Shortly after long time President  Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was ousted in the Tunisian revolution in January 2011, some of us warned that the initial euphoria could eventually give way to unhelpful simplification. Suddenly, all Arabs looked the same, sounded the same and were expected to duplicate each other’s collective action.

An Al Jazeera news anchor might interrogate his guests on why some Arab nations are rising while others are still asleep. The question of why Algeria hasn’t revolted has occupied much international media. “No Arab Spring for Algerians Going to the Polls,” was the title of a US National Public Radio (NPR) program by Andrea Crossan on May 10. The very recent Algerian elections were mostly juxtaposed with much more distant and sporadic realities in other countries, rather than in the context of Algeria’s own unique and urgent situation.

Why should Algeria be discussed within the context of Yemen, for example? What kind of conclusions are we seeking exactly? Is it that some Arabs are brave, while others are cowardly? Do people revolt by remote control, on the behest of an inquisitive news anchor? Algeria is known as the country of a million martyrs for its incredible sacrifices in the quest for liberation between 1954-62. Some sort of consensus is being reached that Algerians are still traumatized by the decade-long civil war which started in 1992. The butchery of thousands was openly supported by Western powers, who had feared the emergence of an Islamic state close to their shores.

While Palestinians have been traumatized severely in the 64 years that followed their expulsion from Palestine, they remain in a constant revolutionary influx. The current trauma that millions of Syrians are experiencing as a result of the violence also cannot be expressed by mere numbers. Yet the violence is likely to escalate to a civil war, as destructive as that of Lebanon’s, if a political solution is not formulated under the auspices of a third, trusted party.

It is easy to fall victim to conventional wisdoms, to disseminate odd theories about Arabs and their regimes. The problem is that every day is churning out new events which cannot fit into a simplified concept like the ‘Arab Spring’. The poeticism of the term was hardly helpful when 74 people died and hundreds more were injured as fans of two Egyptian soccer clubs clashed in Port Said on February 1st. The disturbing news seemed inconsistent with the Tahrir Square rallies one year prior. Some in the media dismissed the killings as ‘confusing’ or just ‘unfortunate.’ It simply didn’t fit the almost scripted perception we wished to have of Egypt’s ‘perfect’ revolution. But Egyptians understood well the roots of the violence, and explained it within a local context. The fact is, the occasional violence that followed the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak was uniquely Egyptian and perfectly rational within the many movements that were attempting to exploit the revolution.

If things go according to plan, Egypt might have its first democratically-elected president in July. While some will celebrate the official rise of a ‘new Egypt’, others will mourn the demise of the revolution and its prospected achievements. But there can be no perfect revolution with positive outcomes unanimously agreed on by all sectors of society. This doesn’t mean that the Egyptian revolution has failed. It has succeeded in engaging many new participants in the country’s political life, which had been controlled for so long by an authoritarian government. Tahrir Square has revised the rules of the game – partially for now, but maybe fundamentally in the future.

Jean-Paul Sartre believed that society needed to position itself in a permanent state of revolution in order for freedom to take root and flourish. His support of the French youth revolt in 1968 was a testimony to his strong belief in freedom as a collective quest. “What’s important is that the action took place, when everybody believed it to be unthinkable. If it took place this time, it can happen again,” he wrote in 1968.

“It is not uncommon…that the revolution by the masses turns upon itself and starts feeding upon its own to protect itself against a conceived counter-revolution or internal dissension,” wrote Ayman El-Amir in Egypt’s Al Ahram Weekly. He further claimed that the “Arab Spring has gone berserk, devouring its friends and foes alike, not so much because of fear of the counter-revolution but because one faction wants to steer the nation in its own direction. As a consequence, an environment of chaos is deliberately incited and revolutionary change is disrupted or misdirected.”

There is much truth to that, but El Amir too is falling into the pit of generalization. Syria is not Egypt, and a Tunisian may not think that her country’s revolution is ‘devouring its friends and foes.’ The Arab Spring is only confusing and strange when we insist on calling it an ‘Arab Spring.’ It is much more cogent when understood within its local contexts. Egypt is in turmoil simply because it is undergoing a process that is restructuring a society that was made to cater to the whims of a small, corrupt class of rulers. Syria is positioned in a much more difficult geopolitical intersection, where countries throughout the region are all ‘investing’ in the violence to ensure that the outcome suits their interests. The Syrian people’s relevance to the struggle there remains strong, but, unlike Egypt, they are not the dominant party anymore.

Egypt is not Syria, and Yemen is not Bahrain. However, while we need to remain wary of generalized and reductionist discourses, this does not indicate a need to disown collective identification with other people’s struggles. To the contrary, a truer understanding of what is now taking place in various Arab, and also non-Arab countries, is a more conducive way of offering solidarity. “We will freedom for freedom’s sake, and in and through particular circumstances. And in thus willing freedom we discover that it depends entirely upon the freedom of others and that the freedom of others depends upon our own,” Sartre argued. It is from this value as a point of departure that one can speak of Yemen, Syria, Egypt, and yes, Greece in the same sentence. Any other interpretation is lacking at best, suspect at worst.

In covering al-Nakba, sympathetic Arab and other media play sad music and show black and white footage of displaced, frightened refugees. They rightly emphasize the concept of Sumud, steadfastness, as they show Palestinian of all ages holding unto the rusty keys of their homes and insisting on their right of return. Other, less sympathetic media discuss al-Nakba, if at all, as a side note – a nuisance in the Israeli narrative of a nation’s supposedly miraculous birth and its progression to an idyllic oasis of democracy. What such reductionist representations often fail to show is that while al-Nakba started, it never truly finished.

Those who underwent the pain, harm and loss of al-Nakba are yet to receive the justice that was promised to them by the international community. UN Resolution 194 states that “the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date” (Article 11). Those who wrought this injustice are also yet to achieve their ultimate objectives in Palestine. After all, Israel doesn’t have defined boundaries by accident.

David Ben Gurion, first Prime Minister of Israel, once prophesized that “the old (refugees) will die and the young will forget.” He spoke with the harshness of a conqueror. Ben Gurion carried out his war plans to the furthest extent possible. Every region in Palestine that was meant to be taken was captured, its people were expelled or massacred in their homes and villages. Ben Guiron ‘cleansed’ the land, but he failed to cleanse Israel’s past. Memory persists.

Ben Gurion referenced my own family’s village – Beit Daras – which witnessed three battles and a massacre. In an entry in his diaries on May 12, 1948, he wrote:

Beit Daras was mortared. Fifty Arabs (were killed). The (villages of) Bashit and Sawafir were occupied. There is mass exodus from nearby areas (neighbors in Majdal). We sustained 5 dead and 15 wounded.  (War Diaries, 1947-1949).

More than fifty people were killed in Beit Daras that day. An old Gaza woman, Um Mohammed – who I discussed in my last book, My Father was a Freedom Fighter – refers to what is likely the same event:

The town was under bombardment, and it was surrounded from all directions. There was no way out. The armed men (the Beit Daras fighters) said they were going to check on the road to Isdud, to see if it was open. They moved forward and shot few shots to see if someone would return fire. No one did. But they (the Zionist forces) were hiding and waiting to ambush the people. The armed men returned and told the people to evacuate the women and children. The people went out (including) those who were gathered at my huge house, the family house. There were mostly children and kids in the house. The Jewish (soldiers) let the people get out, and then they whipped them with bombs and machine guns. More people fell than those who were able to run. My sister and I…started running through the fields; we’d fall and get up. My sister and I escaped together holding each other’s hands. The people who took the main road were either killed or injured. The firing was falling on the people like sand. The bombs from one side and the machine guns from the other.

Ben Gurion would not necessarily doubt Um Mohammed’s account. He candidly stated:

Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves…politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves…The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country. (as quoted in Chomsky’s Fateful Triangle, pp. 91-2).

It is precisely for this reason that neither the old nor the young have forgotten. Every day is another manifestation of the same protracted al-Nakba that has lasted 64 years now. Young people’s hardships today are inextricably linked to the violent and horrific uprooting decades ago.

Al-Nakba has also remained an ongoing project through generations of Israeli Zionists. When Ben Gurion died in 1973, current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in his mid-twenties. He was then serving his last year in the Israeli army, and today he rules Israel with a coalition that includes almost three quarters of the Israeli parliament. Like most Israeli leaders, he continues to contribute to the very discourse by which Palestine was conquered. He speaks of peace, while his soldiers and armed settlers take over Palestinian homes and farms. He makes repeated offers to Palestinians for ‘unconditional’ talks, as he repeats his violent rejection of every Palestinian aspiration. His lobby in Washington is much stronger than ever before. He reigns supreme, as he continues to fulfill the ‘vision’ of early Zionists.

Old keys and deeds of stolen lands attest to the intergenerational experience that is Al-Nakba. Today Palestinians continue to be herded behind military checkpoints. They are denied the right to proper medical care, and their ancient olive trees are ruthlessly bulldozed. What Israel has not been able to control, however, is the resolve of Palestinians. The prison, the checkpoint and the gun reside in our collective memory in a way that cannot be held captive, controlled, or shot.

In fact, al-Nakba is not a specific date or an estimation of time, but the entirety of those 64 years and counting. The event must not be assigned to the shelves of history, not as long as refugees are still refugees and settlers continue to rob Palestinian land. As long as Netanyahu speaks the language of Ben Gurion, other ‘catastrophic’ episodes will follow. And as long as Palestinians hold on to their keys and deeds, the old may die but the young will never forget.

Former politicians and intelligence bosses have been challenging the conventional wisdom of right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu through a series of charged statements and political rhetoric.

A few weeks ago it sounded rather like a political fluke when former chief of the Israeli Mossad, Meir Dagan called an attack on Iran “the stupidest thing I have ever heard.” His comment was then widely dismissed, but other voices have since joined the discussion.  Yuval Diskin, former head of the Israeli internal intelligence, the Shin Bet, went even further, as he questioned the abilities of both Netanyahu and Barak, accusing them of promoting ‘messianic sentiments’ regarding Iran.

“I saw them up close, they are not Messiahs… These are not people whose hands I would like to have on the steering- wheel,” he said. Dagan, who remains insistent on the ‘stupidity’ of the Israeli government, came to Diskin’s support. He told the New York Times on April 29 that “Diskin is a very serious man, a very talented man, he has a lot of experience in countering terrorism.”

Netanyahu’s exaggeration of the supposed ‘existential danger’ posed by Iran’s nuclear program is clearly political – ultimately aimed at weakening another regional foe and appeasing his hard-line coalition. The invoking of holocaust analogies over a ‘threat’ that various international agencies have disputed, is a clear sign of the government’s political and moral bankruptcy.

Awareness of Netanyahu’s ineptness is not confined to former heads of Israel’s intelligence, but the military itself. In a highly publicized interview in Haaretz in April, Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Benny Gantz disputed the government’s conventional wisdom – both by attesting to the rationality of Iranians leaders and discounting the very claim that Iran is on the road to manufacturing nuclear weapons. “Iran is going step by step to the place where it will be able to decide whether to manufacture a nuclear bomb. It hasn’t yet decided whether to go the extra mile,” he said.

The timing of this stream of focused criticism, emanating from some of Israel’s most decorated intelligence and army men, is not coincidental. Yes, there may be a major political upheaval underway regarding Iran, but considering the fact that Netanyahu still possesses the upper hand in Israeli politics, one must neither delve too far into optimism nor subsist in perpetual cynicism.

In ‘Changing Course in Israel’ (Gulf News, May 4), Patrick Seale wrote:

The challenge to Netanyahu could have far-reaching consequences. For one thing, it appears to have removed any likelihood of an early Israeli attack on Iran, such as Netanyahu has threatened and trumpeted for a year and more; for another, it has revived the possibility of a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a solution many had thought moribund, if not actually dead.

It is difficult to ascertain whether the threat of war against Iran has been ‘removed’ based on statements made during an election season in Israel. Israeli politics is particularly known for its underhandedness, and parties vying for power understand that focusing their attack on Netanyahu is the only way to reinforce their candidate’s chances in the upcoming elections. This is not the first time that former heads of Israel’s intelligence and military have adopted such a charged position against a standing prime minister.

Yet, regardless of the motive, the move against Netanyahu may be backfiring. According to a recent Haaretz poll, Netanyahu is ‘the clear favorite heading into Israel’s upcoming elections.’ Yossi Verter wrote on May 5:

Netanyahu can rest easy after reading the results of the latest Haaretz-Dialog poll: Not only does he trounce all his rivals on the question of who is most fit to lead the country, but an absolute majority of Israelis reject the aspersions cast on him last week by former Shin Bet security service chief Yuval Diskin.

The poll indicates that the clearly coordinated statements regarding Iran are yet to shake Netanyahu’s throne. That said, such criticism could represent the start of political friction around Iran’s war. The friction could either move the next government further to the right or to the center. Until the nature of the next Israeli political formation becomes clearer, German commentator Ludwig Watzal is maybe closest to the right assessment. “The power struggle between Israel’s security establishments should tell the international public that an attack on Iran’s civilian nuclear program would be highly dangerous and politically irresponsible,” he wrote.

Iran aside, what about other major maneuvers in Israeli politics preceding the probable elections a few months from now? [Ramzy Baroud to DV Editor: "The article was written couple of days before Netanyahu's call for early elections was cancelled, and replaced with a coalition with Kadima. My reference to 'few months from now' were based on Netanyahu's own call for early elections, which were expected to take place anytime between August and October. So that bit is outdated."]

Tzipi Livni, former head of Israel’s biggest opposition party, Kadima, has left the Knesset with a bang, although her resignation had been anticipated following her major defeat by challenger Shaul Mofaz in primary party elections last March. Once more, Livni assigned herself the role of the visionary, warning that Israel was sitting ‘on a volcano’. “The international clock is ticking and the existence of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state is in danger,” she suggested.

Livni may have left the Knesset, but she has not left ‘political life.’ That declaration was enticing to the media which began speculating on what role Livni now sees for herself. According to the Haaretz poll, Mofaz, who defeated Livni, enjoys a minuscule approval rating of 6 percent.

The frenzy of statements and political realignments preceding Israel’s elections are typical, and should not indicate major shifts in policies. Mistaking all of this to signal the return of the two state options is too hopeful, to say at least.

The fact remains that Israel is unlikely to shift its aggressive policies from within. What is being promoted as the moral awakening, or political sensibility of some influential Israelis might merely be political maneuvers aimed at helping Israel find an exit strategy from delving further into war rhetoric. It could also be an attempt to challenge Netanyahu’s stronghold on Israeli politics. Quarreling within the ruling class in Israel during an election is almost a requirement. It neither ushers a new era of peace, nor does it signal a serious change from the constant saber-rattling against Iran.

On April 24, an Israeli ministerial committee approved three settlement outposts – Bruchin and Rechelim in the northern part of the West Bank, and Sansana in the south. Although all settlement activities in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem are considered illegal by international law, Israeli law differentiates between sanctioned settlements and ‘illegal’ ones. This distinction has actually proved to be no more than a disingenuous attempt at conflating international law, which is applicable to occupied lands, and Israeli law, which is in no way relevant.

Since 1967, Israel placed occupied Palestinian land, privately owned or otherwise, into various categories. One of these categories is ‘state-owned’, as in obtained by virtue of military occupation. For many years, the ‘state-owned’ occupied land was allotted to various purposes. Since 1990, however, the Israeli government refrained from establishing settlements, at least formally. Now, according to the Israeli anti-settlement group, Peace Now, “instead of going to peace the government is announcing the establishment of three new settlements…this announcement is against the Israeli interest of achieving peace and a two states solution”

Although the group argues that the four-man committee did not have the authority to make such a decision, it actually matters little. Every physical space in the occupied territories – whether privately owned or ‘state owned’, ‘legally’ obtained or ‘illegally’ obtained – is free game. The extremist Jewish settlers, whose tentacles are reaching far and wide, chasing out Palestinians at every corner, haven’t received such empowering news since the heyday of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

The move regarding settlements is not an isolated one. The Israeli government is now challenging the very decisions made by the Israeli Supreme Court, which has been used as a legitimization platform for many illegal settlements that drove Palestinians from their land.

On April 27, the Israeli government reportedly asked the high court to delay the demolition of an ‘unauthorized’ West Bank outpost in the Beit El settlement which was scheduled to take place on May 1st.. The land, even by Israeli legal standards, is considered private Palestinian land, and the Israeli government had committed to the court to take down the illegal outposts – again, per Israeli definition – on the specified date.

Now the right wing Netanyahu government is having another change of heart. In its request to the court, the government argued: “The evacuation of the buildings could carry social, political and operational ramifications for construction in Beit El and other settlements.” Such an argument, if applied in the larger context of the occupied territories, could easily justify why no outposts should be taken down. It could eradicate, once and for all, such politically inconvenient terms such as ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’.

“Previous Israeli governments have pledged to demolish the unauthorized settler outposts in the West Bank, but only a handful have been removed,” according to CNN online. In fact, that ‘handful’ are likely to be rebuilt, amongst many more new outposts, now that the new legal precedence is underway.

Michael Sfard, an attorney with Yesh Din, which reportedly advocates Palestinian rights, described the request as “an announcement of war by the Israeli government against the rule of law.” More specifically, “they said clearly that they have reached a decision not to evacuate illegal construction on private Palestinian property.”

Some analysts suggested that Netanyahu was bowing down to the more right wing elements in his cabinet – as if the man had, till now, been a peacemaker. The bottom line is that Israel has decided to embark on a new and dangerous phase, one that violates not only international law, but Israel’s own self-tailored laws that were designed to colonize the occupied territories. It appears that even those precarious ‘laws’ are no longer capable of meeting the colonial appetite of Israeli settlers and the ruling class.

Israeli settlements have been contextualized through Israeli legal and political references, as opposed to references commonly accepted in international law. The emphasis on differences between Israeli governments, political parties and religious/ultra-nationalist settlement movements is distracting and misleading; colonizing the rest of historic Palestine has been, and remains, a national Israeli project.

An article in the right wing Israeli Jerusalem Post agrees. “Support for settlement is not simply a program of right-of-center Likud. Its history has firm roots in Labor party activity during the periods of its governments, and activities by predecessors of the Labor party going back before the creation of the Israeli state” (April 27).

The only variable that might be worth examining is the purpose of the settlement, not the settlement itself. Following the war of 1967, the Allon plan sought to annex more than 30 percent of the West Bank and all of Gaza for security purposes. It stipulated the establishment of a “security corridor” along the Jordan River, as well outside the “Green Line”, a one-sided Israeli demarcation of its borders with the West Bank. Then, there was no Likud party to demonize, for that was the Labor party’s vision for the newly occupied territories.

While the Israeli settlement drive since then has swallowed much of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, populating them with over half a million Israelis, the international community’s response was as moot in 1967 as it is now in 2012. Responding to the latest sanctioning of illegal outposts, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon declared that he was “deeply troubled” by the news. Meanwhile, Russia was ‘deeply concerned’ and so was the EU’s Catherine Ashton. As for the US, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland insisted that the Israeli measure is not “helpful to the process.” What process?

While Israel has now showed all of its cards, and the international community declared its complacency or impotence, the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah continues to plan some kind of UN censure of the settlements. Even if a watered-down version of some UN draft managed to survive the US veto, what are the chances of Israel heeding the call of international community?

There is no doubt that Israel is plotting its version of the endgame in Palestine, which sees Palestinians continuing to subsist in physical fragmentation and permanent occupation. Unless a popular Palestinian uprising takes hold, no one is likely to challenge what is actually an Israeli declaration of war against the Palestinian people.

An all out war against newly independent South Sudan might not be in Sudan’s best interest. South Sudan’s saber-rattling is not an entirely independent initiative; its most recent territorial transgressions – which saw the occupation of Sudan’s largest oil field in Heglig on April 10, followed by a hasty retreat ten days later – might have been a calculated move aimed at drawing Sudan into a larger conflict.

Stunted by the capture of Heglig, which, according to some estimates, provides nearly half of the country’s oil production, Bashir promised victory over Juba. Speaking to large crowd in the capital of North Kordofan, El-Obeid, Bashir affectively declared war. “Heglig isn’t the end, it is the beginning,” he said, as quoted in the Wall Street Journal. Bashir also declared a desire to ‘liberate’ the people of South Sudan from a government composed of ‘insects.’ Even when Heglig was declared a liberated region by Sudan’s defence minister, the humiliation of defeat was simply replaced by the fervor of victory. “They started the fighting and we will announce when it will end, and our advance will never stop,” Bashir announced on April 20.

Statements issued by the government of South Sudan are clearly more measured, with an international target audience in mind. Salva Kiir, President of South Sudan, simply said that his forces departed the region following appeals made by the international community. This includes a statement by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, which described the attack on Heglig as “an infringement on the sovereignty of Sudan and a clearly illegal act” (Reuters, April 19). A day before the hasty withdrawal, South Sudan government spokesman Barnaba Marial Benjamin claimed there had been no conflict in the first place. His statement was both bewildering and patronizing. He considered Sudan, which was then rallying for war to recapture its oil-rich area, a neighbor and “friendly nation”, and claimed that “up to now we have not crossed even an inch into Sudan” (Associated Press, April 19).

The fact remains, however, that wherever there is oil political narratives cannot possibly be so simple. Sudan is caught in a multidimensional conflict involving weapons trade, internal instabilities, multiple civil wars and the reality of outside players with their own interests. None of this is enough to excuse the readiness for war on behalf of Khartoum and Juba, but it certainly presents serious obstacles to any attempt aimed at rectifying the situation.

With a single act of aggression, a whole set of conflicts are prone to flaring up. It is the nature of proxy politics, as many armed groups seek opportunities for territorial advances and financial gains. News reports already speak of a possible involvement of Uganda should the fledging war between Khartoum and Juba cross conventional boundaries. “As the possibility of a full-fledged war became unnervingly higher, General Aronda Nyakairima, chief of Uganda’s defense forces, said that his army might be compelled to intervene if Bashir did overthrow South Sudan’s regime,” reported Alexis Okeowo in the New Yorker website (April 20). Both Sudans are fighting their own war against various rebel groups. Despite the lack of basic food in parts of the region, plenty of weapons effortlessly find inroads to wherever there is potential strife.

In a statement published last July, Amnesty International called on UN member states to control arm shipments to both Sudan and South Sudan. It accused the US, Russia and China of fueling violations in the Sudan conflict through the arms trade.

US support of South Sudan is already well known. “The US reportedly provided $100 million-a-year in military assistance to the SPLA (Sudan People’s Liberation Army),” according to Russia Today on April 19, citing a December 2009 diplomatic cable revealed by WikiLeaks.

According to political author and columnist Reason Wafawarova, US interest in South Sudan is neither accidental nor motivated by humanitarian issues. He told RT, “It would not be surprising if the US is trying to capitalize on the vulnerability of South Sudan in its efforts to establish the AFRICOM base somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa.” RT goes on to reference Sudan’s Al-Intibaha newspaper for its reports on Israeli weapon supplies to Juba.

US and Israeli military support of Juba is not a new phenomenon. Sudan’s civil war (1983-2005), which cost an estimated 2.5 million lives, could not have lasted as long as it did without steady sources of military funding. And while the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, the January 9-15, 2011 referendum, and finally the independence of South Sudan in July were all meant to usher in a new era of peace and cooperation, none actualized. Sudan’s territorial concessions proved most costly, and South Sudan, destroyed and landlocked, was ripe for outside exploitation.

Both countries are now caught in a deadly embrace. They can neither part ways completely, nor cooperate successfully without a risk of war at every turn. Bashir also knows he is running out of options. While Khartoum has already “lost three-quarters of its oil revenue after the secession,” according Egypt’s Al Ahram Weekly, “now it is poised to lose the rest.”

Naturally, a conflict of this magnitude cannot be resolved by empty gestures and reassuring statements. The conflict has been festering for decades, and war has been the only common language. Powerful countries, including the US, Russia, China, but also Israel and regional Arab and Africa players exploited the conflict to their advantage whenever possible. In a recent analysis, the International Crisis Group in Brussels advised that a “new strategy is needed to avert an even bigger crisis.” The crisis group recommends that the “UN Security Council must reassert itself to preserve international peace and security, including the implementation of border monitoring tasks as outlined by UN Interim Security Force in Abyei.”

Expecting the Security Council to act in political tandem seems a bit too optimistic, however. Considering that the US is arming and supporting South Sudan, and that Russia and China continue to support Khartoum, the rivalry in fact exists within the UN itself.

For a sustainable future peace arrangement, Sudan’s territorial integrity must be respected, and South Sudan must not be pushed to the brink of desperation. Rivalries between the US, China and Russia cannot continue at the expense of nations that teeter between starvation and civil wars. And whatever hidden hands that continue to exploit Sudan’s woes now need to be exposed and isolated.

Jenny Tonge, then a member of the UK’s Liberal Democrat party, was a dangerous British politician as far as Israel was concerned. She not only dared to use strong language while referencing Israeli actions in the occupied territories, she also demanded action from her government

For this she was subjected to the same, predictable verbal abuse by Israeli officials and media, by the pro-Israeli British lobby, and even by some of her peers. However, calling Tonge ‘anti-Semitic’ was never going to be convincing. The formidable woman has spent years of her life serving her community – as a doctor, MP and spokesperson for Health for Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords – and has amassed far too much credibility to be shaken by defamatory accusations.

Moreover, very few will agree that calling for “the immediate—and I mean immediate—establishment by the United Nations Security Council of an independent fact-finding commission to Palestine to investigate all breaches of international law” constitutes anti-Semitism in any way.

But for those who insist that Israel is above any criticism, the mere suggestion that Israel should be investigated for alleged war crimes is an unforgivable act. Any hint of criticism can easily be misrepresented to equal the questioning of the very existence of the state, and casually labeled as racism.

The Baroness is not easily intimidated, however. Speaking at Middlesex University on February 23, she stated that, “Israel is not going to be there forever in its present form,” a reference to the country’s current racially-based political identity as a ‘Jewish State,’ which leaves native Muslim and Christian Arabs vulnerable to institutional racism and discriminatory laws.

Many others have already warned from the increasingly anti-democratic nature of Israel, especially with the rise of religious and ultra-nationalist parties. Leading scholars, Noble Laureates, acclaimed anti-Apartheid figures and former US presidents have all made similar calls, targeting the skewed nature of the Israeli political establishment, which grants rights to people of Jewish lineage while denying basic civil rights to all others.

Tonge was not targeting any race, but rather the small, yet powerful cliques that have long infested both British and US politics in areas concerning Israeli and the Middle East. “One day, the American people are going to say to the Israel lobby in the USA: enough is enough,” she said. “Israel will lose support and then they will reap what they have sown” (The Guardian, Feb 9).

In stating the obvious, Tonge irked British politicians, including members of her own party, who speak of ‘peace in the Middle East’ while actively undermining any real efforts to achieve such peace. Ed Miliband, leader of the Labour Party, said there was “no place in politics for those who question the existence of Israel.” Tonge, in fact, had done no such thing. Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, stated, “I asked Baroness Tonge to withdraw her remarks and apologize for the offense she has caused. She has refused to do so and will now be leaving the party.”

Since his sudden rise to close to the top of British political hierarchy, Clegg has moved substantially from his original stance regarding Palestine and Israel. In his article in the Guardian on December 21, 2009, he had articulated a strong position against the Israeli blockade on Gaza, and asked: “And what has the British government and the international community done to lift the blockade? Next to nothing. Tough-sounding declarations are issued at regular intervals but little real pressure is applied. It is a scandal that the international community has sat on its hands in the face of this unfolding crisis.”

Once in the government, Clegg changed his position. Tonge, on the other hand, remained consistently audacious, regardless of position or perks. Her stance in 2012 mirrored other stances she has taken in the past. In 2006, she uttered what few before dared to even speak in private: “The pro-Israeli lobby has got its grips on the western world, its financial grips. I think they’ve probably got a grip on our party,” she said (BBC, Sep 21, 2006.) Then, as in now, her comments were manipulated by the media to imply something entirely different from what she had clearly intended. Her exit from the party was a testament to the will of this strong British woman, but also to the power of the very Israeli lobby she often criticized.

It is important to remember that Tonge’s battle is not a skirmish within the ranks of the political elites. Rather, it’s a war of narratives, where Israel and its ‘friends’ insist on silencing any meaningful debate on Palestine-Israel. The other side, encompassing Tonge and numerous others, is slowly encroaching on Israel’s well-guarded discourse, and making serious inroads.

A recent episode in the war of narratives involved Gunther Grass, German author of the widely acclaimed anti-Nazi novel, The Tin Drum. Grass has now done what many others, especially in Germany, never dared to do. He criticized Israel for its aggressive posturing towards Iran. Israeli officials responded by calling the man every bad word in the book of defamation.

The typical ‘storm’ created by Israeli responses has, however, not managed to enact a typical response this time. Nicholas Kulish wrote in the New York Times that judging by the ‘outpouring’ of comments by German politicians and media, “it would appear that the public had resoundingly rejected (Gunter’s) work… But even a quick dip into the comments left by readers on various Web sites reveals quite another reality” (April 13). According to Kulish, “Mr. Grass has struck a nerve with the broader public, articulating frustrations with Israel here in Germany that are frequently expressed in private but rarely in public.” He adds that “charge of anti-Semitism aimed at Israel’s critics is widely viewed as a blunt instrument that silences debate, and in the process prevents Mr. Grass from making a point…”

While Israel does occasionally succeed in silencing critics, the tried and true tactic of the past is becoming less effective. In the final analysis, neither Tonge nor Gunter have actually lost to the lobby. In the world of ideas, only the credibility of one’s views actually makes a difference. The rest is hasbara.

Not only did the action cost many thousands of lives and untold destruction, it also paved the way for perpetual conflict – not only in Libya but throughout north Africa.

Mali was the first major victim of NATO’s Libyan intervention. It is now a staple in world news and headlines such as “The mess in Mali” serve as a mere reminder of a bigger “African mess.”

On March 17 last year resolution 1973 resolved to establish a no-fly zone over Libya.

On March 19, NATO”s bombers began scorching Libyan land, supposedly to prevent a massacre of civilians.

The next day, an ad-hoc high-level African Union panel on Libya met in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, and made one last desperate call to bring Nato’s war to an immediate halt.

It stated: “Our desire is that Libya’s unity and territorial integrity be respected as well as the rejection of any kind of foreign military intervention.”

The African Union (AU) is seldom considered a viable political player by the UN, NATO or any interventionist Western power.

But AU members were fully aware that NATO was unconcerned with human rights or the well-being of African nations.

They also knew that instability in one African country can lead to major instabilities throughout the region.

Various north African countries are glued together by a delicate balance – due to the messy colonial legacy inherited from colonial powers – and Mali is no exception.

It is perhaps too early to talk about winners and losers in the Mali fiasco, which was triggered on March 22 by a military coup led by army captain Amadou Sanogo.

The coup created political space for the Tuaregs’ National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) to declare independence in the north merely two weeks later.

The declaration was the culmination of quick military victories by MNLA and its militant allies, which led to the capture of Gao and other major towns.

These successive developments further emboldened Islamic and other militant groups to seize cities across the country and hold them hostage to their ideological and other agendas.

Ansar al-Din, for example, had reportedly worked in tandem with the MNLA, but declared a war “against independence” and “for Islam” as soon as it secured its control over Timbuktu.

More groups and more arms are now pouring through the ever-porous borders with Mauritania, Algeria and Niger.

Al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad, along with al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) are now making their moves across Mali.

New alliances are being formed and new emirates are being declared, making Mali a potential stage for numerous permanent conflicts.

Speaking to the Guardian, former UN regional envoy Robert Fowler railed against NATO:

Whatever the motivation of the principal NATO belligerents [in ousting Gadaffi], the law of unintended consequences is exacting a heavy toll in Mali today and will continue to do so throughout the Sahel as the vast store of Libyan weapons spreads across this, one of the most unstable regions of the world.

Considering that the inevitability of post-Libya destabilisation was obvious to so many from the start, why the insistence on referencing a “law of unintended consequences”?

Even “chaos” has its own logic. For several years, and especially since the establishment of the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) in 2008, much meddling has taken place in various parts of Africa.

Writing in Foreign Policy magazine, Gregory Mann tried to undermine the fact that Sanogo “had American military training, and briefly affected a US Marine Corps lapel pin.”

He said that these details “are surely less important than the stunning fact that a decade of American investment in special forces training, co-operation between Sahalien armies and the United States and counter-terrorism programmes of all sorts run by both the State Department and the Pentagon has, at best, failed to prevent a new disaster in the desert and, at worst, sowed its seeds.”

The details are hardly “less important,” considering that Sanogo called for international military intervention against the newly declared Tuareg republic, referencing Afghanistan as a model.

True, regional African countries and international institutions have strongly objected to both the military coup in the capital Bamako and the declaration of independence by the Tuaregs in the north, but that may prove irrelevant after all.

The Azawad succession appears permanent and the US, although it suspended part of the aid to Mali following the junta’s takeover, has not severed all ties with Sanogo.

After all, he too claims to be fighting al-Qaida and its allies.

It is difficult to believe that despite years of US-French involvement in Mali and surrounding region, the bedlam wasn’t predictable.

The US position regarding the coup was precarious.

“The Obama administration has not yet made a formal decision as to whether a military coup has taken place in Mali,” wrote John Glaster in AntiWar.com.

According to US military definitions, this is still a “mutiny, not a ‘coup’” and US army personnel – referred to as “advisory troops” – were, in fact, dispatched to Bamako after March 22, according to AFRICOM spokeswoman Nicole Dalrymple.

What is clear is that the “mess in Mali” might be an opportunity for another intervention, which mainstream media sources are already rationalising.

A Washington Post editorial on April 5 counseled:

NATO partners should perceive a moral obligation, as well as a tangible national security interest, in restoring Mali’s previous order. The West should not allow its intervention in Libya to lead to the destruction of democracy – and entrenchment of Islamic militants – in a neighbouring state.

Unintended consequences? Hardly.

The message was widely disseminated as it coincided with Land Day, an event that has unified Palestinians since March 1976. Its meaning has morphed through the years to represent the collective grievances shared by most Palestinians, including dispossession from their land as a result of Israeli occupation.

Barghouti is also a unifying figure among Palestinians. Even at the height of the Hamas-Fatah clashes in 2007, he insisted on unity and shunned factionalism. It is no secret that Barghouti is still a very popular figure in Fatah, to the displeasure of various Fatah leaders, not least Mahmoud Abbas, who heads both the Palestinian Authority and Fatah. Throughout its indirect prisoners exchange talks with Israel, Hamas insisted on Barghouti’s release. Israel, which had officially charged and imprisoned Barghouti in 2004 for five alleged counts of murder – but more likely because of his leading role in the Second Palestinian Intifada – insisted otherwise.

Israel held onto Barghouti largely because of his broad appeal among Palestinians. In late 2009, he told Milan-based Corriere Della Sera that “the main issue topping his agenda currently is achieving unity between rival Palestinian factions” (as quoted in Haaretz, November 25, 2009). More, he claimed that following a unity deal he would be ready to submit candidacy for Palestinian presidency. Barghouti, is, of course, still in prison. Although a unity deal has been signed, it is yet to be actualized.

Barghouti’s latest statement is clearly targeting the political class that has ruled Palestinians for many years, and is now merely managing and profiting from the occupation. “Stop marketing the illusion that there is a possibility of ending the occupation and achieving a state through negotiations after this vision has failed miserably,” he said. “It is the Palestinian people’s right to oppose the occupation in all means, and the resistance must be focused on the 1967 territories” (BBC, March 27).

Last December, Jospeh Dana wrote, “Barghouti is a figure of towering reverence among Palestinians and even some Israelis, regardless of political persuasion.” However he did not earn his legitimacy among Palestinians through his prophetic political views or negotiation skills. In fact, he was among the Fatah leaders who hopelessly, although genuinely, pursued peace through the ‘peace process’ – which proved costly, if not lethal to the Palestinian national movement. Dana wrote, “Barghouti’s pragmatic approach to peace during the 1990s demonstrated his overarching desire to end Israeli occupation at all costs” (The National, December 23, 2011).

Although his latest message has articulated a conclusion that became obvious to most Palestinians – for example, that “it must be understood that there is no partner for peace in Israel when the settlements have doubled.” – Barghouti’s call delineates a level of political maturity that is unlikely to go down well, whether in Ramallah or Tel Aviv.

So it’s not his political savvy, per se, that made him popular among Palestinians, but the fact that he stands as the antithesis of traditional Fatah and PA leadership. Starting his political career at the age of 15, before being imprisoned and deported to Jordan in his early 20s, Barghouti was viewed among Fatah youth – the Shabibah – as the desired new face of the movement. When he realized that the ‘peace process’ was a sham, intended to win time for Israeli land confiscation and settlements and reward a few accommodating Palestinians, Barghouti broke away from the Fatah echelons. Predictably, it was also then, in 2001, that Israel tried to assassinate him.

Marwan Barghouti still has some support in Israel itself, specifically among the politically sensible who understand that Netanyahu’s right wing government cannot reach a peaceful resolution, and that the so-called two-state solution is all but dead. In a Haaretz editorial entitled ‘Listen to Marwan Barghouti,’ the authors discussed how  “back when he was a peace-loving, popular leader who had not yet turned to violence, Barghouti made the rounds of Israeli politicians, opinion-makers and the central committees of the Zionist parties and urged them to reach an agreement with the Palestinians.” The authors recommended that ‘Jerusalem’ listen to Barghouti because he “is the most authentic leader Fatah has produced and he can lead his people to an agreement” (March 30).

In his article entitled ‘The New Mandela’, Uri Avnery wrote that Barghouti “is one of the very few personalities around whom all Palestinians, Fatah as well as Hamas, can unite” (Counterpunch, March 30). However, it is essential that a conscious separation is made between how Barghouti is interpreted by the Palestinians themselves and Israelis (even those in the left). Among the latter, Barghouti is presented as a figure who might have been involved in the “murderous terror” of the second Intifada (Haaretz) but who can also “lead his people to an agreement” – as if Palestinians are reckless multitudes desperate for their own Mandela who is capable, through his natural leadership skills, of uniting them into signing another document.

For years, but especially after the Oslo peace process, successive Israeli governments and officials have insisted that there was “no one to talk to on the Palestinian side.” The tired assertion was meant to justify Israel’s unilateral policies, including settlement construction. However, Barghouti is a treasured leader in the eyes of many Palestinians not because he is the man that Israel can talk to, and not because of any stereotypical undertones of him being a ‘strong man’ who can lead the unruly Arabs. Nor can his popularity be attributed to his political savvy or the prominence of his family.

Throughout the years, hundreds of Palestinians have been targeted in extrajudicial assassinations; hundreds were deported and thousands continued to be imprisoned. Marwan Barghouti is a representation of all of them and more, and it’s because of this legacy that his messages matters, and greatly so. In his latest message, Barghouti said that the Palestinian Authority should immediately halt “all co-ordination with Israel – economic and security – and work toward Palestinian reconciliation,” rather than another peace agreement.

Most Palestinians already agree.

The answer, according to an Israeli official: not this year (as quoted by Agency France Press).

An internal Israeli Foreign Ministry report last month also concluded that a third Palestinian intifada or uprising was ‘unlikely’ this year. According to the unnamed official, “This report, which is more than 100 pages long, judges that an explosion of generalized violence in the form of a third intifada is unlikely.”

Instead, it was resolved that Palestinians would “continue to seize all opportunities to isolate Israel on the international stage” (AFP, Feb 28).

After six decades of occupation, Israeli government strategists are yet to realize that the Palestinian people are not a singular body of blind followers who can be easily manipulated and controlled.

The erroneous Israeli perception defines the very fundamentals of Israel’s political discourse and subsequent policies towards Palestinians. A famous statement by former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in March 2002 signifies Israel’s official and reductionist view of the enemy: “The Palestinians must be hit and it must be very painful: we must cause them losses, victims, so that they feel the heavy price” (Znet).

Although the phenomenon of official Israeli reports attempting to predict – and thus preempt – Palestinian rebellion is not a new one, last month’s report is particularly odd. ‘Palestinians’ – as a political actor – are all lumped into one group, juxtaposed and conveniently tossed about in their constant scheming along with ‘Arab regimes’.

It’s difficult to imagine how such incongruous and ahistorical thinking has allowed Israel so much dominance over the political discourse of the conflict.

Genuinely popular events in human history are not instigated by politicians, regimes or calculating factions. The keyword here is ‘genuine.’ Israeli leaders describe their conflict with Palestinians using a grand terminology with and unabashed ethnic classification. In his speech before the UN’s 66th session of General Assembly last September, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke on “behalf of Israel and the Jewish people,” as he extended his hand to the “peoples of North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.” He ranted against Iran and theorized on ‘political Islamists’ and the free world.

This is what he had to offer to justify the illegal annexation and continued occupation of East Jerusalem: “Jews in Spain, on the eve of their expulsion; Jews in the Ukraine, fleeing the pogroms; Jews fighting the Warsaw Ghetto, as the Nazis were circling around it. They never stopped praying, they never stopped yearning. They whispered: Next year in Jerusalem. Next year in the promised land” (Haaretz, Sep 24, 2011).

Such a selective narrative might be discounted as intentionally sentimental; the self-aggrandizing is somewhat expected of a state that was constructed, and continues to operate on a base of supposed racial supremacy. But there is more to the Israeli narrative than clever phraseology and the exploitation of history. Israel’s depiction of itself as the ‘Jewish state’ allowed it to explore other people’s identities in terms of collectives as well. ‘Palestinians’ or ‘Arabs’ are constantly and opportunely moved about to further cement Israeli claims. This handy managing of large groups, peoples and collectives is not just dangerous at an intellectual level, but politically and militarily perilous as well.

Former Israeli president Moshe Katsav said of his enemies: “There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies? Not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy” (Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2001).

This might be a transition from Golda Meir’s wholesale denial of the existence of the Palestinian, or of other Zionist leaders depicting Palestinians as animals, beasts and cockroaches. It is also a more advanced and conscious form of dehumanization. Palestinians here are essentially ‘people’, yet devoid of every shred of humanity; they are temporarily elevated, to be fully destroyed. Worse, they are like aliens from another galaxy; ‘our enemies.’

Within the confines of this logic, everything that is obstinately frowned upon by the law, ethics or morality, becomes effectively good, expected and embraced: from the ethnic cleansing in 1947- 48 to the war on Gaza (2008-09), the continued state siege, the so-called Separation Wall, the daily violent practices of the Israeli occupation army, the unlawful, arbitrary imprisonments, the torture, the humiliation, the discrimination.

When Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich declared last December that Palestinians are “invented” people, he was simply reaffirming his allegiance to his pro-Israeli financial backers, who required the regular restating of tired Israeli assertions. But this becomes all the more bizarre when one looks at the political implications of the language. Gingrich’s position “could be seen as putting him at odds with the US push for a two-state solution in the Middle East” (CBC, Dec 9, 11).

Grand narratives can be convenient, serving as an easy swindle to forge alliances and demonize one’s enemies. Their greater danger lies in the fact that they have no boundaries. In the case of Israel, it has abused the discourse pertaining to its conflict with the Palestinians to the extent that the false narratives now define the very mainstream society, not only in Israel, but also in the US and other parts of the world. Even the Israelis are now buying into their own pretenses, reaching the point of trying to predict the breaking point of the Palestinian people through data fed into some computer and subsequently analyzed and summarized.

The Israeli report on the ‘unlikely’ revolt of the Palestinians in 2012 took 100 pages to articulate. I was present in 1987 at the first mass protest in Gaza which sparked the First Palestinian Intifada, the people’s revolution that took Israel and the whole world by surprise. And I can testify it took very few words to pronounce and articulate this revolution: “With our blood, with our souls, we will sacrifice for you, Palestine.”

No official analysis could ever predict such a moment.

Balandi is located in the Panjwai District of Kandahar Province, which has seen some of the toughest resistance to the US-NATO occupation of the country. Kandaharis have received a bad reputation for spoiling the war party devised by the US, NATO, and their corrupt local allies.

In a way, Balandi is a microcosm of Afghanistan.

When the US-led bombing campaign of Afghanistan commenced in October 2001, many commentators cheered. In a strikingly unequal war – with the world’s most advanced nations attacking the world’s poorest – the US wanted to teach al-Qaeda terrorists a lesson. The latter quickly disbanded and poured through neighboring borders across the region (the violent network is now being sighted in several Arab countries). Meanwhile, the Afghani people shouldered the brunt of the war. Tens of thousands have since perished in a vengeful war they had no part in creating.

Many commentators have supported the war, rationalized it, or simply pretended it was not happening. The Afghans seemed to be dispensable on account of their being less ‘civilized’ somehow. The war was presented as a ‘good war’, with a rationale that swayed the likes of Christopher Hitchens, who stated: “‘Bombing Afghanistan back into the Stone Age’ was quite a favorite headline for some wobbly liberals. The slogan does all the work. But an instant’s thought shows that Afghanistan is being, if anything, bombed OUT of the Stone Age” (Daily Mirror, November 2001).

Even those who were actually committed to human rights and international law found some sort of logic in the war in Afghanistan.  “To my lasting regret I supported the war initially as an instance of self-defense validated by the credible fear of future attacks emanating from Afghanistan,” wrote Richard Falk, a renowned human rights scholar and UN envoy. However, he came to realize that “senseless and morbid wars produce senseless and morbid behavior” (Foreign Policy Journal, March 15).

The words “senseless” and “morbid” don’t begin to describe the dirty war in Afghanistan. A recent indication of callousness was on display in Washington, as President Barack Obama welcomed British Prime Minister David Cameron to the White House. Our alliance is “rock-solid,” Obama said. “Our world has been transformed over and over, and it will be again. Yet, through the grand sweep of history, through all its twists and turns, there is one constant: the rock-solid alliance between the US and the UK.” The intended reference was mostly about Afghanistan, as the latest massacre of Afghan civilians prompted a call by the country’s president, Hamid Karazi, to ask the US to redeploy its troops out of villages throughout the country.

“Rock-solid” means the US and its allies will stick to their plan of not ending their combat operations until 2014, and then, through a US-Afghan memorandum, maintaining a permanent military presence. Considering the alarming killing rates of Afghans, the term ‘rock-solid’ could also indicate numerous more deaths of innocent people simply because Obama doesn’t want to be seen as “soft” and inconsistent during an election year.

But Afghans cannot maintain this charade for long. Expectedly, the Taliban will no longer engage the US in direct or indirect talks. As for the country’s weak president, he cannot find the right balance of accommodating the US plans and managing the active anger brewing among his countrymen.

The original orchestrators of the Afghanistan war are waking up to the new reality. The Afghans will accept no less than a full US-NATO withdrawal from their country, no matter the cost of that freedom. Empowered by an inflated sense of military superiority, the Bush and Obama administrations failed to grasp what has become a historical imperative: Afghanistan belongs to its people, who will fight to reinstate that fact over and over again.

Freedom is an absolute value. Its meaning is not diminished by war or military occupation. The moral clarity of the Afghan struggle for freedom in 2012 remains as strong as it was in 2001. What may prove ominous in future months is the fact that even the feeble excuse for war – that it was actually a “war on terror” – is hardly as ubiquitous as it once was. The war now merely exists to save face, to assert a degree of American dominance, and to arrange for some beneficial future that allows the US to reap unclear gains. This lack of moral and strategic centrality is turning the war into something sadistic, strange, racist and utterly inhumane.

The US is turning its citizens into ‘pathological killers’ wrote Falk. “American soldiers urinating on dead Taliban fighters, Koran burning, and countryside patrols whose members were convicted by an American military tribunal of killing Afghan civilians for sport… (Whatever US officials say to explain all of this) has become essentially irrelevant.”

In a meeting with Karazi, an elder from Balandi asked the president: “They killed so many of our loved ones, and do you have an answer why?”

No one is likely to offer an answer, for pathology cannot always be explained by carefully worded diplomatic language. What is clear, however, is that the recent spree of violence and humiliation will further fuel the determination of Afghans to end yet another bloody episode of their history on their own terms. “I don’t want any compensation. I don’t want money, I don’t want a trip to Hajj (pilgrimage), I don’t want a house. I want nothing but the punishment of the Americans. This is my demand, my demand, my demand and my demand,” said another elder (Al Jazeera, March 17).

Speaking of demands, what are the US’ demands and objectives? Do American soldiers even know what they are fighting for, or whom they are fighting against? (Bales’ victims were mostly women and children.)

Former US secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld said in March 2003: “Freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.”

Richard Falk is right; senseless and morbid wars do produce senseless and morbid behavior. They produce bizarre logic as well.

Zuhair Qasis was the head of the Popular Resistance Committee. He was killed alongside a Palestinian prisoner from Nablus, who had recently been freed and deported to Gaza.

Then, another set of missiles rained down, this time taking Obeid al-Ghirbali and Muhammad Harara.

Then, a third, and a forth, and so on. The death count began on March 9 and escalated through the day. The Hamas government urged the international community to take action. Factions vowed to retaliate.

In these situations, Western media is usually clueless or complicit. Sometimes it’s both. The Israeli army was cited readily by many media outlets without challenge.

The first round of attacks was justified based on a claim that Qasis was involved in the planning of an attack that killed seven Israelis last year. The Israel army didn’t even bother to upgrade that claim – which already resulted in the killing and wounding of many Palestinians. Even Israeli media had drawn the conclusion that the attack then originated from Egypt, and no Palestinian was involved.

Al Jazeera reported that some of the victims were decapitated, a familiar scene in most of Israel’s unforgiving atrocities.

Expectedly, Palestinians fired back. “The national resistance brigades, the DFLP’s armed wing, the Al-Aqsa brigades, and the armed wing of the PRC, the An-Nasser Salah Ad-Din brigades, have all claimed responsibility for rocket fire,” reported Maan news agency.

The incessant Israeli provocations would not have been enough to end the months-long truce. Palestinians know that Israeli provocations are often, if not always, politically motivated. This time however, the people killed were leaders in al-Muqawama, the local resistance parties. Neither Hamas’ might nor diplomacy could persuade Gaza’s many factions to hold their fire. Israel knows this fact more than any other party. This is why it sent such unmistakably bloody messages. Israeli needed Palestinians to respond, and urgently so.

But why did Israel decide to ignite trouble again?

To answer the question, one needs to make a quick stop in Washington. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had recently tried to articulate a case for war against Iran there. Unlike the successful effort to isolate and strike and invade Iraq in 2003, the Iran war campaign is not going according to plan.

The Israelis are desperate to see Iran’s nuclear facilities bombed by American bunker buster bombs – some of which weigh up to 13600 kg. Israel’s former head of military intelligence, Amos Yadlin, assured the ‘free world’ – a term often manipulated by Netanyahu – that a bombing campaign can succeed if it’s followed by the right measures. “Iran, like Iraq and Syria before it, will have to recognize that the precedent for military action has been set, and can be repeated,” he wrote (as cited in CNN, March 9).

There is growing consensus in Israel that ‘something has to be done’ – at least to set back Iran’s uranium enrichment by few years, per the assurances of deputy director of the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies, Ephraim Kam. Republican candidates in the US, and even President Obama himself, agree. But Obama, despite his groveling at the recent AIPAC conference, dared to question the timing and the way in which Iran must be brought to its knees. The US president is becoming increasingly isolated within Washington because of his stance on Iran.

It is election year, and Israel knows that a window of opportunity will not be open for long. “Netanyahu won a crucial battle in Washington this past week. No one brought up the Palestinians. Netanyahu has quite masterfully shifted the conversation to the subject of Iran,” wrote Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic (March 9). He is right, of course, but only within the context of ‘peace process’ and conflict resolution.

The Palestinians were mentioned in a different context, and repeatedly so. Ephraim Kam, for example, expected that thousands of rockets would rain on Israel from Hizbollah, Hamas and Iran itself. The Associated Press quoted Vice Prime Minister Dan Meridor as saying, “The whole of Israel (is vulnerable to) tens of thousands of missiles and rockets from neighboring countries. If there is a war…they are not just going to hit Israeli soldiers. The main aim is at civilian populations” (February 20).

Per this logic, the only way to prevent rockets from reaching Israel is by attacking Iran. An independent Israeli commentator, Yossi Melman, predicted that a weakened Iran “would undoubtedly have an impact on Hamas and Hezbollah” (CNN, March 9).

Yes, the Palestinians were infused plenty in Israeli war rhetoric. They were liberally presented as the jackals who would pounce on vulnerable Israel. Who would dare challenge this tired victimization narrative? Who would have the audacity to point out the fact that Israel has the region’s strongest army, equipped with hundreds of fully-functioning nuclear heads, while Palestinians fighters – who had until recently respected the truce, although Gaza’s siege was never lifted – are armed with light weapons?

No one in the mainstream media, of course. But then, as the supposed threat has reached an all time high, Hamas spokesperson in Gaza, Fawzi Barhoum, told AP: “Hamas weapons and the weapons of the Palestinian resistance, in general, are humble weapons that aim to defend and not to attack, and they are to defend the Palestinian people…that does not give us the ability to be part of any regional war.”

Hamas has its own calculations independent of Israel’s war momentum. But losing Hamas would jeopardize the very equation Israel has been constructing for years. The ‘radical camp’ must remain intact, as far as Israel is concerned. No political polarization caused by the so-called Arab Spring will be allowed to endanger the Israeli narrative: the radicals, the evil alliance, the threat facing the ‘free world’ and all the rest. Great resources were spent on spinning the perfect story to justify a preemptive war.

Then, on Friday, March 2, less than two days after Barhoum made his comments of ‘humble weapons’, heads began to roll in Gaza. Literally. And the media machine resumed its work   unabashed. “Gaza Rockets fire disrupts life in Israeli south,” read a headline in Israel’s Haaretz. “IDF strikes Gaza terror targets following rocket barrage,” declared another in the Jerusalem Post. It’s war all over again. Israeli civilians run to shelters. Sirens blare. US media reports the fate of ‘besieged’ Israelis and Palestinian ‘terrorists’.

It matters little to them that it was Israel itself that stirred the trouble, broke the truce, and fanned the flames.

According to the accompanying report, the destruction of Palestinian olive trees by Jewish settlers -under the watchful eye of the Israeli occupation army – cost farmers over $500,000 in 2011. It isn’t only income that the settlers are targeting. They know the land is also a source of empowerment to millions of Palestinians. Their ultimate aim is to break the bond that has united the native inhabitants of Palestine since time immemorial.

But will they succeed?

Suheil Akram al-Masri, a 26-year-old political prisoner from Gaza, was hospitalized on March 2, just hours after his release. Al-Masri had reportedly fallen unconscious after 13 days of being on a hunger strike, in solidarity with female prisoner Hana Shalabi, who went on a hunger strike on February 12.

Hana’s story is troublingly typical. She has spent 25 months under what Israel calls ‘administrative detention,” a bizarre legal system that allows Israel to hold Palestinian political activists indefinitely without charge or trial. She was released in October 2011 as part of the prisoner exchange deal, only to be kidnapped again by soldiers a few months later.

Like Khader Adnan, who had recently ended the longest hunger strike ever staged by a Palestinian prisoner, Hana decided that enough was enough. Hundreds of Palestinians, including Hana’s aging father, joined in her quest for freedom and dignity.

Charlotte Kates, an activist with The National Lawyers Guild, wrote, “Imprisonment is a fact of life for Palestinians…There are no Palestinian families that have not been touched by the scourge of mass imprisonment as a mechanism of suppression.”

In the Israeli military there is an order that grants it “the authority to arrest and prosecute Palestinians from the West Bank for so-called ‘security’ offenses.” There are 2,500 such military orders, including one issued in August 1967, which deems any acts of influencing public opinion as “political incitement’”. Also prohibited is any activity that demonstrates sympathy for organizations deemed “illegal” by the military.

Palestinians are thus governed by laws without internationally recognizable legal frame of reference. There is no need to examine the Fourth Geneva Convention on prisoners, the rights of occupied nations or the forceful seizure of property. Israel is governed by its own absurd and inhumane logic.

It is this very logic that allows Israel to justify the detention of Gaza patients seeking medical treatment outside their besieged area – which lacks critical medical equipment and life-saving medicine. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) issued a statement on January 23, protesting an exceptionally disturbing practice that has been used by the Israeli military for many years: interrogating Palestinians seeking surgery in West Bank or Israeli hospitals.

Bassam Rehan, 25, from Jabaliya refugee camp, was a victim of this policy. He was detained as he tried to pass through the Erez crossing. PCHR was concerned that, like many before him, Rehan would be subject to torture, according to Maan News. “Targeting patients, exploiting their need for medical treatment at hospitals in Israel or the West Bank and blackmailing them constitute serious illegal actions,” PCHR’s statement read.

Such stories don’t begin or end here. But the continuation of this terrible and convoluted episode raises questions about the lack of will to bring the injustice to an end. It highlights our collective moral responsibility, even culpability, in allowing Israel to treat people – the natives of this ancient ‘holy land’ – in such a degrading way.

There is no point in counting on Barack Obama, Stephen Harper or David Cameron to exact justice for Palestinians. How could they, when their governments continue to facilitate and arm the occupation of Palestine, finance the illegal settlements, ensure the continuation of the siege on Gaza and block any attempt – even symbolic – to indict the unlawful, violent and Apartheid-like practices of the Israeli government?

To whom can ordinary Palestinians turn for justice? To whom can they appeal for their rights? And from whom should they expect solidarity?

One thing remains certain. Palestinians will continue to resist with or without an international awakening to their plight. The old man will try to replant a new olive grove. Suheil, Hana and Adnan will continue their quest for freedom. A whole new generation will carry on the torch from the previous one.

In the meanwhile, we, the silent multitudes, cannot afford to remain silent. Our silence only empowers Israel’s crimes and allows for the untold suffering of millions of people. It is time to redefine our relationship to the Palestinian struggle. We are not helpless outsiders; we are enablers of this moral travesty, and we can choose not to remain so.

Ordinary Palestinians need true solidarity, not sermons about violence and non-violence. They have utilized the latter for nearly a hundred years. They need us to morally divest from Israel, as opposed to standing halfway between the oppressed and the oppressor. They need us to overcome our tendencies towards intellectual elitism or any sense of moral ascendancy. They don’t need of us to play the role of the lecturer. They need us to truly listen, to comprehend and to act.

This is not a conflict concerning religion or politics. It is about rights, about people with history firmly rooted in their land. They need us to remember their names, their stories and their longing for justice and lasting peace. Suheil, Hana, Adnan and Bassam and millions of others need our voices of support.

Before we speak of ‘solutions’ to the ‘Palestinian-Israeli conflict,’ I believe that we must first resolve our own dilemma by divesting from an occupation that runs counter to any conception of true humanism.

Desmond Tutu once said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

Where do we stand in relation to this conflict? Are we on the side of the armed Brooklyn settler, and the US-armed Israeli soldier? Or are we on the side of the bearded old man holding tightly to his broken olive branches, conveying a profound mix of despair and hope?

The choice is yours. And the consequences of your choice could redefine history.

A year later, Blair, enthusiastically joined a US-led coalition that launched an illegal war against Iraq. Their hunt for weapons of mass destruction was futile because no such weapons actually existed. The Iraq Survey Group, a 1,400 strong member organization set up by the CIA and the Pentagon, made every attempt to prove otherwise, but only came back empty-handed. In its final Duelfer Report, released in September 2004, the group “found no evidence of concerted efforts to restart the [nuclear] program.”

One would think that the years between 1991 – the first war on Iraq – and 2003 would have been enough to convince US-led western allies that economically besieged, politically isolated and war torn Iraq had no capacity for producing such weapons. Still, Iraq was attacked with a ferocity that left hundreds of thousands dead and a destroyed country. The outcome of the misadventure may be history to some, but it is a devastating reality for millions of Iraqis.

Considering all of this, shouldn’t we at least expect a slight change of course?

‘Drums of war beat louder as Iran and Israel step up rhetoric,’ declared a story headline in the British Independent newspaper on February 4, while ABC news stated that ‘Fear of Israel War With Iran Grows Amid Heightened Nuke Concerns.’

Of course, there is great deal of journalistic trickery in how the story is being reported. Iran did promise retaliation if attacked, but the possible war is being initiated and engineered by Israel.

In fact, contrary to popular perception, the potential war is not an exclusively Israeli-Iranian matter. While Israel is sorting out logistical issues, Western allies are actively working to both choke Iran economically and isolate it politically. The strategy may give the impression that Israel is the predator moving for the kill, but all other details are being sorted out in Western capitals.

As was the case with Iraq, Western allies are now hatching up both legal and political discourses. As they continue to escalate on multiple fronts, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) seem to conveniently run into all sorts of obstacles in Iran itself.

Meanwhile, mainstream media continues to hype the idea of Iran as a threat to Israel and the United States. Comments made during a Friday sermon by Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which threatened serious retaliation in case of attack, were stretched in every possible direction to give an impression of dangerous Iranian leadership. This was intended to retrospectively cement the bizarre Israeli narrative that ‘Iran must be stopped before it’s too late’.

U.N. Nuclear Inspectors’ Visit to Iran Is a Failure, West Says,’ declared a headline in the New York Times, although the story itself pointed to the fact that the inspectors merely faced problems meeting key scientists and would return later in the month.

The media anxiety reached an all time high with the publishing of a report in the Independent, which suggested that US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta “believes Israel could strike nuclear targets in Iran before the summer after concluding that military action might be needed before it was ‘too late’ to stop Tehran’s nuclear program”.

The saber-rattling that preceded the Iraq invasion prepared public opinion for a war that should never have taken place. In the case of Iraq, Israel was a central piece in the US justification for war. Defending Israel from some imagined Iraqi threat was used by every war enthusiast in the US government and media.

Now, it’s Iran’s turn. The ugly deed this time is likely to be perpetrated by Israeli hands as early as April, according to Panetta. (One would argue that a dirty war is already underway as a number of assassinations targeting Iranian scientists have been committed.)

While the very suggestion of war was an Israeli-US ‘option’ that has been tossed back and forth since at least 2005, no sensible Iranian position is to be found in Western media reporting.

“Iran argues that as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it has every right to develop and acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes,” read a news article published in Iranian Press TV website.

No such claims will be assuring enough to the Israeli leadership. When Hamas’ feeble home-made rockets are viewed by Israel’s official discourse as an ‘existential threat’, one can imagine the trepidation of co-existing with a militarily strong Iran. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Ehud Barak are the two major proponents of the ‘bomb Iran before it’s too late’ argument. Considering Israel’s existing arsenal of nuclear weapons, subscribing to the Israeli logic is paramount to accepting that only Israel somehow has the moral capacity to use WMDs wisely.

Chillingly, officials used the annual conference of Israel’s security establishment at the Inter-Disciplinary Centre in Herzilya to mostly discuss the ‘how’ and ‘when’ of launching their attacks. Vice Prime Minister, Moshe Yaalon is determined that “one way or the other…(the) messianic-apocalyptic” Iranian nuclear project would be stopped. Yaalon is a passionate supporter of the theory that Iranian ungrounded facilities can, in fact, be penetrated by bunker-buster bombs.

However, using the Iraq war narrative for comparison must end here. The fact is, there are also significant differences between both cases. Iran is a major regional power, geographically massive and cannot be politically ‘contained’ or economically choked without exacting a high price from all parties involved. No ground invasion is possible, for the US is counting its losses in Iraq and is cutting down its military budget. Iran has had enough time to anticipate and prepare for all grim possibilities. The American-British-Western public willingness to subscribe to another war rationale is at an all time low. And an act of war could destroy any remaining semblance of stability in a strategically and economically precious region during a time of global recession.

If history ever repeats itself, it does so only when we fail to learn its important lessons. Israel might be prepared to take such chances, but why should the rest of the world?

Those of us who can see through such distorted thinking know that White is a principled writer who has never displayed a shred of racism in his work. Zoabi is very well-known civil rights leader with a long-standing reputation of courage and poise.

How could anti-racist endeavors themselves become the subject of accusation by Halili and others like him?

It goes without saying there should be no room for any racist discourse – Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, or any other – in the Palestine solidarity movement, which aims at achieving long-denied justice and rights for the Palestinian people. A racist discourse is predicated on racial supremacy, which is exactly what Palestinians are resisting in Israel and the occupied territories.

But the “Jewish and democratic state” of Israel is riddled with so many contradictions, the kind that no straightforward narrative can possibly capture.

Many scholars and rights groups have discussed the way in which irreconcilable values defined the very character of Israel from the onset. According to Adalah (meaning “justice” in Arabic), the legal center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, “Israel’s Declaration of Independence (1948) states two principles important for understanding the legal status of Palestinian citizens of Israel. First, the Declaration refers specifically to Israel as a ‘Jewish state’ committed to the ‘ingathering of the exiles.’ (Second)…it contains only one reference to the maintenance of complete equality of political and social rights for all its citizens, irrespective of race, religion, or sex.”

Adalah further asserts that there is a ‘tension’ between the two principles. Perhaps this is the case, intellectually, but in practice the Israeli political establishment has resolved the seeming quandary whereby the Jewishness of the state prevails above every other humanitarian, democratic or legal consideration. Racially discriminating legislation is being churned out in the Israeli Knesset at an alarming speed, and new laws are constantly being proposed. These include “one that would end the status of Arabic as one of Israel’s official languages and another that would punish Israeli citizens, including Arab Israelis, for refusing to pledge their allegiance to ‘Israel as a Jewish and democratic state,’” according to columnist Linda Heard (Arab News, Jan 24).

As for Palestinians living in the occupied territories, their legally enshrined political inferiority has been felt in much harsher and often bloodier ways than their brethren living in Israel. For nearly four and a half decades, the Palestinians living in these territories have been losing their land, livelihood, freedom of movement and even their very lives in the name of the racial superiority of their occupiers. Jewish settlements are illegally constructed on Palestinian land to host Jewish settlers, who use Jewish-only roads to travel between their heavily fortified colonies and the “Jewish state”. While numerous intellectuals, activists and ordinary members of Jewish communities around the world have strongly protested Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, as well as Israel’s misuse of the Jewish religion to attain political goals, Israel relies greatly on the support of Jewish communities, organizations and individuals for vital funds, political support and lobbying.

While many Jews identify with Israel as a ‘Jewish state’, “younger American Jews are more likely than their parents to be acquainted with the Palestinians and their story,” reported TIME magazine on September 29.

The TIME story references one such youth, Benjamin Resnick, 27, who decries the fact that the Jewish state and American liberal democracy represent two views that are ‘irreconcilable’. On the other hand, he “continues to consider himself a Zionist,” who “quotes the Torah in support of his view that American Jews should press Israel to end settlement expansion and help facilitate a Palestinian state.” Even Resnick’s political dissent is riddled with inconsistencies, where national identity (as an American) clashes with ideology (Zionism) and religion (the Torah) is referenced as a means to resolve the discord.

The Torah is put to good use repeatedly among mainstream and ardent Israeli rabbis, whose edicts to kill Arabs are commonplace in Israeli media (although rarely discussed in US media). The so-called King’s Torah – which is endorsed by some prominent Israeli rabbis – has made it permissible to kill Palestinians of all ages, including those who don’t pose a threat. “You can kill those who are not supporting or encouraging murder in order to save the lives of Jews,” it states in the fifth chapter, entitled “Murder of non-Jews in a time of war.” The BBC elaborates: “At one point it suggests that babies can justifiably be killed if it is clear they will grow up to pose a threat” (July 19).

This becomes particularly problematic when the lines between politics, ideology and religion become so conveniently blurred. Israeli and Jewish leaders borrow from the corresponding text as they find suitable to achieve policies to further occupation, war and illegal settlement. Alan Dershowitz, a professor at Harvard Law School, came to represent the latter model. His style lacks diplomacy and logic; however, it is effective in some circles because it centers around the idea of smearing anyone who dares to criticize Israel. The greater tragedy is that Dershowitz is provided with platforms in mainstream and right wing Israeli media, thus giving his smear campaign the means to turn any genuine discussion of Israel into a controversial hate speech.

While critical non-Jews are often smeared as ‘anti-Semites’, jurist Richard Goldstone, who lead the UN investigation into the Israeli war on Gaza., was not a mere anti-Semite for concluding that Israel and Hamas had both potentially committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. Dershowitz told Israeli Army Radio that Goldstone is a ‘traitor to the Jewish people’. ‘The Goldstone report is a defamation written by an evil, evil man,’ Dershowitz said (Haaretz, October 31).

While the case for Palestinian rights and statehood can be clear-cut – not many true-to-self intellectuals could justify ethnic cleansing, defend Apartheid and rationalize murder – delving into the political identity of Israel and its ideological and religious supporters becomes immediately ‘controversial’. The controversy is embedded in the purposeful intellectual and political elasticity by which Israel defines, or refuses to define, itself. It claims to be Jewish as well as democratic. It claims to embody religious ideals but also to be secular. It claims to be liberal, while it is militarily oppressive. It claims to uphold ‘equality’ for all, while it is racially exclusive.

And if you dare to challenge these irreconcilable contradictions, you are termed an anti-Semite or a traitor – or both.

Most American politicians actually despise the UN. While the Security Council is directed or tamed by the US veto (often to shield the US and its close ally Israel from any criticism), other UN bodies are not as easily intimidated. When the UN education and science agency, UNESCO, accepted Palestine’s bid for full membership last October, following a democratic vote by its members, the US could do little to stall the process. Still, it immediately cut funding to the agency (about 20 percent of its total budget).

The move was devoid of any humanitarian considerations. The UNESCO provides vital services to underprivileged communities all over the world, including the United States. Yet, State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, insisted on sugarcoating what was an entirely injudicious political act. “Today’s vote by the member states of UNESCO to admit Palestine as member is regrettable, premature and undermines our shared goal of a comprehensive just and lasting peace in the Middle East,” said Nuland (CNN, October 31).

The fact is, there has been much sabre-rattling in the US Congress targeting the UN. The campaign, led by Republican congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, is threatening the UN with all sorts of punishment if the organization does not cease its criticism of Israel and tighten the noose around Iran. Naturally, the UN is not meeting the expectations of Ros-Lehtinen and her peers. It happens to be a body that represents the interests of all its member states. Some US politicians, however, see the world through the distorted logic of former president George W. Bush: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

The late British author and humanitarian doctor, Theodore MacDonald, showed that the US actually has a love-hate relationship with the UN. In his final book, Preserving the United Nations; Our Best Hope for Mediating Human Rights, MacDonald reveals a strange reality: that the US and its allies labor to undermine the UN, while also using it to further their own military, political and economic objectives. Expectedly, successive US governments had mastered the art of political manipulation at the UN. When successfully co-opted to accommodate US military designs, the UN suddenly becomes true to its mission – per Washington’s account, of course. However, when US pressures failed to yield a unified front against Iraq in late 2002, President Bush asked in his first address to the United Nations, on September 12, 2002: “Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?”

The Bush years were rife with such ultimatums – to the UN and the whole world. However, a similar attitude continues to define the administration of Barack Obama. The US latest assault on the UN is now happening under the guise of reforms, but no ‘reforms’ are possible without first creating the needed polarization aimed at pushing for an American agenda. Joe Torsella, the US Deputy Ambassador for Management and Reform of the United Nation, spoke of the latest US efforts at reining in the 47-nation Geneva-based Human Rights Council. “The US will work to forge a new coalition at the UN in New York, a kind of ‘credibility caucus’ to promote truly competitive elections, rigorous application of membership criteria, and other reforms aimed at keeping the worst offenders on the sidelines,” he said (Reuters, Jan 20).

UNHRC is an outspoken critic of human rights violations. As of late, the organization has been particularity vocal regarding the rights violations underway in Syria. It is also very critical of Israel and its one-sided wars and human rights violations in Gaza and the rest of the occupied territories. For years, the US has conspired to undercut, intimidate and silence this criticism.

The Reuters report on the US latest push for the supposed reforms states: “Council members include China, Russia and other countries where rights groups say abuses are commonplace.” To offset the seeming inconsistency – between UNHRC mission and its members’ records – the US, according to Torsella, wants to “hold Human Rights Council members to the same standard of truly free and fair elections that the U.N. promotes around the world, and insist on the highest standards of integrity for the Council and all its members.” Viewed without context, it is a noble endeavor indeed. However, it becomes a tainted statement when one considers that the US status at the UN has been achieved through the least democratic of all means: a disproportionate political power (the veto) and money (used for arm-twisting).

Attempting to curb and contain the UN, as opposed to punishing and boycotting the international body, is basically what sets Democrats apart from Republicans. Unlike Republicans, “the other side of the debate (mostly Democrats) believes that achieving these reforms requires strong American leadership – and strong leadership is demonstrated by paying dues on time and in full. You can call this side ‘constructive engagement,’” wrote Mark Leon Goldberg in the UN Dispatch (January 20). Practically, both approaches are aimed at achieving similar outcomes: realizing US policies, rewarding allies and punishing foes – even at the expense of the noble mission once championed by the UN over 65 years ago.

While the latest push for ‘reforms’ is being hailed by Washington’s media cheerleaders, no honest commentator could possibly believe the US campaign against UNESCO. UNHRC and the UN as a whole represents a genuine democratic endeavor. In fact, the truly urgent reforms required right now are ones that aim at correcting what MacDonald described in his book as the UN’s “foundational defects”.

MacDonald counseled for immediate addressing of the “issue of permanent membership and the use of the veto”. He also recommended the granting of greater power to the General Assembly and eliminating the “imposed use of the US dollar” in mediating UN transitional affairs. MacDonald’s guidelines for reforms are comprehensive, and rely on the concept of equality, guided by humanitarian and moral urgencies.

The same can hardly be said of Washington’s latest UN intrigues and shady politics.

Every few years the media becomes captivated by Israeli democracy. Commentators speak of right, left, center, and anything in between. Despite Israeli elections still being a year and a half away, media pundits are already discussing possible outcomes of the vote against the peace process, economic reforms, social equality, and so on.

In a recent article, Israeli columnist Uri Avnery decried the fact that the main opposition to the right wing parties – “the Likud, the Lieberman party and various ultra-nationalist, pro-settlement and religious factions” – is no other than the center-left Kadima. The party, led by the “incompetent” Tzipi Livni, is allegedly in “shambles”. Moreover, left parties, such as Labor and Meretz, are not expected to pose a real threat to the right party conglomerate, despite their temporary rise in the polls.

As genuine as he is, Avnery is once again presenting the false hope of a savior emerging to save Israel from itself. Avnery envisions Israel being rescued from its ‘neo fascists’ and  returned to the over-romanticized scenario of old, when early Zionists supposedly dreamed of an Israel governed by universal ethics, true democracy, peace and social equality . “I fervently hope that a different kind of new political force will emerge – a center-left party with a clear and inclusive message: social reform, narrowing the gap between rich and poor, the two-state solution, peace with the Palestinians and the end of the occupation.”

But this is as far as the imagined narrative of a kinder, gentler Israel can possibly go. Many outside Israel struggle to reconcile familiar discourses of democracy and equality with the reality on the ground. True, the ailment is not exclusive to Israel itself, but few other self-proclaimed democratic countries have such a massive gap between mainstream political discourses and actual policies.

Recall, for example, what the media touted as Israel’s own ‘Arab Spring.’ Even those who knew Israeli history hoped for a fleeting moment that the mass protests throughout Israeli cities could actually challenge the political and social status quo in Israel. But not Seraj Assi, a columnist and PhD student at Georgetown University. Assi wrote:

The dirty secret of the Tel Aviv protests is that the bulk of those middle-class Ashkenazi protestors are moved by a racist hysteria. They are simply afraid of being moved to the city peripheries and the far less fashionable parts of the country. For when they complain that they only feel at home in Tel Aviv, they explicitly express a racist desire to stay away from the development towns and neighborhoods populated by Arabs, poor Mizrahi and Ethiopian Jews.

Indeed, the protests labored to stay clear of contentious discussions of military occupation, war, and even racial inequality within Israeli itself.

Not even the one-sided war on Gaza, which resulted in the killing of over 1400 Palestinians, was enough to raise the level of mass consciousness to challenge political and military apparatuses in Israel in any meaningful way. Under the title, ‘The Moral and Military Meltdown in Israel’, Hamid Dabashi, Professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia University, wrote: “It is not just the worst of the Israelis who (according to a recent poll by Haaretz) condone and actively support the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, but so have their very best, their intellectuals, professors, journalists, filmmakers, novelists and poets, from Amos Oz to David Grossman to A. B. Yehoshua to Meir Shalev and scores of others” (Jan 12, 2009).

While right wing Israeli parties are often dismissed as anti-peace and hawkish, the ‘liberal’ Zionists in the Israeli Left have been viewed by some as an alternative, capable of righting wrongs and achieving the long-awaited peace. These are mere ‘delusions’, argued Roger Sheety in a recent article. “Scratch just a little below the surface and you discover that .. when it approaches the Palestinian person in particular, (Liberal Zionism) suddenly stops and fully reverses itself,” he wrote (Jan 9).

Sheety suggests a “clear and concise word for this phenomenon — hypocrisy.” But ‘hypocrisy’ might be too easy a term to explain this very involved trend in Israeli politics, which defined the Zionist movement long before the state of Israel was established in 1948. A most compelling book by Israeli author Tikva Honig-Parnass traces the roots of liberal Zionism from an insider perspective. False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine is a profound addition to a growing library that challenges ‘liberal’ Zionists’ claim to liberalism or progressiveness.

After reading Honig-Parnass’ book, one is left with a clear impression that liberal Zionists are neither ‘Israel’s best’ and nor is their double-speak a simple reflection of hypocrisy. Liberal Zionists were, and remain, at the heart of the problem. After all, the Israeli Right didn’t emerge as a powerful player in politics until the late 1970s. All that proceeded – the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing, the Law of Return, the 1967 war and further colonial expansion, and even the war on Gaza in 2008-09 – were orchestrated by Israel’s Zionist Left leaderships. More, the “systematic institutional discrimination against Palestinian citizens was (also) applied through the strengthened power of the Zionist Left,” Honig-Parnass argues. Even the most ‘radical’ forces in Israel are tainted, as the Zionist Labor movement rallied around racial discrimination against non-Jews before the establishment of Israel; later laws made racial discrimination against non-Jewish laborers the status quo, as is the case today.

To hold hope in the new election cycle in Israel is like waiting for false prophets. No salvation will be heralded by some imagined center-left party that will bring “an end to the ultra-rightist frenzy,” as hoped by Avnery.

The task will not be easy, but a true shift in Israeli politics can only occur at the foundational level by confronting the country’s Apartheid-like political institutions. More, by challenging the “Zionist Left political and ideological perspectives,” a way could open for “progressive forces among Jews and Palestinians to fight together against the Zionist/Jewish state,” as suggested by Honig-Parnass.

Both leaders said what would be expected of them under these circumstances. Haniyeh asserted that his movement’s “presence with the Brotherhood threatens the Israeli entity,” and Badie reaffirmed the Brotherhood’s commitment to “issues of liberation, foremost the Palestinian issue” (MENA and AP, December 26).

It is very telling that Haniyeh’s first official visit outside Gaza as prime minister was to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood headquarters in Cairo’s Moqattam district. He shared his message – of resistance against Israeli occupation, national unity with rival Fatah and reaching out to Muslim countries – and then resumed his regional tour.

Since 2006, Hamas has attempted, but largely failed to win the approval of governments in Muslim-majority countries. Muslim solidarity was the thrust of Hamas’ foreign policy, aimed at lessening Palestinian political and financial dependence on the US and other Western governments. It failed because, as it turned out, US financial and political leverage is too overpowering and far-reaching for a relatively small movement like Hamas to singlehandedly challenge. But, as Haniyeh himself reiterated, times are changing

In the first and second rounds of Egyptian elections, the Brotherhood’s newly created Freedom and Justice party won more than 35 percent of the vote. The electoral success was hardly an anomaly. The Islamic Nahda party, which formed the first post-revolutionary government in Tunisia, won more than 40 percent of the vote last October. Morocco’s Justice and Development party won the November elections and the Islamic leaning of Libya’s new political set up is all too palpable. There have been marks of Islamic political influence in other countries across the region.

The reformation of the political landscape in the Arab region has tempted many to infer polarizing, if not frightening conclusions. Israeli army Home Front Command Chief Major General Eyal Eisenberg was one of the first in Israel to refer to these developments as an Arab Spring turning into a “radical Islamic winter”. He said, “This leads us to the conclusion that through a long-term process, the likelihood of an all-out war is increasingly growing” (Arutz Sheva, September 5).

However, what truly worries Israel is not the radicalization of Muslim societies, but the rise of Islamic politics to represent a rational, mainstream political discourse. It threatens Israel because it could rally many Arabs around one cohesive political agenda, and repositions Palestine, once more, as central to what many Muslim intellectuals refer to as the “Islamic Awakening”.

Israeli fear mongering aside, the US – Israel’s main benefactor – must find ways to co-exist with the new political arrangement. Other Western governments too “will have to adapt to a power shift they have long sought to prevent,” wrote Roula Khalaf and Heba Saleh in the Financial Times (December 28).

For Israel, however, the transformation in regional politics will prove unbearable. It is not Tunisia’s Nahda party that Israel is most concerned about, of course; it is Hamas. This is partly what compelled Haniyeh to venture out of Gaza. As the US is hoping to control, if not manage, the rise of Islamic parties, Hamas aims at ensuring a primary position for Palestine – as seen through the prism of the Islamic movement – in the region’s new political landscape.

There is little doubt that Hamas’ rise to political prominence in 2006, and the numerous subsequent attempts at isolating and destroying it will influence new Islamic parties in various Arab countries. Hamas’ ability to survive has certainly registered among new Muslim politicians in Egypt and elsewhere. Now, with the early fruits of the Egyptian revolution being plucked by Islamic parties, Hamas is guardedly making its move. Hamas is a “jihadi movement of the Brotherhood with a Palestinian face,” said Haniyeh in Cairo.

A quick look at the roots of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine shows that Haniyeh was hardly exaggerating. Since the Society of the Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Ismailiyya, Egypt in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna and a few others, it quickly found in Palestine a rally cry to unite Muslims through the entire region. The first link between the movement and Palestine was formed in 1935, when Abd al-Rahman al-Banna (the founder’s brother) visited Palestine and met with the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini.

The Brotherhood became visible during the revolt of 1936, as they communicated the Palestinian message with an Islamic tone to the rest of the Arab world. The cause of Palestine promptly became the central mission and calling of the Brotherhood, as Hasan al-Banna himself headed the newly founded General Central Committee to Aid Palestine.

More, in April 1948, when most Arab governments delayed in partaking in the defense of Palestine, the Muslim Brotherhood deployed three battalions of volunteers. Estimates of the number of Brotherhood volunteers in Palestine during the war and the subsequent Nakba vary, but Hasan al-Banna himself noted, in March 1948, that the movement had approximately 1,500 volunteers in Palestine.

The relationship between the Brotherhood and Palestine had it ebbs and flows, but the rapport was never completely severed. Even before Hamas was officially established in 1987, the movement functioned under various classifications, all directly affiliated with Egypt’s Brotherhood.

The recent Cairo meeting between Haniyeh and Badie could be understood within that historical context, representing a triumphant reunion and possibly open coordination. This would once again rejuvenate the Brotherhood’s Palestine connection, and grant Hamas greater political leverage – after years of isolation, and despite the current political turmoil in the region.

Of course, Hamas’ challenges are many and growing. Leading among them is Israel’s violent escalation in Gaza, and the unremitting US pressure. Still, it is expected that Hamas’ political message and outlook will continue to find balance between Palestinian exceptionality and the more inclusive Arab and Islamic framework.

By venturing out of Gaza, Haniyeh is hoping to expand the diameters of the Palestinian Islamic movement into Egypt and beyond – thus reclaiming what Hamas once considered ‘the strategic depth’ of the Palestinian cause. While such a push failed to attain its objectives in 2006, 2012 is a brand new year.

In December 2011, when an Israeli soldier shot him from a short distance with a tear gas canister, half of Mustafa’s face went missing. More soldiers laughed as his horrified family tried to accompany him to a nearby hospital, according to activists present at the scene. Only the mother was finally able to obtain a special permit from the Israeli military, which allowed her to be with her son.

Mustafa’s crime? He, along with Palestinian, Israeli and international peace activists, protested the besiegement of Nabi Saleh by the illegal Jewish settlement of Halamish. Halamish has existed since 1977 and drastically grown in size and population ever since, taking over privately-owned Palestinian land. As of late, Nabi Saleh has been struggling for mere survival as its fresh water spring has also been seized by settlers under the watchful eye of the Israeli army.

Mustafa died so that the village of Nabi Saleh could live. The struggle will continue for years.

A young man may now be gone, but he also left behind a legacy which has become the cornerstone of the augmenting international solidarity with Palestinians around the globe.

The struggle for justice in Palestine is ultimately between a Palestinian — protesting, with a rock or rifle in hand — and an Israeli, often equipped with the latest killing technology the arms industry has to offer. The former fights for basic rights — land, water, freedom, equality and such – while the latter is determined to intimidate, silence, imprison, and, when compelled, commit murder or even large scale massacres to prolong Israeli occupation and military dominance over Palestinians.

Things are not always so clear-cut, of course. Some Palestinians have learned with time the benefits of co-existing with the occupation. Some Israelis have jointly struggled with Palestinians against the inhumanity of the occupation, the brutality of the military and the illegality of the land seizure.

One such Israeli is Tamar Fleishman, of Machsomwatch. She is simply indefatigable. Her mission is to document the daily violations committed by the Israeli army at a series of checkpoints extending between Ramallah (in the West Bank) and Jerusalem. Showing a complete disregard for international law, and even the official foreign policy of the United States, Israel has insisted that the entirety of Jerusalem is Israel’s eternal capital. But illegally occupied East Jerusalem — or al-Quds — has been the beating heart of Palestinian national, religious, and even intellectual identity for many generations. To split the heart from the body, Israel has been choking occupied East Jerusalem since 1967, encircling it with illegal Jewish settlements, Jewish-only bypass roads, and a dizzying checkpoint structure intended to create a permanent divorce between the West Bank and a city that Palestinians see as their future capital.

Armed with a camera and her own willpower, Tamar is relentless. She knows by name all the tired-looking children who sell tea in plastic cups, newspapers and gum at all the checkpoints. She narrates their stories of humiliation, pain and struggle. She tells of the people crammed between glass walls, barbed wire and blocks of cement. As long as these women and men keep the checkpoints populated, Jerusalem will maintain its historic attachment with the rest of Palestine.

And Tamar, the habitual visitor of these very spots, will resume her daily toil to convey the stories that capture the essence of this enduring conflict.

But without the numerous media outlets that challenge the inherent pro-Israeli bias, censorship and apathy of mainstream media, Mustafa’s story and Tamar’s photos would have remained confined to Nabi Saleh, or some checkpoint manned by cruel soldiers.

In fact, the story of Palestine is getting more than a good share of coverage in old and new alternative media outlets. More, 2011 has concluded on a positive note as far as media coverage of this conflict is concerned. In an article entitled, ‘The media consensus on Israel is collapsing’, Jordan Michael Smith reveals that “slowly but unmistakably, space is opening up among the commentariat for new, critical ideas about Israel and its relationship to the United States” (salon.com, December 21). While Smith rightly credits the academics Tony Judt, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer for “expanding the permissible,” the pressure on mainstream media has been obstinately championed by numerous individuals from all walks of life. It is they, who, for many years, refused to subscribe to the convenient narrative that venerates and vindicates Israel — not only at the expense of Palestinians, but also at the expense of the United States’ foreign policy.

The popular solidarity movement continues to score new victories with each passing day. Israel’s attempt at countering its gains seems to achieve little more than inviting controversy, which actually recruits more support for Palestinian rights.

One platform that has become very successful in recent years, and particularity so in 2011, was the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

“The BDS movement is growing relentless,” wrote Eric Walberg, author and editor at al-Ahram Weekly. His ‘BDS Updates’ regularly highlight the overwhelming success of the worldwide initiative that is partly modeled on the triumphant anti-Apartheid movement of South Africa. His year-ender updates for 2011 included the cancelation of an Israel tour by the famous musician Natacha Atlas (though sadly, not all artists were so principled). Walberg also reported that “in a wonderfully shocking divestment move, Israeli powers-that-be are furious at BNP Paribas for shutting down its operations in Israel. (They) believe the bank’s board of directors caved to pressure groups, in the first case in years of a foreign bank leaving Israel…” Such reports are now stable items crowding social media channels on a regular basis.

True, 2011 had its share of tragedy. Human lives were lost in Palestine. But hope was also sustained by the sacrifices of numerous ‘ordinary’ people who collectively managed to achieve many hard-earned feats. It is these numerous small victories that will make it difficult for Israel to continue with its futile campaign to occupy and dominate a people so determinately entrenched in their land — from the small village of Nabi Saleh to the proud Palestinian city of al-Quds.

Another ‘militant’ had been killed two days earlier. Israeli military aircraft “had targeted two militant squads that were preparing to fire rockets into southern Israel,” according to the Associated Press. AP quoted an Israeli official saying the army would “continue to take action against those (who) use terror against the state of Israel.”

It really doesn’t take much to kill a ‘militant’ in Gaza. Israeli military intelligence officers simply select a weapon and zoom in on their chosen person on any given day. This is not a difficult task, really, since the entire population of the Strip are besieged in Gaza’s open air prison. The same statement issued regarding the assassinated ‘militant’ can then be easily rewritten, using the same predictable justifications.

Israel’s excuses actually tell nothing of the history behind the phenomena of ‘militancy’. To know why some young men in Gaza decide to mask their faces and carry arms, they need to abandon the media’s reductionist characterization of Gaza’s armed struggle. This goes back much earlier than Hamas and Fatah, the 2006 elections, the 2007 siege or the 2008-09 war.

The phenomenon began shortly after the Nakba – The Palestinian ‘Catastrophe’ in 1948, which saw the destruction of Palestine and the erection of today’s Israel. During this time nearly a quarter of a million were evicted or  forced to flee to Gaza. A displaced population then yearned to go home, and many wished to recover the life savings they had buried under patches of earth in their Palestinian villages. Some wanted to harvest their crops, and others sought family members that had gone missing during the forced march out of Palestine.

Once they crossed into newly established Israel, many refugees never returned. But the boldness of the ‘fedayeen’ – freedom fighters – now began to grow rapidly.

The refugees eventually began organizing themselves, with or without help from the Egyptian army, which was still stationed at the outskirts of Gaza and the southern borders of the Sinai desert. Groups quickly assumed names and became factions, and their members acquired military fatigues. The fighters used kuffiyehs – traditional headscarves – to cover their faces to escape the watchful eyes of Israeli collaborators, who were also growing in number.

Over time, Palestinian guerrilla commandos began carrying out daring strikes deep inside Israel. The fedayeen were mostly young Palestinian refugees. Their operations grew bolder by the day, as they snuck into Israel, like ghosts in the night, with primitive weapons and homemade bombs. They would target Israeli soldiers, steal their weapons and return with the new weapons the second night. Some would sneak back into their villages in Palestine; they would ‘steal’ blankets and whatever money they had saved but failed to retrieve in the rush of war. Those who never returned received the funerals of ‘Martyrs’. Following every fedayeen operation, the Israeli army would strike Gaza’s refugees, inspiring yet more support and recruits for the young, but growing commando movement.

The phenomenon quickly registered among Palestinian youth in Gaza – not due to any inexplicable desire for violence, but because they saw in the fedayeen a heroic escape from their own humiliating lives. Indeed, the fedayeen movement was the antithesis of the perceived submissiveness experienced by refugees. It was a manifestation of all the anger and frustration they felt. They simply wanted to go home, and freedom-fighting seemed the only practical way of fulfilling this wish.

As refugees stayed put in their tents, and as more Palestinians were killed by Israeli military incursions and snipers, the numbers of fedayeen multiplied. In a historic visit to Gaza in 1955, then Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser promised to fight on until all of Palestine was liberated. Soon after, amid angry demands for action, Egypt decided to establish ten battalions of the National Guard, which were made up mostly of Palestinian fedayeen and led by Egyptian officers. It signaled an Egyptian attempt to take charge of the situation and control the scattered Palestinian leaderships and its armed factions. Cross-border skirmishes culminated, at times, into full-blown border battles. Israeli mortar attacks reached many areas in Gaza. There was no safe place to hide.

The factions changed names. The fedayeen wore different colored kuffiyehs. But in essence, little changed. Poverty persisted. Human rights continued to be routinely violated. Not a single refugee returned home. And three, if not four generations of fedayeen, carried on with the fight.

In some way, the media perception of these masked men also remained largely unchanged. The ‘militant’ has always been reported as an inexplicable irritant. At best, he served as a reminder, not of a poignant history that must be unearthed and understood, but of why Israel is, and will always remain, threatened by masked Palestinians. When a so-called ‘militant’ is brutally killed, little justification is offered. If any ‘militants’ respond to the killing, such retorts could possibly serve as a casus belli for an already planned Israeli military escalation.

It is important that we understand that ‘militancy’ in Gaza is not linked to any Palestinian faction, per se, nor is it incited by a specific ideology or individual. The phenomenon had indeed preceded all the factions and individuals that dot Gaza’s political landscape. It was caused by the single event of the Nakba, and all the tragedies that manifested as a result of it.

Chances are, the ‘militants’ – or fedayeen, or even ‘terrorists’ by the standards of Israel and its supporters – will continue to exist as long as the conflict remains unsolved per the necessary standards of justice and fairness.

As for the media, it behooves reporters to dig a bit deeper than an image of the charred remains of an uncle and his nephew – and to see beyond the predictably false accusations that underlie official Israeli statements.

The First Intifada, as it is commonly known, had, once and for all, placed the Palestinian people as a collective on the political map of a region that previously had room only for Israeli Merkava tanks and US ‘peace envoys’. The Arab body politic had been led by mostly powerless leaders, and Palestinian factions with multiple allegiances were led by men with numerous nom de guerres.

Not discounting the fact that some of the Palestinian factions had, in fact, contributed to the long and arduous struggle for Palestinian freedom, a chasm had long existed between the larger mass of the Palestinian people and those who claimed to represent them.

The Intifada tried to change that unsettling paradigm. It transported the struggle away from Arab capitals back to Palestine, and, more importantly, involved ordinary Palestinians in the campaign to end Israeli occupation. The parties that represented the traditional ‘players’ in the conflict faced an unprecedented situation in a conflict that had previously been determined almost solely by Israel’s military might, enabled by US’ unconditional support and Arab acquiescence. But this time around, no bullets were deadly enough, no US support was generous enough, and no political submission was demoralizing enough to stifle the spontaneous calls of freedom made by ordinary Palestinians.

The Intifada eventually subsided. Palestinian political elites tried to capitalize on its gains, and Israel did its best to prevent its reoccurrence. Thus the Oslo Accords, a joint effort by Israeli and some Palestinian leaders to create a new status quo. Selected Palestinians were brought back to the occupied territories to manage the ‘unruly’ masses while Israel carried on with its colonial mission unhindered. Since then — and despite of the Second Palestinian Uprising in 2000 — no major paradigm shift has managed to change that terrible reality. The Palestinian leadership, clustered in the so-called Palestinian Authority (PA), has fallen deeper into corruption while illegal Israeli settlements have morphed beyond the imaginings of Ariel Sharon and other ardent Israeli rightwing leaders.

Meanwhile, Palestinians continue to subsist between bouts of defiance — as exemplified in Gaza, Jenin and other places — while slowly being ethnically ‘cleansed’ from East Jerusalem and the West Bank to make room for expanding Jewish settlements. The courage of these ordinary Palestinians, men and women holding onto their beloved ancient olive trees as they are ruthlessly bulldozed, is now a trademark known in its Arabic form: sumoud, steadfastness.

That said, the political landscape is once again being locked into a predictable pattern. Two-faced Israeli leaders speak of peace while maintaining a state of siege and occupation over millions of Palestinians, while a self-designated Palestinian leadership grows increasingly reliant on the very occupation it is trying to end. According to the International Middle East Media Center, citing an academic study conducted by a Palestinian researcher from the West Bank, “the amount of investments by Palestinian businessmen in Israeli settlements and in Israel itself, amounted to $2.5 Billion in 2010” (IMEMC and Agencies, November 9).

In fact, this is a much bigger issue than Palestinian money invested in the Israeli occupation, or even some outrageous concessions made by one ‘chief negotiator’ or some other official. The tragedy is that while Israeli dominance is once again being normalized (as was the case before 1987), the Palestinian leadership, despite repeated failures, insists on maintaining its position of ascendancy and control. This insistence continues even as the geopolitical map of the region is being redrawn — whether by the action of Arab peoples, or through the military might and political influence wielded by outsiders.

A paradigm shift is in fact underway in several Arab countries, especially those immediately adjacent to Palestine and Israel. While the breeze of the so-called Arab Spring is likely to be felt by occupied Palestinians, the extent of its political influence remains uncertain. Even if change in Egypt, for example, proves truly fundamental and irreversible, it will do the Palestinians little good if an alternative and truly revolutionary leadership doesn’t materialize soon. This is the only change that could possibly renew and harness the indefatigable energies of the Palestinian people.

The political attitude of the Palestinian leadership, whether the US-backed ‘moderates’ in the West Bank, or Hamas in Gaza are maneuvers aimed at accommodating the political change underway in Cairo and Damascus. The unity talks between Fatah and Hamas — the latest touted ‘successful’ talks being held in Egypt on November 24 — might, in theory, bridge the divide between the two rivals. Yet, in reality, it remains a political project between two movements aspiring to find common ground for their own political ends. This is arguably a positive feat, but it will definitely fall short of the minimal paradigm shift required in Palestine under the current circumstances.

It is almost ahistorical that Palestinians haven’t yet marched forward, along with Tunisians, Egyptians and others. This could be attributed to the extreme factional polarization and bitter politics that have divided Palestinians in myriad of ways. There have been a few bashful attempts at reaching a critical mass of popular mobilization, but instead a limited movement with overly sentimental and unclear political demands was quickly co-opted.

In reality, national unity is not a mere strategic decision, necessitated by rapidly changing political reality. It requires a fundamental shift from old strategies and the shedding of old beliefs. In the case of Palestine, a new beginning requires the total mobilization of all aspects of Palestinian society, restating nationally unifying priorities, introducing original language, new tools and strategies, and accompanied by as little empty rhetoric as possible.

This critical stage of the Palestinian struggle cannot be satisfied by the rebranding of Palestinian politicians, and it cannot be ushered in by a leadership with tainted records. It requires a generation of leaders with clean slates, revolutionary in their thinking, motivated by the single belief that no freedom can be achieved without true national unity, under a single flag. The allegiance must not lie with any particular faction, but to Palestine itself, and the only unifying slogan should be ‘Freedom’.