip as reported by Human Rights Watch groups. Netanyahu’s “Iran first” message is also meant to freeze re-opening any peace negotiations with the Palestinians and to escape American and European pressure to suspend colonial settlements in the West Bank.

Internally Netanyahu, like all previous Israeli Prime Ministers, is manipulating the media to bombard the Israeli population with a propaganda campaign filled with the images of the monstrosity of the enemy (Israel’s existential threat) to incite the feelings of fear and hatred of others and of elitecism (God’s chosen people) to unite and to rally the Israelis behind his leadership.

Israelis have come from different countries with different nationalities, social norms, backgrounds, and political ideologies. To unite them together Israeli leaders resort to tactics of fear, hatred, elitecism and war to create some type of national bond among them.

The US wants to control all the energy resources in the Middle East and South East Asian regions. The US has firm footings in the Gulf States, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union it started expanding in South East Asia starting with Afghanistan, jumping to Iraq then back into Pakistan. Now Iran is left in between as a gab in the US continuum presence.

The US wants also to control and manipulate the nuclear technology. After securing Indian and Pakistani nuclear bombs and facilities, the US is now directing its attention towards North Korean and Iranian nuclear facilities. It seems hypocritical of the still nuclear arms producing US to deny the Iranians peaceful nuclear technology. This is especially so since the US had agreed to provide India with nuclear fuel for its reactors, and had entered into agreements with Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan to help them build their own peaceful nuclear facilities.

The US knows very well that it could not stop Iranian nuclear program especially with the present Iranian government. To delay Iranian nuclear program the US is threatening to use the UN to impose economic sanctions not only on Iran alone, but also on countries who would continue dealing with Iran on any level especially those selling refined oil products to Iran. The effectiveness of such sanctions is still to be seen since a lot of countries have trade and business dealings with Iran.

The endgame

Since the US is heavily involved in at least three open military confrontations, and since many of the American military assets are sitting ducks in the Persian Gulf region for possible Iranian retaliatory strike, and since Iran is a large country that is not weak militarily or been weakened yet by economical sanctions, and since Iran might withdraw from the NPT and might pursue an accelerated nuclear military program if faced with more pressure and more existential threats, the US has no viable solution but to accept Iran as a nuclear country compliant to the NPT and subject to IAEA monitoring.

The nuclear threat or attack of the US, a nuclear country, against Iran, a non-nuclear country, would be a fatal attack on the NPT itself. Other NPT-member countries might withdraw from the treaty and start developing their own nuclear arsenals as a deterrent weapon against nuclear threats from nuclear countries. The NPT would be annulled and nuclear proliferation would become world spread.

An attack, even surgical, on Iran would not happen for it has a catastrophic consequences on the whole world. A draw seems to be the most reasonable endgame.

Concluding remarks

Accepting Iran as a nuclear country would not stop the US and Israel from supporting terrorist attacks within Iran as they have been doing for the last six years. The two countries have been supporting terrorist organizations such as Mujahedeen Khalg, Jundallah, and Kurdish groups within Iran. These terrorists are responsible for attacks against Iranian military targets, interrupting power and communication lines to the nuclear facilities, and assassinations of some Iranian nuclear scientists such as Ardeshire Hassanpour. The US will also continue funneling American tax money to the Iranian opposition, as was done during the Iranian election (as confessed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in an interview with CNN’s reporter Fareed Zakaria) to topple down, to weaken, and to hinder the operation of the Iranian government.

Meanwhile the US is planning to take full advantage of the Iranian threat in the region in order to strengthen its grip on the oil producing Gulf States, and to siphon their oil money into the budgets of the American military companies under the guise of security. Hillary Clinton touched briefly on that plan during a televised interview in Thailand stating that nuclear Iran could be contained by an American so-called “defensive nuclear umbrella” over the region. The notion of this nuclear umbrella, if there is such a thing, was the brainchild of Patrick Clawson, deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and Dennis Ross, then senior editor of Middle East Quarterly in 2004. Of course such an umbrella would be developed, built, and paid for by oil money from the Gulf States.

Clinton in her remark had acknowledged the inevitability of Iran, faced with existential nuclear threats from both US and Israel, gaining a nuclear arsenal, and the inevitable American acceptance of this fact.

Since the Oslo Agreement and their return to the West Bank, some of the Fatah top leaders have, gradually, turned into docile and corrupt leaders. They have hijacked the movement and turned it from a national liberating movement to a political party oppressing the same people they wanted to liberate through the Palestinian Authority. To maintain their power positions and their control over the Palestinian economy and the donor’s money, they sabotaged every attempt to convene the congress for the last 20 years.

Israel would not have kept any of the Palestinian leaders alive except those who call for “futile” peace negotiations and are ready to give political concessions to Israel. Those honorable leaders who wanted to continue the liberating struggle were assassinated by the Israeli forces, such as Mustafa Alhaj the Secretary General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was at home in Ramallah in August 2001. Other leaders such as Marwan Barghouthi, an Intifada leader, were kidnapped and dumped in Israeli dungeons. Even Arafat, himself, was poisoned when he could not give any more concessions to Israel.

Following previous successive American administrations Obama’s administration is about to come out with its own flavor of “peace plan” for the Arab (Palestinian)/Israeli conflict. Such a plan requires a new Palestinian leadership seemingly more honest and more respected than the previous known corrupt leadership, who would turn the Palestinian Authority into a huge security apparatus to ensure the Palestinian people’s submission to such a plan. Fatah’s Congress convention was called for to produce such a seemingly more honest leadership.

To guarantee the victory of the so-called “moderate” Abbas, the salesman of most generous concessions to Israel, the convention was carefully planned and manipulated by the Israelis, Americans, and some Arab leaders. After Jordan and Egypt had refused to host the convention, it was decided, despite many objections, to have the convention in Bethlehem under the watchful eyes of Israel.

Israel had refused entry to many Fatah delegates, especially from the refugee camps in Lebanon. Many other delegates from North African countries and from Gulf States refused to enter the occupied territories. 400 Delegates from Gaza Strip were refused entry by the Hamas-led government. This worked out for the benefit of Abbas, who filled the vacant seats with his men and enlisted some more. Originally 2000 delegates were supposed to convene, yet later on the number totaled 2300 with 700 delegates added by Abbas.

Many Fatah leaders outside of the occupied West Bank, especially in the Gulf States and in Lebanon, had published a declaration criticizing and questioning the legitimacy of the convention. They accused Mahmoud Abbas, an expired president, and his Ramallah-based Fatah leaders as illegitimate group trying to hijack Fatah. They considered the Bethlehem convention illegitimate and sponsored by the American Lieutenant General Keith Dayton, the security coordinator for the Palestinian Authority, and the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. They declared that they would not recognize any outcome of this convention. They announced that they recognize only Fatah in Diaspora led by Farouq Qaddoumi, the Secretary General of Fatah, and they called on Qaddoumi to arrange for their own convention in the Diaspora to elect a new and separate Fatah Central Committee and a Revolutionary Council.

Qaddoumi, who is also the head of the political department of the Palestine Liberation Organization, had accused Abbas of despotic tactics within Fatah. In a news conference in Amman, Jordan, on July 12th and on Al-Jazeera television, Qaddoumi had accused Mahmoud Abbas and Muhammad Dahlan, the latter a former Chief of PA Security Forces, of conspiring with the Israelis and Americans to assassinate Arafat and all Palestinian military and political leaders of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Fatah-affiliated Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, so that they would control the Palestinian Authority and manipulate the negotiations with Israel. As a proof of his accusations Qaddoumi produced the minutes of a meeting in March 2004 between Abbas, Dahlan, then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and William Burns, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs. The minutes were sent to Qaddoumi by Arafat for safe keeping.

The Ramallah-based Fatah leaders questioned Qaddoumi’s motives for such accusations and accused him of trying to sabotage and manipulate the outcome of the convention for his own interests.

Despite Qaddoumi’s accusations the Bethlehem meeting took place as scheduled. It witnessed the huge presence of Abbas’s security forces, which had aggressively controlled the progress and the quality of the convention. The security forces harassed and beat some delegates, some of whom had to be sent to the hospital for treatment. Speakers, who attempted to question or criticize Abbas’ leadership, were violently shut up and/or taken down from the podium.

The convention did not follow the conventional protocols for such political meetings. No reports about Fatah’s accomplishments for the last 20 years were given. There was no financial report explaining the income and expenditure of the movement. Most importantly, and most dangerously, there was no political policy or agenda for future actions of the movement. When some delegates demanded such reports and planning they were told that they had to consider Abbas’ opening speech as the official reports and political policy.

Abbas’ opening speech is considered the most dangerous for the Palestinians and the best gift for the Israelis. After the usual cheap clichés of struggle for liberation and building an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, Abbas proceeded to deliver a skewed history of the PLO beating his own drum as an active co-leader of it.

He praised the past Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation then he turned around and labeled it as terrorism when he stated that Fatah had renounced terrorism and is seeking the path of peaceful negotiation. He acknowledged that for the last 15 years “… these negotiations are in vain” but insisted “but still, there is a glimpse of hope and we have to continue this way for the interest of the people.”

Abbas insisted that the only way to achieve statehood is by peace negotiations and adopting the Road Map starting with the elimination of all “Palestinian terrorism” against Israelis. Basically this meant safeguarding Israeli security by fighting all the Palestinian resistance groups. That means turning the Palestinian Security Forces against the same people they are supposed to serve and protect in order to protect their worst enemy; the Israelis.

Although insisting on hopeless negotiations with Palestinians worst enemy, Israelis, and giving them more free concessions, Abbas made it clear that he is not ready to negotiate with Palestinian brothers in Gaza, Hamas, whom he called “the princes of the darkness and coup makers, who are dividing the homeland and the people and harming democracy by preventing Fatah members from joining the conference.”

To exonerate himself and Dahlan from the capital crime of assassinating Arafat, Abbas accused Israel of causing Arafat’s death, and assigned a committee to investigate how Arafat died — not who assassinated him.

Abbas claimed that the Oslo Agreement had allowed thousands of Palestinians to return to their home land: West Bank and Gaza Strip. He made it clear that the right of return means the return to the West Bank and Gaza Strip only, and not to Palestine proper.

At the end of the conference Abbas, as expected, was nominated, not elected, as the supreme leader of Fatah. The election of the Central Committee and the Revolutionary Council had resulted in the election of many of Abbas’ hired men, many of whom could be considered traitors than patriotic. Fatah delegates from Gaza, backed by others from West Bank, called it a pre-arranged fraudulent election and resigned from the movement as a protest.

The Fatah convention had succeeded only in weakening and dividing the once patriotic liberating movement into a docile ready to negotiate Ramallah-based Fatah, an orphaned Gaza-based Fatah, and a confused Diaspora-Fatah.

Financed by a pro-Zionist American administration and virtually led by American General Keith Dayton, the Ramallah-based Fatah, in the form of Palestinian Authority, would be internationally recognized as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and would be groomed to accept whatever peace plan the American administration imposes on it through what is called peace negotiations.

It was said that a nation who negotiates with its occupier over its own independence is signing, at the same time, its own enslavement contract.

This “change Orgy” became contagious and spread to other countries especially in Africa, where Kenya, the birth place of Obama’s father, declared a national holiday to mark Obama’s victory. Since American foreign policies have a direct impact on almost every country in the world, many world leaders, especially African leaders were hoping to start a new fresh page with Obama’s administration. After the collapse of the Soviet Union the Bush administration felt empowered and justified to be more condescending towards the rest of the world, and felt free to do anything and everything to expand its control around the world. With Obama in the Oval Office world leaders are hoping for a “good” change.

Obama’s victory, and more accurately Democrats’ victory, was a sure thing. Through two major wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the war in Haiti, their proxy wars in Africa, war in Georgia, war against Lebanon via Israel, and their violations of international laws, plus the internal wars against the freedom of American people, and the ravaging of American economy, the Republican neoconservative Bush administration had swung the pendulum to the extreme right, and now it has but to swing back to the opposite direction. Everybody knew that after eight disastrous years of Republican rule the Democrats will have their turn. This inevitable change is what brought Obama to the White House. Obama rode to the White House on the people’s wish for change

This has been the most expensive American election so far. The combined cost of both Democratic and Republican campaigns was estimated to about one billion Dollars. McCain raised about $360 millions while Obama raised about $640 millions. In just one month Obama was able to raise $150 millions. Such amounts of money has not been raised from the poor and middle class American families, millions of whose bread winners had lost their jobs to outsourcing, lost their investments and retirement funds, and finally lost their homes. Such money came from the power elite; bankers and corporations, who wanted to have a saying in the decisions of the new American administration. Obama cannot accept such funds without paying a price of loyalty to such donors. With this money Obama was able to employ media power to reach every American minority and to talk to them in their own ethnic languages and their own dialects. He was able to deliver his dream of change to the newly young voters in their colleges and universities. With double the money McCain had, Obama was able to “buy” more votes.

Record voters turned out to vote for Obama; estimated to be 64% with 62.3 million votes. The majority of them were Blacks and Latino. Race, as well as economy, had played the greater influence in electing Obama. This was obvious in all election rhetoric that could not escape using racist terminologies. Unfortunately, a large majority are not aware that race is not the core issue of the struggle. It is, rather, a class struggle; the few filthy rich against the poor. Many colored rich minorities had, and still, enslave the poor of their own color. Let us remember what military black previous Secretary of State Collin Powell and his successor Chevron’s Condoleezza Rice had done to the blacks of America.

Obama is no different. He will soon be exposed the person he really is; just another wolf in sheep clothing. Obama’s promises to protect the middle class are just empty promises. This was obvious after he approved the $700 billion (plus interest) bailout to give more tax money to corrupt bankers, who will use that money to buy weaker banks. The money should have been used to pay portions of the mortgages the middle class owe to the banks, so they could keep their homes. His acclaimed tax cut promise to the middle class means nothing to its unemployed members. The official unemployment rate is 6.5% not counting those, who are not receiving unemployment benefits and are thus not counted. In 2008 alone Americans have lost 1.2 million jobs to outsourcing. Obama’s solution to outsourcing is offering corporations tax cuts as incentives to keep the jobs in the US. Such incentive is nothing compared to the huge savings, in the forms of benefits and retirement funds the corporations are saving by employing very cheap labor force unprotected by any labor laws in third world countries lacking any environmental laws. Obama never talked about the poor Americans. For him they don’t exist.

Obama’s real position concerning the unfair NAFTA agreement, that he aggressively criticized and called for its revocation, was exposed later, when it was leaked that his advisor Astan Goolsbee had called Canadian officials asking them not to take Obama’s anti-NAFTA rhetoric seriously, but “…should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plan”.

People, who think that a president like Obama with his limited political experience could actually change policies, are gravely mistaken. He will be under the influence of members of his administration, more experienced experts and advisers, who will shape his decisions. They are expected to be more right-wing than the Republican neoconservatives. Each interest group, who contributed to Obama’s campaign, will push its own agent into this administration to implement its own agenda that might be different than and opposite to the agenda of other interest groups. His administration will be pulled to too many different directions and the well being of the common people will be forgotten and lost.

Obama’s first appointment (pushed onto him by AIPAC) as his chief of staff is an Israeli citizen and Israeli army veteran Rahm Emanuel, whose father was a member of the Irgun; a Zionist terrorist group who perpetrated terror attacks in British mandated Palestine. This appointment comes to guarantee and to foster Obama’s promised support to Israel. Obama promised $30 billions of American tax money in military aid to Israel. Ignoring the fact that Israel has violated many international laws, and is an occupying power, Obama declared his support to Israel as a “theocratic” Jewish state with undivided Jerusalem as its capitol. He also vowed to “isolate Hamas” the Palestinian representatives elected in the most free and democratic election as observed and certified by international observers. He also threatened to do everything in his power to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons to threaten Israel.

Hypnotized by “change” and “race” people could not see the similarities Obama has with McCain/Bush/Republicans. They are all for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although initially Obama opposed the Iraqi invasion, he always voted for the surge and more war funding in Iraq. He wants to leave a residual force in military bases in Iraq, and wants to ship another military surge to Afghanistan to keep bombing Pakistani borders. He supported Israeli terror and aggression against Palestinians and the war against Lebanon. Obama is belligerent towards Iran promising to do “everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon”. He was confrontational towards Russia after the war in Georgia. He is for war against “global terrorist” and promised to bring Osama bin Laden in dead or alive. He is for drug wars (protecting drug trade, whose money goes through Wall Street). Locally, he supports the death penalty, pollutant nuclear and coal industries, and had never talked about abolishing oppressive laws such as Patriot Act, homeland security, internet control, and wiretapping and spying on American citizens.

The most dangerous is Obama’s denial of any evidence that the North American Union (NAU); the so-called Security & Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) that President Bush had signed in 2005 with Canada’s Prime Minister Paul Martin and Mexican President Vicente Fox without the approval of the Congress, will take place. Ohio’s Representative Marcy Kaptur stated “There is a plenty of evidence that this is going on”. Presidential candidate Ron Paul had also denounced this union. The North American Union is based on eliminating the borders between the three countries, and creating a new common currency called Amero; a monetary conversion that would transfer more wealth to bankers similar to what happened in Europe’s conversion to the Euro. Most American manufacturing jobs are planned to move to cheaper Mexico with raw material imported from Africa and South East Asia into Mexican ports, and the manufactured products would be transported via a super highway linking Mexico to Canada through the heart of American middle states. This super highway is planned to be leased and controlled by a foreign body; Spanish Centra Company. Yet when asked about this union, Obama pretended that the term is new to him. It is a sin for a president-to-be to deny such evidence, and even more sinful if he really does not know about it.

Obama is just a sweet dream people will enjoy for a short while. The morning after, people will wake up and will recognize that it was but a dream.

Settler colonialism, usually technologically and militarily more advanced, is based on the erasure of already existent people, their culture and their memory, and substituting it with new foreign national entity that builds new culture, new history and new memory. To do this, settler colonialists have to get rid of the native people, their physical evidence, their history and their memory. They have to wipe off their existence from the world collective memory.

In the case of Palestinians, the name of their country has already been wiped off the map. If you look for Palestine on any modern map you will not find it. Palestine had been wiped off the map and replaced by Zionist Israel.

The plan of wiping Palestine off the map originated within the First Zionist Congress in 1897, when a programme for the colonization of Palestine by Zionist settlers was approved to pave the way for the establishment of an exclusive Jewish state in the heart of the Arab World.

Britain, the super colonial power at the time, adopted the programme, which started to materialize with Balfour Declaration in 1917 when the British government promised to use “its best endeavours to facilitate the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

This decision was taken regardless of the Palestinian’s national aspiration and without asking them whether they wanted to give their country away to strangers or not. Palestinians were dehumanized and disregarded, their existence was not even acknowledged, hence came the Zionist slogan “Land without people for people without land”.

To establish a Jewish settler-colonization in Palestine, Zionists needed land, people (settlers), and economy. They started to acquire land, and to encourage Jewish immigration and settlements and building a segregated economy. This process continued from 1918 to 1948 when the state of Israel was declared on usurped Palestinian land.

Although Jews were then a minority comprising only 30% of the population and possess a mere 6% of the land, still they announced the establishment of the state of Israel. Subsequently Arabs declared war on Israel. Hearing this, one would imagine that Arab countries had amassed huge well equipped armies to attack Israel. The fact was that most of the Arab countries at that time were still either under occupation or had just come out of it and had poor resources. Arab countries were able to amass only 23 thousand troops while Israel had 93 thousand well equipped troops. Israel was receiving heavy arms from Europe through communist Czechoslovakia (through Zatic military base). The defeat of the Arab armies thus was clear and inevitable.

As a result of this war Israel occupied 78% of Palestine, about 75 hundred thousand Palestinians (two thirds of population) were kicked out of their homes and made refugees, and more than 400 Palestinian villages were completely razed off the ground.

Occupying most of Palestine ushers the first phase of establishing the Zionist colonial settler entity. Setting up the base was accomplished. The second phase is to get rid of the people.

In his book Birth of Palestinian Refugee Problem, Israeli historian Benny Morris quoted Yousef Weitz, the director of the Jewish National Fund’s Land Department, from his diary as saying:

It must be clear that there is no room in the country for both people (Palestinians and Jews) … the only solution is a Land of Israel, at least a western Land of Israel without Arabs. There is no room here for compromise … There is no way but to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries … Not one village must be left, nor one Bedouin tribe.

In his book Dispossed- the Ordeal of the Palestinians (1982), the Israeli writer David Gilmour states that expulsion was the most common method used to make people leave their homes by force. Terrorism and the use of propaganda to spread fear of terrorism were the most grotesque. Here are some eyewitness accounts of such method. A Palestinian woman from “Safsaf” describes what happened in her village when Israeli troops occupied the village:

“As we lined up, a few Jewish soldiers ordered four girls to accompany them to carry water for the soldiers. Instead they took them to our empty house and raped them. About seventy of our men were blindfolded and shot to death, one after the other, in front of us.”

Many similar atrocities were perpetrated at several places and are well documented. Let us look at an alternative viewpoint from an Israeli soldier, who himself described the actions of his fellow Israeli troops:

They killed some eighty to one hundred Arabs, women and children … Another soldier boasted that he raped an Arab woman and then shot her. Another Arab woman with a day-old baby was employed in cleaning jobs in the yard … She worked for one or two days and then was shot with her baby. … Cultured and well mannered commanders who are considered good fellows … have turned into low murderers, and this happened not in the storm of the battle and blind passion, but because of a system of expulsion and annihilation. The less Arabs remain, the better.

The second phase of settler colonialism is the erasure of natives’ physical evidence. I would like to emphasize here that wiping off Palestinian villages was a pre-meditated scheme planned and partially implemented long before the establishment of the state of Israel.

Zionists started by buying Ottoman’s feudal properties from absentee rich families and kicking out by force the Palestinian farmers, who lived on and cared for the land for hundreds of years. One such example was the property of “Sarsaq” family consisting of 240 thousand Donums of land in Haifa Valley and “Marj Ibn Amer” valley with 23 Palestinian farm towns on the land. In 1921 the “Sarsaq” land was acquired by the National Jewish Fund, who forcefully kicked out 8 thousand Palestinian farmers and leveled 21 out of their 23 villages. Some of the razed Palestinian villages were Jinjar, Sufsafa, Tel Alfarr, Jalod, Alfulah, Al-Affula, Tel el-‘Adas, Jeeda, Tel al-Shummam, Quamoon, Jibata, Khuneifus, Al-Harithia, and Al-Harbaj.

They also acquired similar properties in Hula Valley and Beesan Valley, where they razed 70 other Palestinian farm villages and evacuated their inhabitants.

Many Palestinian villages, which survived destruction during 1948 war, were later erased (wiped off) after the war. Records of the Association of Archeological Survey, housed in the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem, show that a plan to wipe off Palestinian villages was implemented jointly by the Israeli Lands Administration and the Jewish National Fund in 1965, and was carried on for several years. The plan intended to wipe off all traces of Palestinian villages in order to destroy any hope for the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes.

The Israeli Association of Archaeological Survey was established in 1964 to issue permits for the destruction of Palestinian villages. By 1967 this association had approved the wiping off of about 100 villages inside 1948-occupied Palestine (Israel). After 1967 the Association turned its attention to destroying Palestinian villages in West Bank and Golan heights. On December 2006 Roni Bar-On, Israeli Interior Minister declared his ministry’s approval on a plan to demolish more than 42,000 homes of Palestinian Bedouins in Negev Desert. This plan will wipe off 45 Palestinian villages housing more than 86,000 Palestinian Bedouins, who in 1958 were evacuated out of their land and confined to a piece of land in the desert known as the Triangle. Although paying taxes to Israeli government like any other town, these 45 villages were not recognized by the Israeli government, and received no civil services at all.

The destruction of Palestinian history, culture, and wiping off their memory, continued by changing names of Palestinian towns and villages, and replacing them with Jewish names. Moshe Dyan, a previous Israeli Defense Minister, said in a lecture he gave at the Technion University in Haifa in March 19th 1969:

we came here to a country that was populated by Arabs, and we are building here a Hebrew, a Jewish state; instead of the Arab villages, Jewish villages were established. You even do not know the names of those villages, and I do not blame you because these villages no longer exist. There is no single Jewish settlement that was not established on the place of a former Arab Village. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul, Kibbutz Gv’at in the place of Jibta, Kibbutz Sared in the place of Huneifis, and Yehushua in the place of Tel al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population. (Haaretz, April 4th, 1969)

The policy of wiping off Palestinian names and replacing them with Jewish names was adopted by first Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion since the establishment of Israel in 1948 when he established a special committee from historians, geographers, geologists and Torah experts, whose task was to wipe off the Canaanite and Palestinian Arabic names and substitute them with Jewish names. So Tel Rabi’ became Tel Aviv, Um Rashrash became Eilat, Shu’fat became Nevi Yachob, Beit Jala became Gilo, Za’tara became Tabbuch, Beisan became Beit Shean, Qualandia became Atarot, Beit Mahseer became Beit Me’er, Artof became Hartuv, and so on.

So, not only did they erase the indigenous peoples’ memory, they have sub-planted a new memory in its place.

Israel is intent on destroying all Palestinian and Islamic cultural city landmarks. Religious places and buildings, especially Muslim mosques, were destroyed, neglected to collapse, or turned into museums, art galleries, pups, clubs, senior citizens shelters, and stables for farm animals.

Muslim Palestinians were not allowed to renovate or build new mosques. Renovation and strengthening the bases of Al-Aqsa mosque for example was hindered by Jerusalem municipality. Building permits were withheld, and building materials were not allowed to pass through Jerusalem old gates to the mosque. The ancient Islamic Council building and its adjacent Islamic “Ma’man Allah” cemetery in West Jerusalem are important historic and cultural Palestinian landmarks. The Israeli government is destroying the internals of the Islamic Council building to build western-style apartments, and digging up the cemetery to build a Jewish Museum of Tolerance on its place. It is so ironic and hilarious to destroy someone’s historical place to build a museum of tolerance!

After the Jewish Holocaust the whole world cried “never again”. Yet the same victims of the Holocaust, and their descendant, are now perpetrating a similar Holocaust against the Palestinians. It is true that Palestinians are not being gassed, yet their children are targeted daily by Israeli snipers, their civilians are routinely murdered by Israeli artilleries and air raids, their homes are destroyed by Israeli bulldozers, their land is being usurped by Israeli settlers, their natural resources are exploited and abused by the Israeli government, and their economy is being choked by restrictions and sieges. Palestinians are imprisoned within a high wall snaking through and around their cities. They are being starved to death. If this is not another Holocaust I don’t know what is. All this is happening while the world is watching silently. The international slogan “never again” had thus become an empty cry.

Many believe that what happened in Gaza Strip was the result of a failure in the American-Israeli policy of supporting Fatah mutineers (Dahlan’s death squads) to oppose and to topple Hamas government. Contrary to this belief, what happened in Gaza was exactly what Bush’s administration and Israeli government planned for. They set an inescapable trap for Hamas, who was left without any other alternatives but to act in order to put an end to Dahlan’s death squads and to enforce security to protect Palestinian citizens. US, Israel, and some Arab leaders are distorting Hamas legitimate action in order to destroy the Hamas resistance phenomenon and to prevent it from spreading to the neighboring Arab countries.

To understand the dynamics of Fatah-Hamas conflict we need to go back in history to the first Gulf War when Iraqi Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Arafat, then, made the fatal mistake of openly supporting Saddam’s invasion. He was hoping for more financial support from Saddam that he, then, gained control over the largest oil resources in the region. Unfortunately for Arafat the Iraqis were ousted from Kuwait, and the Gulf States, who used to finance Arafat, had boycotted him for his support to Saddam. This boycott dried up Arafat’s financial resources, that led some of his officials gathering whatever money is left, closing PLO offices in some countries and abandoning the movement.

During the 1993 Oslo negotiations between the Arabs and Israelis Arafat broke away from the Arab negotiating team, went behind his own Palestinian negotiating team, and signed the Oslo Accord with shady conditions in order to hasten the receipt of badly needed money from Western donor countries. To assure the flow of such money Arafat and his Fatah officials had to follow the dictate of these donor countries and to give Israel free political concessions one after the other.

On their entrance (return) to Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip Fatah officials hastened to strengthen their positions through gaining monopolies over Palestinian economical resources, and through business partnerships with Israel as per donor countries’ conditions. Those “returnees” started accumulating money, living in luxurious homes, buying people’s loyalties, and abusing their political positions. The local Palestinian leaderships were left with very few positions, and many of those who acquired any position had to sell their loyalty to Fatah. The Palestinian Authority (PA) had become a mediatory Israeli tool to execute Israeli policies through seemingly Palestinian apparatus. Corruption prevailed within Fatah PA.

Although Arafat gave Israel political concessions there were certain matters (status of Jerusalem and refugees right of return) that he could not compromise for fear of losing his status and branded as a traitor. In the 2000 Camp David Summit with American President Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Barak, Arafat refused to compromise on these matters (so called Israel’s generous offer). A more lenient collaborative replacement was sought for, and Mahmoud Abbas was appointed as Palestinian Prime Minister under the pressure of the donor countries. On June 4th 2003 while meeting with President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Arial Sharon in Aqaba, Jordan, Abbas showed in his speech the sought-for “understanding” of the Israeli position. Yet Arafat did not grant Abbas any political power, so he resigned his position.

More drastic measures were taken by Israel to discredit and to pressure Arafat. Israeli intelligence supported the then weak Hamas faction in Gaza in order to oppose Arafat’s Fatah. Unfortunately for Israel Hamas was joined and led by many Palestinian patriots, who were committed to resisting Israeli occupation until independence for all Palestine is achieved. Hamas focused its resistance against Israel, and lately became so powerful enough to control Palestinian Parliament and Prime Ministry.

Israel had also supported Muhammad Dahlan, a collaborator who was enlisted while in Israeli jails, evicted from the Occupied Territories to join Fatah, and to become the Chief of Security Guards. Dahlan tried to discredit Arafat (the old man as he used to call him), but his Coup failed even before the start due to Arafat’s tight grip on all divisions of Security Guards. So Israel sent its tanks to destroy most of Arafat’s Ramallah headquarters and to imprison him in his office. Yet Arafat did not give in, his popularity was strengthened, and he was visited by many European political figures and even by Israeli sympathizers. Arafat then was poisoned.

To guarantee the success of “moderate” Abbas in 2005 Palestinian Presidential election to replace Arafat the Bush administration financed Abbas, the Israeli government arrested his strongest local Palestinian competitor Marwan Barghouthi, and restricted the movement of the other candidates. With Hamas’ boycott of election and with Fatah controlled Palestinian TV giving Abbas 94% of electoral campaign time, Abbas was elected president.

During the next year corruption of Fatah officials became rampant. Money from the Palestinian Economic Council for Development and Reconstruction (PECDAR) funds had disappeared and not accounted for, tax revenues of the border crossings were siphoned into Dahlan’s private Israeli bank accounts, the then Prime Minister Ahmad Qurie’s cement sale to Israeli contractors to build the imprisoning apartheid wall, and the smuggling of millions of cash money of Fatah’s officials outside the country had led the people to lose trust in the PA and to demand reform. The donor countries decided to freeze their donations until more accountable process is established.

The Palestinians expressed their dissatisfaction with Fatah in the Parliamentary election in January 2006, when they elected Hamas leaderships (by 42%) to form the government. With all the American-Israeli support Fatah leaderships lost election due to their corruption and collaboration with Israel, while Hamas won due to their resistance to occupation, their social services, and their charity they provided to the people. The election process was strictly scrutinized by international observers (including ex-President Jimmy Carter), who testified that it was democratic, free and honest election.

The result of the election caught everybody by surprise including Hamas themselves, who expected to win few seats in the Parliament and not the majority. Immediately Hamas invited all the Palestinian factions to form a unity government, but Fatah and the rest of the factions turned their backs on this offer for fear that Hamas would eventually fail due to American rejection.

The Bush administration, the self-proclaimed defender and spreader of democracy in the New Middle Eastern region, did not like Palestinian democracy. So it backed the Israeli government and Fatah’s rejectionists to apply pressure on the new Hamas government to renounce resistance “violence”, recognize Israel’s right to exist “on usurped Palestinian land”, and to accept previous “unreasonable and unjust” agreements with Israel. Hamas rejected these demands.

The decision came to starve Palestinians in order to cripple, discredit and to topple Hamas government. Before the establishment of the new government the old Fatah Parliament gave President Abbas more constitutional power. Abbas also hastened to double the number of his Presidential Security Forces. The Bush administration struck financial, economical, and political sanctions against Hamas government, and forced EU, the Quartet, and Arab countries to join in otherwise face financial isolation. The administration, under the supervision of General Keith Dayton, formulated a plan to finance Abbas, train his Security forces in Jericho, in Jordan, and in Egypt, and send in death squads, under the leadership of Security Chief Muhammad Dahlan, to spread terror, assassinations, and “creative chaos” to force Hamas to react. This reaction is expected to incite civil war as Dayton has opined in his Congress session late last May. This plan was revealed by Public Affairs and Department Spokesman Sean McCormack on 22nd of last December when he declared Washington’s readiness to provide PA with large shipment of weapons to topple Hamas government. The author of the plan was Bush’s Deputy National Security Advisor Elliot Abrams, who on 7th of last January called for a “hard coup” to overthrow Hamas.

Dahlan’s death squads started terrorizing people in Gaza. They attacked Hamas government buildings, torched Hamas charitable institutions and social services centers, attacked mosque goers, burned educational and cultural centers, assassinated Hamas resistance members, and fired automatic weapons randomly in the streets to terrorize people. Many times they engaged members of Qassam Brigade. They also had kidnapped foreigners and media reporters then let Dahlan release them as a show of his own influence. Arab mediations interfered many times to solve what was termed power struggle between Hamas and Fatah. Representatives of both factions met with Arab mediators in Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia to come up with agreements that usually did not last except for few days, after which the death squads would start their terror again.

The death squads started targeting Hamas officials. PA Minister of prisoner’s affairs, Wasfi Quebha, escaped assassination attempt when his car was strafed with bullets. On 13th of last December Judge Bassam Al Farra was assassinated in Gaza. On the 14th Palestinian Prime Minister, Isma’el Haniyeh, himself was the target of a failed assassination attempt while entering Gaza from his Gulf trip. On the 17th of the same month there was another failed assassination attempt against Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar. Hamas leaders sent letters to President Abbas naming members of the death squads, who took camp in Presidential compound in Gaza and used it as prison and torture centers, and asking him to use his influence to put an end to Dahlan’s death squads. Yet Abbas did not give them any attention. In Mecca meeting Hamas offered to share power with Fatah in a form of a Unity Government to address security issues in Gaza. This Unity Government did not live long; Hani Qawasmi, the newly assigned Interior Minister charged with security reforms, turned in his resignation due to the many hurdles he met from Presidential Guards.

The beginning of month of June ushers what seems to be a preparation for a coup against Hamas government into Gaza. On the 2nd of June Hamas Interior Ministry in a press conference expressed its concern about armored military vehicles secretly crossing the borders and stationing in Presidential compound in Gaza. It was revealed that on Friday 6/1 ten large arms shipments were transported from Jericho to Gaza under the protection of the Israeli army. On Thursday 6/7 eye witnesses reported that several hundreds of members of Fatah’s Badr Brigade had crossed Rafah crossing into Gaza to join the 450 others, who preceded them in May 16th.

A wave of assassinations of Hamas cadre followed, Muslim Imams and their mosques were targeted, some Hamas ministers were also targeted, families of Hamas martyrs were attacked, 12 of their houses were burned and demolished Israeli style and their businesses were looted and torched, and finally the house of Prime Minister Isma’el Haniyeh was targeted with missiles. The death squads, emboldened with enforcements, attacked civilian homes and businesses openly and uncovered without their usual masks. They were led by Samih al-Madhoun, Dahlan’s thug, who was executed later for his many crimes against civilians.

The latest terror wave was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Hamas’ patience ran out and they could not take it any more. To protect themselves and Gaza citizens Hamas was forced to take the last resort of acting pre-emptively to get rid of Dahlan’s death squads and Fatah’s mutineers to avert a possible overthrow of the elected government. To avoid any misconceptions Hamas declared that since President Abbas has not taken any steps to improve security in Gaza it had taken these security measures against the death squads to secure the safety of the people who elected them to do so, and that their action was not directed against Fatah per se. Hamas officials demanded to take Dahlan to court for his crimes citing documented evidence for his treason found in the Presidential compound.

Abbas rejected these claims. Circumventing the Palestinian constitution and bypassing the Palestinian Parliamentary Council Abbas dissolved Hamas government, declared emergency state, and appointed emergency government headed by Salam Fayyad. Abbas claimed that Hamas wants to establish an Islamic Taliban-like “Hamas-stan” in Gaza. He accused Hamas of revolting against the Palestinian legitimacy forgetting that this legitimacy was given to Hamas through election. He refused to negotiate with Hamas to solve the conflict while begging for negotiations with Ehud Olmert the real enemy of Palestinians. Olmert rewarded Abbas by accepting the emergency government as a real partner for peace negotiation, and by releasing Palestinian tax money to “improve” the lives of West Bank Palestinians.

Jordan and Egypt recognized the legitimacy of Fayyad’s government. Jordan offered to send Badr Brigade to Ramallah to help Dahlan secure the West Bank. Dahlan had already regrouped his Security Forces in Ramallah and sent them to attack and seize all Hamas institutions throughout the West Bank. They raided homes kidnapping and imprisoning Hamas leaders and supporters. They torched 180 Hamas social services, cultural, religious, and educational centers.

The Bush administration supported Abbas unconstitutional decrees, accepted his emergency government as legitimate, decided to back him financially, and to provide his Security Guards with more weapons to fight Hamas. The administration also had sent Jacob Walles (Jake) to the West Bank as a High Commissioner to support Fayyad’s government.

The EU had followed the Bush administration in recognizing Fayyad’s government. It promised to end its financial sanctions, and to pour more financial donations to the newly yet unconstitutional government.

Once more it seems that the American administration has successfully toppled another democratically elected government. Palestinians in Gaza seem to face another Nakba (catastrophe). This time it is not only the international community that conspired against them, but also their own leaders and brothers.

One such late story I happened to come across on page 106 of March 19th. 2007 issue of U.S. News Magazine was titled: “You deserve a factual look at… The Forgotten Refugees. Why does nobody care about the Jewish refugees from Arab lands?” The article was published as an advertisement by FLAME (Facts and Logic About the Middle East), which claims to “publish the truth about Israel and the Middle East conflict in advertisements and letters to editors nationwide.”

The advertisement claims that there exists what it called Jewish refugees from Arab countries, and makes some comparison between these Jewish refugees and Arab refugees in an attempt to point to alleged international injustice when the UN spends “many billions of dollars” on the Arab refugees while forgetting the Jewish refugees. The advertisement tries to avoid calling the Arab refugees by their true name: Palestinian refugees, in an attempt to deny any moral and legal responsibility of Zionist Israel in violating Palestinians’ human rights and creating Palestinian refugee problem.

The advertisement attempts to refute “A myth that Jews had an easy life in Muslim/Arab countries”. It claims that Jews under Islam were treated worse than second class citizens “governed by a system of discrimination intended to reduce Jews … to conditions of humiliation, segregation and violence”.

The truth is that Jews were treated, under Islam in the Arab World, better than any other place they had lived in the whole world at the time. They were treated like any other ethnic groups, e.g., Christians, with full citizenship that included freedom and rights like the rest of the citizens. They were allowed to live and worship freely in Jerusalem, where they were barred entrance by ancient Romans and European Christian Crusaders. When European Jews faced persecution since the start of Crusaders campaigns, they did not find any safe haven for themselves except in Islamic and Arab countries in North Africa and in the Middle East. Many of those Jews fought along side Muslim and Christian Arabs against the Crusaders, who called for the slaughter of every Jew for crucifying Jesus. In his book Bitter Harvest Palestinian scholar Sami Hadawi described this Jewish haven as follows:

During the Middle Ages, North Africa and the Arab Middle East became places of refuge and a haven for the persecuted Jews of Spain and elsewhere… In the Holy Land they lived together in harmony, a harmony only disrupted when the Zionists began to claim that Palestine was the “rightful” possession of the “Jewish people” to the exclusion of its Moslem and Christian inhabitants.

The Jewish writer Dan Peretz described this situation in his book “The Arab Israeli Dispute” as follows: “Most Jews in Palestine belonged to old Yishuv, or community, that had settled there more for religious than for political reasons. There was little of any conflict between them and the Arab population. Tension began after first Zionist settlers arrived in the 1880’s.”

Although given freedom like any other citizens a group of the Jews, believing themselves to be the elite God’s chosen people, who should not mix and mingle with the others, “Goyims”, as been taught by their prophets, had isolated themselves into ghettos the same way they had lived throughout Europe. Those, who had the courage to venture out of the ghettos, had flourished and reached high employment positions in Arabic governments and societies. Many had become the financial and trade centers of the Arab World. This fact contradicts the advertisement claims that Jews “were excluded from society, from government, and from most professions … They were barely tolerated and often… were victimized by vicious violence.” Some extremist fundamentalist Jews, who had their noses up in the sky believing themselves to be the chosen people and better than all other nations, had invited rejection and intolerance from all nations, not just from Arabs, to such snobby racist attitudes.

The advertisement goes on further to claim that Jews in the Arab World were subjected to systematic violence and persecution after the establishment of Israel in 1948 and after Six Days War in 1967. “When Israel declared its statehood in 1948, pograms broke out across the entire Arab/Muslim world. Thousands died in this violence… The vast majority of those Jews fled from where they had lived for centuries. They had to leave everything behind. Most of those who were able to escape found their way to the just-created state of Israel.”

The pograms, the advertisement does not clarify, were terrorist acts perpetrated by Zionists against Jewish communities in the Arab World, as well as throughout European countries to coerce the Jews to immigrate to Palestine to establish the alleged safe haven; Israel, on usurped Palestinian land. Zionist zealots and some mercenaries had fire-bombed Jewish synagogues and shops, damaged Jewish cemeteries, and painted hate graffiti to create anti-Jewish climate. Zionists’ offer of free transportation, free housing, and free salaries had encouraged a lot of Jews to surrender their fate to the Zionist plan. Those, who immigrated, had plenty of time to sell their properties before leaving.

The Arabs, contrary to the claims, did not subject their long-time neighboring Jews to violence since they distinguished between a Jew and a Zionist. Yet those Jews, who were disillusioned by Zionism and became “enemy combatants” and spies within the Arab World, had to be dealt with as such.

The advertisement brags about “Israel received every one of those Jewish refugees from Arab countries with brotherly open arms; it housed, fed and quickly integrated them into Israeli society”. It is true that Zionist Israel had received immigrant Jews, paid all expenses including transportation, rent, and monthly salaries until they were integrated in Israeli society. Yet this reception was not out of brotherly love. Those immigrant Jews were, deliberately, drowned into financial debt so that they could not leave Israel, after discovering the trap set for them, without repaying all the expenses plus interests. Young Jewish immigrants, and every new generation of their offspring, have been conscripted into the Israeli terrorist army to kill and to be killed for the interests of rich pro-Zionist corporations of the West.

The advertisement repeats the old myth, that had been told and refuted so many times, that Palestinians had fled from Palestine after the Israeli occupation “following the strident invocations of their leaders …so as to make room for invading Arab armies”, who according the advertisement will kill all the Jews so that Palestinians “could return to reclaim their properties and that of the Jews, all of whom would have been killed …” by Arab armies.

Palestinians, like any other people, would never leave their homes voluntarily, and Arab leaders had never invoked them to leave. Sami Hadawi refuted this claim in his book Bitter Harvest stating the fact: “British Broadcasting Corporation monitored all Middle Eastern broadcasts throughout 1948. The records, and companion ones by a US monitoring unit, can be seen at the British Museum. There was not a single order or appeal, or suggestion about evacuation from Palestine from any Arab radio station, inside or outside Palestine in 1948. There is a repeated monitored record of Arab appeals, even flat orders, to the civilians of Palestine to stay put”.

This myth aims to erase guilt and moral responsibilities off Jewish shoulders for perpetrating the cruelest and ugliest massacres against mostly unarmed Palestinian villagers, and parading their women and children in the streets of Jerusalem to terrorize the rest of the Palestinians into fleeing out of their villages for their lives and for their honor when Zionist terror organizations, such as Irgun and Hagana, spread the rumors of their plans to attack Palestinian villages. Jewish historian Ilan Pappe, in his book The Link, mentions this fact: “The Israeli forces expelled the Palestinians from every village and town they occupied. In some cases, this expulsion was accompanied by massacres of civilians as was the case in Lydda, Ramleh, Dawimiyya, Sa’sa, Ein Zietun and other places. Expulsion also accompanied by rape, looting and confiscation”.

During wars people panic and flee their homes searching for safety. Yet they have always been able to return to their homes when danger subsides. Military conquest does not abolish private rights to property, nor does it entitle the victor to confiscate properties of civilian population. Even if the claims were true that Palestinians left their homes on the commands of their leaders, they still have the right to return to their homes and properties that had been stolen by Zionist immigrants. This right is protected by international law as noted by the noted Jewish writer and thinker Professor Erich Fromm: “In international law, the principle holds true that no citizen loses his property or his right of citizenship; and the citizenship right is de facto a right to which the Arabs in Israel have much more legitimacy than the Jews”.

Israel’s rejection of Palestinians’ right of return has been on the top of their political agenda, which led them to break all UN resolutions regarding this matter, break all international laws, violate Palestinians’ human rights, and reject all Arab peace initiatives.

The advertisement continues with its allegations “… the Arab countries resolutely refused to accept Arab refugees into their societies. They confined them into so-called refugee camps …to keep them as a festering sore and to make solution of the Arab-Israel conflict impossible. These refugees, whose number has by now miraculously increased from their original 650 thousands to 5 millions, are seething with hatred toward Israel, and provide the cadres for terrorists and suicide bombers.”

The Arab countries, mainly Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon, had received the majority of Palestinian refugees, who became a burden on the already impoverished economy of these countries, who, unlike Israel, were not receiving three billions of dollars annually from the US. The majority of these refugees (now numbers about 7.5 million and not only 5 million) want to go back to their own homeland and their homes that were illegally occupied by terrorist Israelis. They fight to regain what is rightfully theirs, unlike the terrorist Israeli army, who fight to usurp lands of other people.

As for the solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Arabs had offered Israel many peaceful solutions, yet Israelis categorically rejected them because without the conflict they could not keep usurping more lands to build “Greater Israel”. The latest Arab peace initiative of last month, March 2007, offered Israel to keep 78% of Palestine for permanent peace and normalization of diplomatic relationships with all Arab countries. Yet Israel, as usual, rejected this offer.

The advertisement acknowledges that “since 1947 there have been over 100 UN resolutions concerning Palestinian refugees, but there has not been one single resolution addressing the horrible injustice done to the nearly one million Jewish refugees from the Arab states.”

This paragraph refutes the advertisement’s claim by showing that the international community has recognized and acknowledged the existence of a genuine Palestinian refugee problem, and the non existence of the false called-for Jewish refugees from Arab countries. That is why “a special branch of the United Nation (UNRWA) exists for the maintenance of those refugees.” (created by Israelis) as the article notices. Israel, backed by successive American administrations, had ignored those UN resolutions that aimed to solve the Palestinian refugees’ problem, rather than spending billions of dollars “contributed by the US” as the advertisement objects. It, also, totally ignores the attention the world had focused on the issue of the Holocaust, the compensation in hundreds of billions of dollars to Israeli Jews, making even the study of the Holocaust an international crime, and sentencing, fining and imprisoning all the renowned historians, who questioned some of its details.

The advertisement criticizes the Arab’s justifiable right to ask for compensations, and the Palestinian refugees’ legitimate right to return to their homeland, “what has been Israel for almost 60 years”, where Palestinian tribes had lived for over than three thousand years. It concludes by stating, “But if there is to be any compensation, those forgotten Jewish refugees are certainly entitled to such compensation as much as the Arab refugees. Anything else would be an outrage and a great injustice.”

The advertisement neglected to mention the most important point in this refugee issue, namely that the Palestinian refugees were forcefully ejected from their homes according to the Zionist ideology that is based on the idea of “people substitution”; the expulsion ‘transfer’ of Palestinians out of Palestine, and the implanting of Jews in their place. The idiom of “Jewish state is unthinkable without compulsory transfer of the Arabs to the Arab states” had been adopted since the first Zionist Congress in Basle in 1897, and had been repeated by notorious Zionist leaders such as British Zionist Israel Zangwill, Haim Weisman, Theodor Herzl, Nahman Syrkin (founder of Social Zionism), Selig Soskin (director of Jewish National Fund), and many others.

On the other hand the so-called Jewish refugees (Zionist Jews) from Arab countries had plenty of time to plan their leave and to liquidate all their properties, and to be fed, resettled and compensated directly by American tax money, where the annual three billion Dollars financial aid pays almost $3,000.00 monthly for every Israeli, not mentioning all the economic aid and tons and tons of military equipment that are given freely to the terrorist Israeli army to inflict terror on Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis and Iranians.

Finally the advertisement gives a comparison between bogus numbers of the Jews in some Arab countries before and after 1948; countries where Zionists had successfully transferred their Jewish population to occupied Palestine (Israel). It ignores to mention the large number of Jews, who are still living, flourishingly, in Northern African Muslim Arab countries, in Turkey, and even in Iran (the so-called extremist Islamic and terrorist supporting country), that houses the largest Jewish population, 25,000 of them, in the Middle East outside Israel, and are represented by a Jewish MP, Maurice Mohtamed.

The publishing organization (FLAME) of this so-called “factual look”, whose claimed purpose is the research, publication of facts, and exposing false propaganda about the Middle East, seems to do the exact opposite; it distorts the facts and spreads false propaganda instead.

The simple truth of the Arab-Israeli conflict had been reflected by Indian leader and peace teacher Mahatma Ghandi when he stated: “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English and France belongs to the French.”