By Dana Halawa *

I have read countless articles and watched numerous videos about Gilad Shalit being reunited with his family five years after his abduction. One typical report noted he was "just 19 years old in 2006 when he was cruelly and illegally abducted by Hamas." I have been hearing of him for the past five years. I know Gilad Shalit's name better than I know the names of my classmates.

Not one Palestinian child detainee in Israeli jails was released during the prisoner swap last month. More than 160 remain behind bars. (Yousef Deeb / APA images)

Ashraf Baluji, Imad Abu Rayyan, Imad al-Masri and Yusuf al-Khalis were only 18 and 19 years old when they were arrested back in 1991. They were part of the first 477 prisoners of war to be released in exchange for Gilad Shalit after spending over 20 years in Israeli jails. Crazily, 1991 was the year I was born. Every breath I have ever taken, every moment I have known of life, they were locked up and tortured.

In every article I've read referring to Shalit by his name and the 1,027 Palestinians being released in exchange as a number or as "militants," the journalist has forgotten to mention that Shalit was an armed and trained soldier that was "kidnapped" from a military occupation vehicle, that the majority of Palestinian prisoners never engaged in military or criminal acts against Israel, and were only accused of resistance to the Israeli military occupation. They have conveniently left out the numerous Palestinian children abducted from their homes and taken far away, usually denied even visits from their parents or lawyers.

In 2009, Time magazine published a story about Walid Abu Obeida, a Palestinian farm boy who was only 13 years old when he was stopped on his way home by two Israeli soldiers aiming their rifles at him. They punched, beat, and arrested him while his parents wondered where he was and why their son wasn't home yet ("Does Israel mistreat Palestinian child prisoners?," 30 June 2009).

Alas, Abu Obeida's treatment was far from an isolated incident. As of the latest figures recorded by Defence for Children International-Palestine Section, as of October 2011, 164 Palestinian children between the ages of 12 and 17 years old are behind bars, including 35 aged between 12 and 15 years old (Child detainees, accessed 7 November 2011).

Many are being held without trial or conviction, while others are — often falsely — convicted of throwing rocks at Israeli tanks occupying their land and demolishing their homes.

Key facts forgotten

Israel has arrested more than 650,000 Palestinians, a number equal to about 20 percent of the population, since the occupation of the West Bank began in 1967. We tend to forget that Israel is occupying Palestine when we speak of the two. Palestinians are killed and arrested every day under the pretext of "protecting Israeli security." Palestinians are kidnapped from their homes and stand trial in Israeli courts, where even Palestinian witnesses have no right to testify, while others are jailed, without trial or charge, under "administrative detention".

Looking through the list of released prisoners, I found the name of Akram Mansour, who was arrested at the age of 18. He has spent over three torturous decades languishing in Israeli jails for resisting the Israeli occupation of Lebanon. At 51, he finally gets to taste a bit of freedom — although without his mother, father or sister who died while he was in Israeli custody — before the brain tumor he developed in Israeli jails takes life itself from him. In an online Arabic-language interview with Mansour, he says he currently suffers from paralyzed fingers, missing teeth and blackouts because of the torture he was subjected to, which varied from hammering his fingers to a nail in his forehead to having urine spilled over him and, after filing a complaint, being forced to strip naked in the cold as buckets of freezing water were spilled over him ("The suffering of the liberated prisoner Akram Mansour," 24 October 2011 [Arabic]).

Video: Interview with liberated prisoner Akram Mansour in Arabic:

Video link: http://youtu.be/WDiRn6RO83Q

Robbed of childhood

Twelve-year-old Palestinian boys are robbed of their innocence and childhood behind bars. Sixteen-year-old Palestinian children are tried as adults by Israel, even though the legal age under international and even Israeli law (for Israelis) is 18. Mothers and sisters are arrested and convicted of terrorism for standing up to the occupation. Children are forced to grow up without parents. Men are convicted and sentenced to as many as 36 life sentences for resisting their genocide. In total, 1,027 will be freed while 5,000 remain captive.

Gilad Shalit will be remembered as a hero that endured five years of kidnapping, during which he had regular medical checkups and was placed in as good a condition as Gaza could provide under the Israeli blockade. This is more than I can say for the Palestinian prisoners, who have often been deprived of basic services, including medical attention when needed.

Today, Shalit is a free man with no conditions on his freedom. However, the 477 Palestinians freed in the first part of this exchange were either allowed home, provided they report to Israel monthly and not travel between Palestinians cities; or exiled to Gaza where they may not see their families in the West Bank (who are not allowed into Gaza); or even exiled outside the entire country and banned from ever returning home. Through preventing released prisoners from returning home, Israel violates the most basic of human rights. Article 12 of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights states: "No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country."

A life is a life, and a human being is a human being. So, many now ask why Gilad Shalit's life is worth 1,027 Palestinian lives. To ask that is to not understand Israel. An Israeli life's value cannot be estimated, whereas a Palestinian life is of very little to no value. I think I speak for most Palestinians when I say, I'm glad Gilad Shalit is home, safe and with his family, that Palestinians more than anyone understand what it's like to lose a father, mother, brother, sister, daughter and son. More than anyone, Palestinians understand the joy he and his family must feel now that his back.

Personally, I believe a fair exchange would have been to release all Palestinian prisoners for all Israeli prisoners, namely just Gilad Shalit, rather than making one life worth 1,027 lives. However, knowing that Israel would never agree to that, I congratulate Hamas and the Palestinian people on their victory. And I pray for the remaining 5,000 Palestinians in Israeli custody, and many more currently being arrested to fill the cells being emptied of 1,027 prisoners.

* Dana Halawa is a twenty-year-old American-Palestinian medical student at the Jordan University of Science and Technology in Jordan.

The PA should disband, but only as part of a resistance strategy that starts with ending cooperation with Israel.

By Lamis Andoni* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The Palestinian Authority (PA) is now perceived as facilitating the occupation (GALLO/GETTY)

Abbas is simply reaching the same conclusion that many Palestinians have long understood: negotiations, under the prevailing conditions, will not lead to the end of the Israeli occupation, let alone the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

In a recent interview with Palestinian state television, Abbas warned that if all efforts to establish a Palestinian state fail he will dissolve the PA and ask Israel to assume responsibility for the occupation. His threats are neither a manoeuvre nor a clearly planned strategy. They are rather an expression of despair and a reflection of the mood of the Palestinian people - who see the PA as merely facilitating the continuation of the Israeli occupation while removing the need for it to pay for its actions.

Disbanding the PA would mean a return to direct Israeli occupation and could be used by Israel as a pretext for escalating its aggression against the Palestinian people. But the Palestinians have reached breaking point. Seventeen years of talks have stopped neither Israeli land theft nor the displacement of Palestinians.

A battle of wills

The idea of dissolving the PA has many supporters - both inside the Palestinian territories and among the Palestinian diaspora. But this must not be a leap in the dark: the Palestinians must be prepared for the consequences of such a move and it must be undertaken as part of a clearly defined resistance strategy.

Neither Abbas nor his opponents, however, have indicated that they are developing any such strategy - for just as Abbas was expressing his despair, Hamas was indicating a greater degree of flexibility towards any possible outcome of, the currently stalled, Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. In a speech last week, Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister, said his movement was prepared to accept the results of a referendum if negotiations reach an historic compromise that includes the establishment of a Palestinian state on the territories occupied during the 1967 war.

It is not the first time that Hamas has signalled its willingness to accept a two-state solution, but its timing - when the talks are effectively frozen and there is no prospect for progress should they resume - is surprising. Haniyeh's statement suggests that the two leaderships, in Ramallah and Gaza, have no idea how to recapture the initiative required to lead the Palestinian people out of the stagnant situation they are in.

Abbas has raised a couple of prospects. Firstly, he has suggested looking to the UN Security Council for recognition of a Palestinian state. This is mainly intended to affirm the 'occupied' status of the Palestinian territories and to thus block Israel from annexing Jewish settlements. Secondly, he has discussed handing responsibility for the Palestinian territories over to the UN. Both of these options would likely be obstructed by a US veto at the UN Security Council.

But any alternative option the Palestinians choose cannot succeed without first establishing national unity and mobilising popular resistance. A serious battle of wills will ensue, and the Palestinians must be prepared.

An international battle for recognition of a Palestinian state must be based on a clear vision and preparedness to confront Israeli actions. For international support alone will not lead to the creation of a Palestinian state. Regardless of whether Palestinians opt for a one- or two-state solution, they cannot avoid a battle to end the occupation under which they currently live.

Is the PA prepared?

The options Abbas speaks of would place the PA face-to-face with the Israeli occupation, so the question remains: is the PA ready for this? The answer would appear to be no.

The PA cannot be taken seriously as long as it accommodates Israeli terms and demands. Israel continues to prevent the movement of goods and people, to conduct raids and arrests in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and to strike at the Gaza Strip. Thus a prerequisite for any significant Palestinian move must be an immediate halt to security coordination between Israel and the PA.

Abbas' justification for such coordination is that if Palestinians "behave" Israel can make no case for postponing ending the occupation. But the only outcome thus far has been the weakening of Palestinian resistance, while Israel has had a free hand to launch military forays into the Palestinian territories, to confiscate more land and to kill more people.

The next step for Hamas and the PA must be genuine unification - without this, disbanding the PA could result in a highly destructive power struggle - based on a joint agreement over an alternative to the now defunct talks. Dissolving the PA should be a significant consideration within this plan, but only once a political and economic strategy has been formulated.

The PA currently pays the salaries of 150,000 people, so disbanding it would have a huge impact on the economy. Before the PA was created, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) contributed funds to help Palestinians stay steadfast in the face of the economic strains of occupation. A similar plan, involving all Palestinians, must now be devised - assuming that Arab states, as should be expected, will fail to offer the Palestinians financial support.

It is, of course, easy for those Palestinians in exile, with comfortable jobs, to call for an immediate dissolution of the PA - it is also very understandable as Israel will be under no pressure to end its occupation as long as it pays little or no cost for it. But, should the Palestinian leadership formulate a new resistance strategy, all Palestinians must be prepared to shoulder the responsibility for it. The onus is now on the PA to start this process and the only way to do that is to end all coordination and cooperation with Israel.

* Lamis Andoni is an analyst and commentator on Middle Eastern and Palestinian affairs.

[Aljazeera]

By Majida Abu Rahmah (School teacher)

Abdullah Abu Rahmah - Bil'in Demonstration

As the coordinator of the Bil'in Popular Committee against the Wall and Settlements I was convicted of "organizing illegal demonstrations" and "incitement." The "illegal demonstrations" refer to the nonviolent resistance campaign that my village has been waging for the last six years against Israel's Apartheid Wall that is being built on our land.

I find it strange that the military judges could call our demonstrations illegal and charge me for participating in and organizing them after the world's highest legal body, the International Court of Justice in The Hague, has ruled that Israel's wall within the occupied territories is illegal and must be dismantled. Even the Israeli supreme court ruled that the Wall's route in Bil'in is illegal.

I have been accused of inciting violence: this charge is also puzzling. If the check points, closures, ongoing land theft, wall and settlements, night raids into our homes and violent oppression of our protests does not incite violence, what does?

Despite the occupations constant and intense incitement to violence in Bil'in, we have chosen another way. We have chosen to protest nonviolently together with Israeli and International supporters. We have chosen to carry a message of hope and real partnership between Palestinians and Israelis in the face of oppression and injustice. It is this message that the Occupation is attempting to crush through its various institutions including the military courts. An official from the Israeli Military Prosecution shamelessly told my Attorney, Gaby Lasky, that the objective of the military in my prosecution is to "put an end" to these demonstrations.

The crime of incitement that I have been convicted of is defined under Israeli military decree 101 regarding the prohibition of hostile action of propaganda and incitement as "The attempt, verbally or otherwise, to influence public opinion in the Area in a way that may disturb the public peace or public order" and carries a 10 year maximal sentence. This definition is so broad and vague that it can be applied to almost any action or statement. Actually, these words could be considered incitement if they were spoken in the occupied territories.

On the 11th of October of this year I was sentenced to 12 months in prison, plus 6 months suspended sentence for 3 years, and a fine. My family and I, especially my daughters, were counting the days to my release. The military prosecution waited until just a few days before the end of my sentence before appealing against my release, arguing that I should be imprisoned longer. I have completed my sentence but remain in prison. Though international law considers myself and other activists as human rights defenders, the occupation authorities consider us criminals whose freedom and other rights must be denied.
In the year that I have spent in prison, the demonstrations in Bil'in, Naalin, Al Maasara, and Beit Omar have continued. Nabi Saleh and other villages have taken up the popular struggle. Within this year, the International campaign calling for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions of Israel until it complies with International law has grown considerably, as have legal actions against Israeli war crimes. I hope that soon Israel will no longer be able to ignore the clear condemnation of its policies coming from around the world.

In the year that I have spent in prison, my son Laith has taken his first steps and said his first words, and Luma and Layan have been growing from children to beautiful young girls. I have not been able to be with them, to walk holding their hands, to take them to school as they and I are used to. Laith does not know me now. And my wife Majida has had to care for our family alone.

Abdullah Abu Rahmah in Israeli military court

Imagine if heavily armed men forced their way into your home in the middle of the night. If your children were forced to watch as their father or brother was blindfolded, handcuffed, and taken away. Or if you as a parent were forced to watch this being done to your child.

This week the door of our cell was opened and a sixteen year boy was pushed inside. My friend Adeeb Abu Rahmeh was shocked to recognize his son, Mohammed, whom Adeeb had not seen since he himself was arrested during a nonviolent demonstration 16 months ago.

Mohammad smiled when he saw his Father, but his face was red and swollen and it was clear that he was in pain. He told us that he had been taken from his home two nights previously. He spent the first night blindfolded and shackled, being moved from one place to another. The next day after a terrifying, disoriented, and sleepless night he was taken to an interrogation room, his blindfold was removed and an interrogator showed him pictures of people from the village. When questioned about the first picture he told the interrogator that he did not recognize the person. The interrogator slapped him hard across the face. This continued with every question that Mohammad was asked: when he did not give the answer that the interrogator wanted, he was slapped, punched and threatened. Mohammad's treatment is not unusual.

Young boys from our village have been taken from their homes violently and report being denied sleep, food, and water and being kept in Isolation and threatened and often beaten during interrogation.

What was unusual about Mohammad is that he did not satisfy his interrogator and with competent representation was released within a few days. Usually children, just because they are children, will say whatever the interrogator wants them to say to make such treatment stop. Adeeb, myself, and thousands of other prisoners are being held in prison based on testimonies forced or coerced out of these children. No child should ever receive such treatment.

When the children who had testified against me retracted what they said in interrogation and told the military judge that their testimonies where given under duress, the judge declared them hostile witnesses.

Adeeb Abu Rahmah and I are the first to be convicted with incitement and participation in illegal demonstrations since the first Intifada but, unfortunately, it does not seem that we will be the last.

I often wonder what Israeli leaders think they will achieve if they succeed in their goal of suppressing the Palestinian popular struggle? Is it possible that they believe that our people can sit quietly and watch as our land is taken from us? Do they think that we can face our children and tell them that, like us, they will never experience freedom? Or do they actually prefer violence and killing to our form of nonviolent struggle because it camouflages their ongoing theft and gives them an excuse to continue using us as guinea pigs for their weapons?

My eldest daughter Luma was nine years old when I was arrested. She is now ten. After my arrest she began going to the Friday demonstrations in our village. She always carries a picture of me in her arms. The adults try to look after her but I still worry for my little girl. I wish that she could enjoy her childhood like other children, that she could be studying and playing with her friends. But through the walls and barbed wire that separates us I hear my daughter's message to me, saying: "Baba, they cannot stop us. If they take you away, we will take your place and continue to struggle for justice." This is the message that I want to bring you today. From beyond the walls, the barbed wire, and the prison bars that separate Palestinians and Israelis.

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter

By Paul J. Balles* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

"Terrorist" is probably the dirtiest label of the last decade. It has also proven convenient for a number of uses:

1. instil fear in the populace
2. justify large military budgets
3. excuse extra-judicial assassinations
4. deflect attention from one's actions to another's

Following 9/11, the US and its "coalition of the willing" entered into a War on Terror. The so-called War on Terror conveniently served all of its uses.

As a means to instil fear, those who bandied about the terms terrorist and terrorism seldom took the time to make clear what the terms meant.

Is it terrorism if an enemy attacks a military organization, or does it apply only to attacks on civilians?

When the American military attacked the Iraq military, would that fit any definition of terrorism? Or would it apply only to the attacks on civilians?

Calling on the same logic, can the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon (military) be on a par with the attacks on the Trade Center (civilian)?

Can governments perform terrorist acts, or are they only performed by non-governmental groups? Can Israelis be considered terrorists when they attack Lebanon or Gaza or West Bank enclaves?

When these places are attacked, are the only terrorists non-governmental, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza or suicide bombers in the West Bank?

A woman whose son was killed said, "Israel took my home in Jaffa, now they come and kill us here, and they say WE are the terrorists."

During the Algerian War of the 1950s, the Arab nationalist guerrilla insurgency won the title of "anti-colonial freedom fighters" while the French government, military and settlers were branded "torturers" and "terrorists".

Do acts of terrorism apply only during peacetime? Or are they applicable during wartime? The activities in both Iraq and Afghanistan have both been referred to as wars.

Does it matter if an act called "terrorism" is done for a good cause? Does it matter if those performing the acts have been oppressed or prevented from enjoying their fundamental human rights?

Ironically, who are the "terrorists" and who are "freedom fighters" have yet to be determined in the US war on terror.

It's important to consider these questions very carefully before labelling anyone or members of any group, simply by virtue of their membership, as terrorists.

What some governments, particularly the United States and Israel, call terrorists, others have called resistance movements. Their members have also been called "freedom fighters".

According to Wikipedia, "a resistance movement is a group or collection of individual groups, dedicated to fighting an invader in an occupied country..."

During the Cold War the term freedom fighter was used by the United States and other Western Bloc countries to describe rebels in countries controlled by communist states or otherwise under the influence of the Soviet Union.

Rebels against the Soviet Union were never called terrorists.Clearly, the distinction between terrorist and freedom fighter is nothing more than political labelling.

According to John Farmer, writing for the New York Times this week, "several federal officials warned that "home-grown terrorists" represent the nation's greatest emerging threat."

Robert Mueller, FBI chief has said that Al Qaeda "has looked to recruit Americans or Westerners who are able to remain undetected by heightened security measures."

This has led Janet Napolitano, the secretary of Homeland Security, to conclude that "homeland security begins with hometown security." And hometown security begins with locally based observations of "suspicious" activity.

Can "home-grown terrorists" be "freedom fighters" as well? Welcome to Nineteen Eighty-Four.Big brother is watching you.

* Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. For more information, see http://www.pballes.com.

How can Palestinians ensure their rights are protected and fulfilled if an agreement is reached?

By Nadia Hijab* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Overview

Many commentators expect the direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians to fail. But there is a much worse scenario: What if they "succeed?" The United States appears determined to push for a framework agreement within a year and both Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA), are aiming for that goal. Such an agreement, U.S. peace envoy George Mitchell explained in a September 2 press conference, would be more than a declaration of principles but less than a peace treaty. In it, the two sides would reach the "fundamental compromises" necessary for a peace accord. Like its predecessor, the Obama administration has already indicated that the accord would still have to be fleshed out and then implemented over the course of several years - which virtually ensures that it will be delayed if not derailed as happened to past peace accords.

If the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and PA were unable to secure a sovereign state and rights through U.S.-brokered negotiations with Israel between 1993 and 2000, when they were in a much stronger position, they are highly unlikely to do so today with such a badly skewed Israeli-Palestinian power dynamic. Instead, next year is likely to see a grand ceremony where Palestinian leaders will sign away the right of return and other Palestinian rights in an agreement that would change little on the ground. The plan of the PA's appointed prime minister, Salam Fayyad, to declare a Palestinian state in 2011 could unwittingly contribute to this outcome by providing the appearance of an "end of conflict" while the reality remains unchanged. If the rest of the world sees that the government of "Palestine" is satisfied with international recognition and a U.N. seat, they will be happy to move on to other problems leaving the Palestinians at Israel's mercy.

Such a scenario could sound a death-knell for Palestinian human rights. The Palestinian people have shown a remarkable capacity to regenerate resistance and evolve new strategies after suffering harsh setbacks over the past century. But there may be no recovery this time around. A "peace agreement" would end the applicability of international law to the resolution of the conflict; permanently fragment the Palestinian people; and demobilize Arab and international solidarity.

What can Palestinians do to forestall abrogation of their fundamental rights and to ensure just peace? In a contribution to the debate around this question, this brief examines five areas that are key to Palestinians determined to persevere until rights are realized: Unifying the Palestinian body politic; espousing common goals; applying international law; using appropriate tactics; and strengthening the Arab and international movement of solidarity. It concludes with some suggestions for strategies in each area.

Unifying the Palestinian Body Politic

A unified body politic is perhaps the most important source of power for the Palestinian people. However, since the Oslo Accords were signed the PLO has no longer represented the Palestinian refugees and exiles, while the Palestinian citizens of Israel have been left to fend for themselves. The PLO has essentially ceased to exist as a functional organization, and the PA has effectively taken over such functions as appointing diplomatic representatives overseas. Hamas continues to be excluded from the PLO and the Hamas-Fatah split further fragments and erodes the Palestinian political voice.

Beyond the political level, each segment of the Palestinian people faces tough challenges. Palestinian citizens of Israel, after articulating a vision of full equality within Israel, now face a harsh crackdown.¹ Palestinians in Gaza, under siege for four years and geographically disconnected from the West Bank and the outside world, remain steadfast in the face of Israeli oppression. Palestinians in Jerusalem are isolated and face expulsions and home demolitions as Israel continues its policy of Judaizing the city.

In the West Bank, part of the population, exhausted after repeated onslaughts, wants to live a normal life even in small enclaves. At the same time, the popular struggle against Israel's Wall and the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement are rooted in the West Bank. It is not clear which is the stronger force: those that are "co-optable" or those who resist. What is clear is that the PA is seeking to "manage" both the popular struggle and BDS, providing funding for some segments of the former and claiming the mantle of BDS with a limited campaign targeting the sale of Israeli settlement products.

Palestinian refugees face serious human rights violations in many of the Arab countries where they are based. Attempts to forge communities of Palestinian exiles in Western countries have had varying success, but nowhere have they established the kind of lobby created by American Jews. The ability of Palestinian exiles to physically reconnect with Palestine, which many were doing during the 1990s and 2000s, is being circumscribed by increasingly restrictive Israeli measures.

Against this background, it is not clear how, when, or even whether, the Palestinian people could revive the PLO. Even if there were no Hamas-Fatah split, the very existence of the PA, its narrow mandate, and its determination to function within the American ambit militates against an independent voice for the Palestinians.

Are there signs of other leadership options? The BDS movement launched by the Palestinian Civil Society Call of 2005 is now being directed by a BDS National Committee (the BNC) which groups representatives of all nationalist, Islamist and other political parties as well as civil society organizations. However the BNC is unlikely, in the near future, to provide the kind of leadership provided, for example, by the United National Leadership of the first Intifada. The current political splits and jockeying for power make it easier for Palestinian political and civil forces to unify around a strategy for rights -- BDS -- rather than to forge a national leadership.

Espousing a Common Set of Goals

In the years since the Palestinian National Charter was recognized in 1968 as the common statement of Palestinian goals, there has been a loss of direction regarding the ultimate objective of the Palestinian struggle.² The PLO gradually shifted from the objective of a secular, democratic state in all of Palestine to supporting the two-state solution. This was formalized after the Palestinian National Council accepted the two-state solution in 1988. It was also "understood," although this was never formally stated, that the Palestinian right of return would have to be implemented within the Palestinian state for some of the Palestinian refugees with, at best, compensation for the rest.

No other national documents that set out Palestinian goals emerged until the 2005 Civil Society Call for BDS and the 2006 Palestinian Prisoners' Document. However, the Prisoners' Document has not been made operational, in the sense of being carried forward by one or more political groups. By contrast, the Civil Society Call is being made operational through the BDS movement. The Call upholds the Palestinian right to self-determination and sets three goals: freedom from occupation, equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel, and realization of the right of return. Unfortunately, most Palestinians and their supporters focus on the strategy of BDS rather than the goals of the Civil Society Call.

The importance of having common goals for a human rights movement cannot be overstated - as South Africans can attest. As a revised Oslo-like process threatens to undermine Palestinian rights, Palestinians and their supporters must have clear goals to know what constitutes success, what violates the national consensus, and when to demobilize. Such goals are even more crucial in the absence of a leadership committed to Palestinian rights. In this context, clear goals provide a reference point for Palestinians and enable them to organize effectively.

Today, the 2005 Civil Society Call is the only clear statement of goals available to the Palestinians that is broadly accepted by a wide swath of civil and political forces within and outside historic Palestine. Moreover it is grounded in international law, including the right to self-determination, and the goals encompass Palestinians under occupation, in exile, and in Israel (See Omar Barghouti's policy brief). As such, the Call's value goes well beyond the BDS strategy, effective as this is proving to be.

Upholding International Law and Human Rights

International law and human rights are vital to the just resolution of the Palestinian conflict. They enable Palestinians to set their goals in a framework that the international community is pledged, in theory, to uphold. They also provide some protection against being pressured into agreements that do not fulfill minimum rights. Indeed, it is significant that the International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on the illegality of Israel's Wall urged the international community to apply international law to this conflict. The 2005 Civil Society Call, issued on the first anniversary of the ICJ Advisory Opinion, responds to this challenge.

Moreover, applying the discourse of human rights to the conflict is a powerful, non-violent strategy. It exposes Israel's greatest weakness: the racist underpinnings of Zionism and its implementation. The values of universal human rights are much more powerful than the concept that a group of people is entitled to be privileged by ethnicity or religion, with no obligation to acknowledge or pay reparations for their persistent ethnic cleansing of a country's indigenous inhabitants. The relevance of international law to conflict resolution does not stop at Palestine's door: It matters to the evolution of humanity at large. By upholding human rights, the Palestinians help protect this universal framework from Israeli, U.S., and other efforts to subvert it.

Using Appropriate Tactics

Every era calls for appropriate tactics to achieve stated goals. Certainly the use of armed struggle was a valid and effective tactic in the early days of the Palestinian national liberation struggle. However, the value of armed struggle today is something that needs to be subjected to dispassionate examination. In particular, if the goals are stated in terms of international law then Palestinians must also uphold this in their choice of tactics. It should first be emphasized that under international law Palestinians have the right to resist occupation, including armed resistance. Yet under the same set of laws, deliberately targeting civilians can constitute a war crime, as most recently articulated in the UN-commissioned Goldstone Report, no matter which party (Israel or the Palestinians) does so and what weapons are used.

Furthermore, the use of weapons puts Palestinians in the arena where Israel is strongest and they are weakest. It enables Israel to use the security argument to obscure its crimes. And weapons do not target Israel's most serious weaknesses -- its claim to ethnic and religious superiority and its refusal to acknowledge its responsibility for past and ongoing Palestinian dispossession. It is worth noting that during the first Intifada, the Palestinians were able to achieve successes similar to the armed struggle of the PLO a quarter of a century earlier: putting the question of Palestine on the map, and attracting a powerful international solidarity movement, official and non-governmental. Today, civil resistance and BDS, coupled with international solidarity, are strengthening the Palestinians and weakening Israelis.

Among the strategies used in the struggle for human rights, the Palestinians urgently need to identify the most effective ways to stay on the land of Palestine. The non-violent popular struggle against Israel's Wall in the Occupied West Bank has scored some successes and has renewed grassroots leadership in an echo of the first Intifada (see Jamal Juma's policy brief). However, Israel is still relentlessly carving up the West Bank and depopulating the Jordan Valley and East Jerusalem, as it is the Negev and other areas where Palestinians are the majority inside Israel. Without Palestinians on the land of Palestine, as Israel knows only too well, the Palestinian cause will be impossible to sustain.

Strengthening Arab and International Solidarity

For decades, the PLO and PA have not reached out to Arab peoples in an organized fashion, largely content to deal with Arab governments. Nor did they nurture the diplomatic support of the non-aligned movement and other friendly countries, at a time when Israel was actively wooing African and Asian states, or strengthen strategic ties with friendly European and post-Soviet Union countries. Arab sympathies remain with the Palestinians but few have any sense of how they can help. Palestinian refugees and exiles can play an important outreach role to Arab peoples, without interfering in internal Arab affairs. At the same time, in seeking solidarity Palestinians must stand in solidarity with Arabs on issues of concern to them (see the Al-Shabaka Roundtable The Role of the Palestinian Diaspora that began this discussion).

The international solidarity movement of civil society is being rapidly revived through the popular struggle and BDS, as well as the outrage at Israel's attacks on Gaza, on the "Freedom Flotilla," and other trampling of international law. New forms of state support are emerging in countries like Turkey and Malaysia. A peace deal that does not fulfill Palestinian rights risks defusing this mobilization, as happened to the powerful international solidarity movement of the 1980s, which used to fill the halls of UN during the annual conference on the question of Palestine.

Recommendations

In each of the areas addressed above, strategies have emerged or are needed to sustain the struggle to fulfill Palestinian human rights. Some examples and suggestions are given below.

• Unifying the Palestinian body politic. Alongside efforts to foster national unity and to revive the PLO, there is a need for increased investment in activities that bring Palestinians together across borders (as, indeed, Al-Shabaka seeks to do) without neglecting any segment of the Palestinian people, in exile, under occupation, and in Israel. There is also need to further invest in the Palestinian capacity to remain steadfast on the land and in exile, while recognizing that those who live on the land of Palestine have a greater ability to influence the Palestinian future. Palestinians in exile also need to use every possible means to remain in physical contact with the land of Palestine and find ways to counter the many tactics Israel uses to prevent them.
• Espouse common goals. Palestinians should disseminate the goals of Civil Society Call as widely and as clearly as possible to compatriots everywhere, explaining the value of the BDS strategy but also drawing attention to other strategies that can uphold these goals, for example nurturing relations with the peoples of Arab host countries. And they should communicate the goals as widely as possible to international civil society so that it remains mobilized until they are achieved. Further, Palestinians need to be prepared to issue public statements and take appropriate actions to inform world governments that any agreement that does not meet these goals will be rejected - and resisted - by the majority of the Palestinian people.
• Applying international law. Palestinians need to invest in education and awareness-raising around the relevant human rights principles and conventions that apply to this as well as to other conflicts such as the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. It is also important to frame messages in terms of universal rights and values that are easily grasped by people everywhere.
• Applying appropriate tactics. There is a need to initiate wide-ranging discussions about the effectiveness of various options for resistance, especially among youth. It is also important to engage the energies of Palestinians of all ages who have been excluded from the political process so that they can make a tangible contribution to the struggle by identifying tactics relevant to their local contexts that help to achieve the common goals.
• Strengthening Arab and international solidarity. In addition to the kind of outreach and education described above, Palestinians need to make time to understand the struggles their supporters face at home - including racism, poverty, and inequality - and find ways to support them

The suggestions are intended to contribute to and encourage debate. Whether there is a "peace agreement" or Israel continues to impose its military and political will to derail an agreement, it is imperative that Palestinians discuss, formulate and communicate the best strategies to achieve their goals. Otherwise this latest "peace process" may succeed in terminally demobilizing the Palestinian struggle for rights.

Footnotes

1. The three vision documents are excerpted in the Journal Palestine Studies Volume XXXVI, No. 4, Summer 2007, pp. 73 -100

2. In 1996, the Palestinian National Council amended the Charter at U.S. and Israeli insistence to remove articles contrary to the letters exchanged by the P.L.O. and Israel in 1993. None of Israel's founding documents were amended to recognize Palestinian rights.

* Nadia Hijab is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies, a syndicated columnist for Agence Global, and a frequent public speaker and media commentator. Hijab co-authored Citizens Apart: A Portrait of Palestinians in Israel (I. B. Tauris). She was Editor-in-Chief of the London-based Middle East magazine before moving to New York to join the United Nations. In 2000 she established a consulting business on human rights, human development, and gender. She has served as co-chair of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, and she is a past president of the Association of Arab American University Graduates.

(Al-Shabaka)

By Sharmine Narwani* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

With pundits in most capitals already predicting failure for the US-brokered Palestinian-Israeli peace talks to begin on Thursday, it seems only natural to start asking the question: "What's next?"

To get a jumpstart on what surely will be an onslaught of new, competing narratives vying for prominence in the post-peace process era, I headed to Damascus to talk to a man who has predicted the failure of this process from the start. And yet who -- against all logic -- has never been invited to sit at the negotiating table.

Khaled Meshaal, head of Hamas' political bureau, is an unassuming man who sauntered into our interview room unattended and chatted with me in English while we awaited his staff.

The young father of seven -- three daughters and four sons, in that order -- is grounded, smart and energetic. We met at 1:00 a.m. when I was fading fast, and he was just getting started. There was a lot of ground to cover, but more than anything I wanted to leave the interview knowing what Hamas stood for. The resistance group, I felt, had left people confused in recent years. By moderating their stances and altering their language to accommodate changing realities in the Middle East, Hamas had become a bit blurry at the edges.

Do they recognize a two-state solution? Do they reject the peace process outright? What do they think about the role and imperatives of the international community in resolving the longstanding conflict between Palestinians and Israelis?

And most importantly for me -- how does one today define an organization that has evolved so much since its inception?

• Firstly, Hamas is clearly a national liberation movement that has at it roots a "resistance" outlook. It's focus is the liberation of Palestine from Israeli occupation, and the group's Islamist character complements rather than competes with Hamas' political objectives.

• Secondly, Hamas' resistance of occupation is at the heart of its strategies -- be they efforts to reach out and engage, or to take up arms. The strategy may change with evolving regional and global realities, but the group's objectives stand firm.

In a nutshell: While the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority enables Israel to enjoy a pressure-free occupation, Hamas ensures that Israel's occupation remains always under pressure.

And so we come to this last leg of the US-brokered peace process. Ostensibly, under the internationally-sanctioned land-for-peace formula, a major goal of negotiations is to end Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands. So why then would Hamas not stand fully behind a peace process that sought to accomplish some of its very own goals? And why too would US mediators not invite the participation of a group that won the Palestinian popular vote in their last elections?

Here is what Khaled Meshaal had to say about the prospects and challenges of peace, and where we find ourselves at this moment, on the eve of direct peace talks:
SN: The peace process has been going on for 19 years -- what in your view has been the major reason for its failure thus far?

KM: Three reasons. First of all, Israel does not want peace. They talk about peace but they are not ready to pay the price of peace. The second reason is that the Palestinian negotiator does not have strong cards in his hand to push the peace process forward. The third reason is that the international community does not have the capability or the desire to push Israel towards peace.

SN: On Thursday, direct talks begin again between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel -- the US has worked hard to bring this about. What are your thoughts on this round, the US' role and prospects for a breakthrough?

KM: These negotiations are taking place for American and Israeli considerations, calculations and interests only. There are no interests at all for us as Palestinians or Arabs. That's why the negotiations can only be conducted under American orders, threats and pressure exerted on the PA and some Arab countries.

The negotiations are neither supported nationally nor are they perceived as legitimate by the authoritative Palestinian institutions. They are rejected by most of the Palestinian factions, powers, personalities, elites, and regular people -- that is why these "peace talks" are destined for failure.

This represents a perfect example of how the US administration deals with the Arab-Israeli conflict -- how American policy appears to be based on temporary troubleshooting instead of working toward finding a real and lasting solution.

Consecutive US administrations have adopted this same policy of "managing conflict" instead of "resolving conflict." This can be useful for American tactical and short-term purposes, but it is very dangerous on the long-term and the strategic levels. This approach will ultimately prove catastrophic for the region.
SN: There is debate about whether Hamas accepts the premise of a two-state solution -- your language seems often vague and heavily nuanced. I want to ask if you could clarify, but I am also curious as to whether it is even worth accepting a two-state solution today when there has been so much land confiscation and settlement activity by Israel in the West Bank and East Jerusalem?

KM: Hamas does accept a Palestinian state on the lines of 1967 -- and does not accept the two-state solution.
SN: What is the difference between the two?

KM: There is big difference between these two. I am a Palestinian. I am a Palestinian leader. I am concerned with accomplishing what the Palestinian people are looking for -- which is to get rid of the occupation, attain liberation and freedom, and establish the Palestinian state on the lines of 1967. Talking about Israel is not relevant to me -- I am not concerned about it. It is an occupying state, and I am the victim. I am the victim of the occupation; I am not concerned with giving legitimacy to this occupying country. The international community can deal with this (Israeli) state; I am concerned with the Palestinian people. I am as a Palestinian concerned with establishing the Palestinian state only.
SN: Can you clarify further? As a Palestinian leader of the Resistance you have to give people an idea of what you aspire to -- and how you expect to attain it?

KM: For us, the 20 years of experience with these peace negotiations -- and the failure of it -- very much convinces us today that the legitimate rights of Palestinians will be only be gained by snatching them, not by being gifted with them at the negotiating table. Neither Netanyahu nor any other Israeli leader will ever simply gift us a Palestinian state. The Palestinian Authority has watered down all its demands and is merely asking for a frame of reference to the 1967 borders in negotiations, but Netanyahu has repeatedly refused to accept even this most basic premise for peace. Nor will America or the international community gift us with a state -- we have to depend on ourselves and help ourselves.

As a Palestinian leader, I tell my people that the Palestinian state and Palestinian rights will not be accomplished through this peace process -- but it will be accomplished by force, and it will be accomplished by resistance. I tell them that through this bitter experience of long negotiations with the Israelis, we got nothing -- we could not even get the 1967 solution. I tell them the only option in front of us today is to take this by force and by resistance. And the Palestinian people today realize this -- yes, it has a steep price, but there is no other option for the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people tried the peace process option but the result was nothing.
SN: While Hamas has not been a participant in the peace process, many of the Arab nations have pushed for these very negotiations. So then why have they persisted with these talks if most of them think the process is futile?

KM: This bloc (of Arab nations) which has pursued the peace process strategy with Israel is ready to continue with habitual and continuous negotiations without even a single outcome. They will continue with this peace process with Israel because they are not ready to turn to the other option.
SN: And the other option is?

KM: The confrontation of Israel. The other option is resistance -- which will gain the strong cards to pressurize Israel. In short, a weak party (this Arab bloc) will adopt a course of action though he knows that he will see no positive outcome, as he does not have his own strength and has no strong cards. At the same time there is also a great pressure on The Resistance from America and Israel in order to prevent our success. If the peace process is blocked without hope, there is no option for the Palestinian people -- for the people of the region -- but the option of continuing with resistance, even though they realize the pressure that will come, and even though they realize there is a conspiracy against The Resistance.
SN: Well one of these Arab nations that keeps pushing for the peace process is Egypt. Egypt is also a party to the siege of Gaza. And yet Hamas accepts the decision of the Arab League to choose Egypt to mediate reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas. Why did Hamas accept Egypt as a mediator?

KM: There is no doubt we have differences with Egypt regarding many of its political positions and decisions. But the reasons for Egypt's mediation of reconciliation talks are different. The first is that Egypt is a major country in the region -- it is not easy for other nations to just bypass them on any issue. The second reason goes back to geopolitics and the history between Palestine and Egypt, which make Egypt more vested in the Palestinian issue than virtually any other country.

The third reason is that the reconciliation itself consists of two parties -- Hamas and Fatah. No mediator in this reconciliation effort will succeed unless both groups agree to their participation. Fatah simply refuses the intervention of any other Arab country as this will anger Egypt. We in Hamas do not refuse Egypt as the caretaker for the mediation -- what is important for us is not whether we have X or Y as the mediator, what is important to us is that reconciliation itself has to be advanced in a correct way. And it was evident in the last round that the main impediment to this reconciliation is American interference.
SN: But then does reconciliation become impossible if Egyptians always cave to US pressure?

KM: Yes, there is an American pressure where Egypt is concerned. Mahmoud Abbas is also acquiescing to that same pressure and this undoubtedly makes the reconciliation more difficult.

SN: Why, in your view, does the West not engage directly with Hamas and make you a partner to the solution? Surely the only path to a comprehensive peace is a solution agreed upon by all major parties to a conflict?

KM: The West is trying -- either because it lacks the capability or desire -- to get somewhere in the region through pressuring the Palestinian side, and not pressuring the Israeli side. The Americans are still convinced today that if they continue pressuring the Palestinian and Arab negotiators -- and not get Israel angry -- they can reach some breakthrough through this process. The time is coming when they will reach a dead-end because the Palestinian people will simply not agree to any solution which will not provide for all their legitimate rights.
SN: Well some Palestinians would. It appears that the Palestinian Authority is prepared to strike a deal that does not address the Palestinian refugees' right of return. But could that be a real solution?

KM: I am talking about a majority of Palestinians -- not the few. The Palestinian Authority cannot reach a solution with the Israelis without the approval of the majority. Any rightful representatives of the people will advocate for, and not disregard, the Palestinian people's ambitions and legitimate rights. In short, the West will discover sooner or later that any solution that will not fulfill the rights of the Palestinian people will not be successful and will not be implemented. In that very particular instance, when they finally decide to respect the desires and ambitions of the Palestinian people, they will decide to engage with the Hamas movement.

To clarify... though we are open to them, the key for the success of any solution is not through the West or the Americans -- we believe that the key to success will come through pursuing our national rights. The change will be made from within the region -- whether America is satisfied or not -- because anyone who is awaiting change from the West today will not get any change.
SN: There are rumors that Hamas has been secretly talking to US officials for about two years -- is there any truth to this?

KM: We don't have any interest in concealing official meetings if they take place. Essentially speaking, there are no official or direct talks with the US administration, except for some meetings that happened at the side of some conference in Doha with low-profile individuals, and we do not consider these direct or official talks with the administration.

But we do consider some of these meetings as indirect talks -- we know very well that some non-US officials we meet with report to the administration. And yes, we have met some former Democrat and Republican officials, and we know that they too report to the administration. We are interested in meeting with the Americans and the West, but we do not beg for these meetings and we are not in a hurry.

In Part 2 of the interview, to be published shortly, Meshaal will talk about the shifting priorities of a "new" Middle East, the "Resistance Bloc," Netanyahu, Iran -- and answers a curious personal question from an unnamed CENTCOM official.

* Sharmine Narwani is a commentary writer and political analyst covering the Middle East, and a Senior Associate at St. Antony's College, Oxford University. She has a Master of International Affairs degree from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs in both journalism and Mideast studies.

Source: Huffington Post

Khaled Meshal, the head of Hamas Political Bureau

By Henry Siegman* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Introduction

Failed bilateral talks over these past 16 years have shown that a Middle East peace accord can never be reached by the parties themselves. Israeli governments believe they can defy international condemnation of their illegal colonial project in the West Bank because they can count on the US to oppose international sanctions.

Bilateral talks that are not framed by US-formulated parameters (based on Security Council resolutions, the Oslo accords, the Arab Peace Initiative, the "road map" and other previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements) cannot succeed.

Israel's government believes that the US Congress will not permit an American president to issue such parameters and demand their acceptance. What hope there is for the bilateral talks that resume in Washington DC on September 2 depends entirely on President Obama proving that belief to be wrong, and on whether the "bridging proposals" he has promised, should the talks reach an impasse, are a euphemism for the submission of American parameters. Such a US initiative must offer Israel iron-clad assurances for its security within its pre-1967 borders, but at the same time must make it clear these assurances are not available if Israel insists on denying Palestinians a viable and sovereign state in the West Bank and Gaza.

This paper focuses on the other major obstacle to a permanent status agreement: the absence of an effective Palestinian interlocutor. Addressing Hamas' legitimate grievances - and as noted in a recent CENTCOM report, Hamas has legitimate grievances - could lead to its return to a Palestinian coalition government that would provide Israel with a credible peace partner. If that outreach fails because of Hamas' rejectionism, the organization's ability to prevent a reasonable accord negotiated by other Palestinian political parties will have been significantly impeded.

If the Obama administration will not lead an international initiative to define the parameters of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement and actively promote Palestinian political reconciliation, Europe must do so, and hope America will follow. Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet that can guarantee the goal of "two states living side by side in peace and security." But President Obama's present course absolutely precludes it.

Road to nowhere

Peace talks at an impasse

The Obama administration has reversed the trajectory of previous administrations' engagement with the Middle East peace process. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush avoided dealing with the issue in the early stages of their presidency. President Clinton pursued a peace agreement far more seriously than did President Bush, but not until the closing days of his second term. By contrast, President Obama addressed the issue aggressively virtually the day after he took his oath of office. He appointed Senator Mitchell his personal Middle East peace envoy, delivered a historic speech to the Arab and Muslim world in Cairo, and presented Netanyahu's government the toughest demand for a freeze on all further Israeli settlement enlargement in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem ever made by any US administration - and all within the first year of the first term of his presidency.

But it has been all downhill since. The settlement freeze Prime Minister Netanyahu agreed to turned out to be a sham, the proximity talks a monumental waste of time. President Obama's most recent encounter with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on July 6, at which he felt constrained to express admiration for the seriousness of the commitment to a two-state solution of a man who has shown nothing but disdain for the idea, has triggered despair throughout the region deeper than was experienced during the disengaged Bush administration.

Bilateral talks cannot succeed
The US administration has announced the launching of direct talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) and that the parties have agreed to place a one-year limit on these talks. But nothing much beyond spin to sustain the illusion of continued American "engagement" can be expected from this administration until at least after the November congressional elections, if then. That interregnum provides time for a reconsideration of this administration's Middle East peace strategies that have been undone with humiliating ease by Netanyahu at every turn.

Such a reconsideration must begin with a rejection of the notion that a Middle East peace accord can ever be reached by the parties themselves, with the US role limited to "facilitation." Failed bilateral talks over these past 16 years have shown that left to their own devices, negotiations between Israeli governments - that believe resorting to overwhelming military power is the solution to every political and security challenge - and a powerless Palestinian adversary can only result in the enlargement and completion of Israel's colonial project in the West Bank, notwithstanding American "facilitation," or "bridging proposals," as this administration prefers to call it. Bilateral talks that are not framed by US- formulated parameters (based on Security Council resolutions, the Oslo accords, the Arab Peace Initiative, the "road map" and other previous Israeli- Palestinian agreements) cannot succeed.

A two-state solution will remain beyond everyone's reach because even the most hardline Israeli governments are convinced that the US Congress will not permit an American president to issue such parameters and demand their acceptance by Israel. Israeli governments believe they can defy international condemnations of their colonial project in the West Bank because they can count on the US to oppose international measures that would sanction their illegal behaviour.

If it is to succeed, a US effort to rescue the two- state option must be prepared to offer Israel iron- clad assurances for its security within its pre-1967 borders, but at the same time make it clear that such assurances are not available if Israel insists on denying Palestinians a viable and sovereign state in the West Bank and Gaza.

Credible Palestinian partner lacking
Which brings us to the other major obstacle to a permanent status agreement - the absence of an effective Palestinian interlocutor, due to the bitter internecine divisions between Fatah and Hamas, divisions that have been fostered and deepened by US and European support for Israel's determination to exclude Hamas from Palestinian political life and to bring about its demise. It should be clear by now that this policy has only strengthened Hamas, and that it has retained the ability to torpedo any Israeli- Palestinian peace agreement it is not party to.

This view, shared by virtually every Middle Eastern political and security expert, was expressed concisely as the conclusion of a recent essay on the subject in Foreign Affairs: "Hamas is here to stay. Refusing to deal with it will only make the situation worse: Palestinian moderates will become weaker, and Hamas will grow stronger. If the Obama administration is to move its plans for peace forward, the challenge of Hamas has to be met first."¹

As argued in this paper, a more balanced approach to Hamas, addressing legitimate grievances, could lead to its return to a Palestinian coalition government that would provide Israel with a credible peace partner. If that outreach fails because of Hamas' rejectionism, its ability to prevent a reasonable accord negotiated by other Palestinian political parties will have been seriously undermined.

The misreading of Hamas

Hamas' democratic mandate
Mahmoud Abbas's rule does not extend much beyond Ramallah. Although Fatah was unopposed by Hamas (or by any other organized political party) in the local West Bank elections of July 17, the party is so dysfunctional and unpopular that its candidates were in danger of losing to local unaffiliated candidates, causing Abbas to call off the elections at the last moment. By contrast, Hamas is not only the effective ruler of Gaza, but the only political party that received a democratic mandate for its rule from the Palestinian electorate in the 2006 election that rejected Fatah.

The Oslo accords declared Gaza to be an inseparable part of Palestine, and obliged Israel to provide an unobstructed territorial connection linking Gaza to the West Bank. That provision was reinforced by a formal Israeli-Palestinian agreement (the Agreement on Movement and Access) in 2005 for the free movement of people and goods between these two areas, brokered by James Wolfensohn, then secretary of state Condoleezza Rice's special envoy for Gaza disengagement, an obligation Israel violated even before the ink on the document dried.²

Hamas was denied its electoral mandate and excluded from the West Bank because Fatah conspired with Israel's government and the Bush administration to carry out a putsch by Mohammed Dahlan's militia forces in Gaza to overthrow Hamas. The attempted putsch was pre-empted by Hamas in a bloody manner.³ But the way Dahlan's forces had previously dealt with Hamas' members that it had imprisoned (or the way Abbas' Fatah has dealt with them in the West Bank since) should not leave anyone with false illusions about the treatment that awaited Hamas had Dahlan's putsch succeeded.

Hamas' obsolete charter
But can Hamas be engaged by Israel, or by the US, while it adheres to a charter that is racist and anti- Semitic, and explicitly commits the organization to the violent expulsion of Jews within Israel's internationally recognized pre-1967 borders?

While the government of Israel does not have a charter promising the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and the confiscation of their land, it has been doing exactly that - regularly and systematically. These confiscations and expulsions began even before Hamas existed, yet no one in the West demanded Israel be quarantined, or even that it be denied continued massive American financial and military assistance.

More to the point, Hamas has made it abundantly clear that its charter - like the PLO's charter which Arafat famously dismissed in 1989 as "caduque" (obsolete, expired) well before it was formally annulled - no longer represents Hamas' ideology. Its various proposals for a long-term hudna (ceasefire) with Israel, if it were to agree to a Palestinian state within the pre-1967 borders, clearly contradict its charter.

A more direct repudiation of the charter's anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic diatribe came from Khaled Meshal, the head of Hamas' political bureau, in an interview conducted by the Jordanian Arabic-language newspaper Al-Sabeel in July (translated into English by the Afro-Middle East Centre in South Africa).⁴

Meshal was asked whether Hamas' resistance was directed "against Zionists as Jews or as occupiers." Meshal replied, "resistance and military confrontation with the Israelis was caused by occupation, aggression, and crimes committed against the Palestinian people, not because of differences in religion or belief." He said that although "religion is a cornerstone to our lives ... we do not make of religion a force for engendering hatred, nor a cause or a pretext for harming or assaulting others, or grabbing what is not ours, or encroaching on the rights of others" - referring, of course, to the Israeli settlers' invocation of the Bible to justify the theft of Palestinian land in the West Bank.

Contrast this to the declarations of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, a former Chief Rabbi of Israel and the leader of the most important Orthodox political party in Israel, during a recent Sabbath sermon: "Abu Mazen and all these evil people should perish from the world. God should strike them with a plague, them and these Palestinians." In a previous sermon in 2001, he told his followers: "It is forbidden to be merciful to [the Arabs]. You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and damnable."

Not a single member of Israel's cabinet condemned Rabbi Ovadia Yosef for these pronouncements.

Recognising Israel
At a press conference in April 2008, Meshal stated that within the context of a Palestinian coalition government of which it was a part, Hamas would authorize Abbas as president of the Palestinian Authority to conduct peace negotiations with Israel. If an accord were reached, he said, Hamas would agree to have it submitted to a Palestinian referendum and, if approved, would abide by the outcome even if Hamas itself were opposed to the accord.⁵ (This arrangement was also part of the agreement reached in Mecca for a Hamas-Fatah unity government that fell apart.)

Shortly after the press conference I told Usama Hamdan, a leading member of Hamas' political bureau, that a Palestinian government cannot sign a peace agreement with Israel and still maintain that it does not recognize it. Hamdan agreed, and told me that Meshal agreed as well. He noted that since state- to-state recognition is a governmental responsibility, not a function of individual political parties, Hamas' refusal to recognize Israel does not prevent a government of which Hamas is a part from granting that recognition. He noted that Israeli governments - including the current one, whose prime minister claims to want a two-state solution - have included political parties that oppose Palestinian statehood, and no one has suggested this disqualifies these governments as partners for peace negotiations, or made them candidates for sanctions of the kind imposed on Hamas.

Israeli contradictions
Israel's government undoubtedly rejects that distinction between political parties and governments as sophistry, and considers those who advance it as peddling pro-Hamas propaganda. But it is a distinction that Netanyahu himself must invoke to explain the contradiction between his declared acceptance of a two-state solution and the formal opposition to a Palestinian state of his own Likud Party.

Indeed, not long after Netanyahu made that two-state declaration, most of his cabinet ministers formed a parliamentary caucus in Israel's Knesset, called the Land of Israel Caucus, whose goal it is to defeat their own government's effort to allow a Palestinian state in any part of Palestine in the unlikely event it were to try to do so. (It is not difficult to imagine how Netanyahu would have reacted to a "moderate" Palestinian government made up of parties dedicated to the denial of Israeli statehood.)

More recently, in a TV interview with Charlie Rose, Khaled Meshal stated that Hamas will end its resistance activities when Israel ends its occupation and accepts a Palestinian state within the pre-1967 border. This reverses Hamas' previous commitment to a struggle to recover all of Palestine. Israelis and their supporters in the US ridicule anyone who credits such statements, pointing out that in that same interview Meshal insisted on the Palestinian refugees' "right of return," which he knows no Israeli government will accept.⁶

Apparently they expect Hamas to concede that right - one that Abbas and Fatah also demand - before negotiations have begun. But they do not similarly ridicule Netanyahu's declared support for a two-state solution even when he attaches conditions everyone knows no Palestinian leader would ever accept. Defenders of Netanyahu insist he must be left with negotiating room for the compromises he will have to make, but apparently believe Palestinians do not deserve that same consideration.

It is this feigned Israeli ridicule of any Arab opening towards Israel that sank King Abdullah's peace initiative of 2002 offering to normalize the relations of all Arab states with Israel; "feigned," because it is not scepticism of Arab seriousness that is behind Israeli leaders' dismissal of Palestinian or Arab states' outreach to them, but the fear that it may be sincere, and would therefore compel serious Israeli responses that would expose Israel's real positions on final status.

That exposure is something Netanyahu has so far refused to risk, for it would prove that the territorial and security constraints he intends to impose on Palestinian sovereignty amount to a continuation of Israel's occupation under some other name. It was Netanyahu's refusal to provide that information to Obama when they met at the White House on March 23 that precipitated the crisis in Israeli-US relations that Obama sought to diffuse so humiliatingly at their meeting of July 6.

Hamas - pragmatic and opportunistic
But it is not only Israel that has ignored significant changes in Hamas. The United States and Europe have done so as well, insisting that Hamas must first accept conditions for engagement designed by Israel expressly to preclude the possibility of their acceptance. There is no reason for the US to continue to support these conditions. Obama has not imposed similar conditions for talks with the Taliban. To the contrary: he is encouraging the return of the Taliban to a coalition government with President Hamid Karzai even as they are killing American forces and Afghan civilians. Is the Taliban's ideology more congenial to Obama than that of Hamas, many of whose leaders and adherents are university graduates, and who encourage rather than forbid and punish the education of their daughters?

Questioned by his interviewer in Al-Sabeel about the "marginalisation of women's role in political and social life," Meshal stated that this marginalisation "does not come from the text and spirit of the Sharia," but is the result of "cultural backwardness." He declared that Hamas will not allow "the ages of backwardness or the weight of social norms and traditions that stem from the environment rather than the religious text" to distort Islamic concepts, "especially since the environment of Palestine is not a closed one but a historically civilized one, enjoying plurality and openness to all religions, civilizations and cultures."

A recent report⁷ revealed that the view that US policy towards Hamas is based on a serious misreading of the movement is shared by senior intelligence officials at US Central Command - CENTCOM. In a confidential report to CENTCOM's commander, General David Petraeus, these intelligence officials questioned the current US policy of isolating and marginalizing Hamas and Hizbullah, and urged that Washington instead encourage them to integrate with their respective political mainstreams. They reject Israel's view that Hamas is incapable of change and must be confronted with force. They maintain Hamas is pragmatic and opportunistic, and that failing to recognize its grievances will result in our continuing failure to get it to moderate its behaviour.

At the heart of Hamas' grievances is the double standard that Israel, the US and Europe apply to the entire range of issues the peace talks are intended to resolve. Hamas' leadership maintains that what distinguishes its movement from Fatah is its refusal to swallow this hypocrisy. It insists on absolute reciprocity, especially with respect to the Quartet's three conditions for removing the political quarantine against it. These conditions require Hamas to recognize the State of Israel, accept all previous agreements with Israel, and renounce violence. Yet these three obligations - every one of them - have been regularly ignored and violated by Netanyahu and preceding Israeli governments.

Settlements violate agreements
While insisting on Hamas' recognition of Israel (a requirement to which Netanyahu has added the demand that Palestinians also declare Israel the legitimate national home of the Jewish people), Israeli governments have refused to affirm a Palestinian right to statehood anywhere within Palestine's borders. That right has been rejected not only rhetorically but by the creation of so-called "facts on the ground," ie, Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and in the West Bank, intended to prevent a Palestinian state from ever coming into being.

The argument that the settlements are necessary to assure territorial adjustments required for Israel's security has no credibility. The settlement enterprise long ago exceeded the most expansively defined Israeli security needs. It was not Israel's Peace Now but former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert who, while still in office, ridiculed such claims. Olmert said that for Israel's military and security establishments, "it's all about tanks and land and controlling territories and controlled territories (sic) and this hilltop and that hilltop. All these things are worthless." He added, "Who thinks seriously that if we sit on another hilltop, on another hundred meters, that this is what will make the difference for the State of Israel's basic security?"⁸

Palestinian rights not recognised by Israel
Netanyahu's acceptance of a two-state solution, which has not been taken seriously by anyone in Israel, is not based on his recognition of the Palestinian right to national self-determination. Netanyahu led the successful opposition to Ariel Sharon's effort in 2002 to prevent the Likud's executive committee from declaring its rejection of a Palestinian state, thus precipitating Sharon's departure from the Likud to the newly-formed Kadima party.

As long as Israel's government refuses to delineate its borders and to recognize the right of Palestinians to a state of their own east of the 1967 lines, Hamas will reject demands that a Palestinian state of which it is a part recognise Israel. As noted above, Netanyahu refused to indicate his government's definition of Israel's borders even in the privacy of his meeting with President Obama at the White House on March 23.

The second Quartet condition is that Hamas abide by all previous Israeli-Palestinian accords. Clearly, neither President Obama nor the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, believe Israel has abided by this obligation, or they would not have demanded that Israel halt all further settlement expansion in East Jerusalem and in the West Bank. Israel's violations of previous accords have not been limited to borders and settlements, but include the "road map" and the Oslo accords' provisions that the future status of Jerusalem can be determined only by agreement between the parties, not by unilateral fiat, as Netanyahu's government seeks to do.

Non-violent alternative lacking
As to the third condition, renunciation of violence, Israel again is as much in violation of that requirement as is Hamas. On virtually every Israeli measure whose legality has been challenged by the Palestinians - eg, the confiscations of Palestinian territory for Jewish settlements, the expulsion of Palestinians from East Jerusalem, the demolition of Palestinian homes and the construction of a security fence on Palestinian territory - Israel has prevailed because of its unrestrained resort to violence to subdue or eliminate Palestinians who stand in the way.

As a sovereign state, Israel enjoys a monopoly on the use of violence, but only within its own borders. It has no greater claim to a right to resort to violence to implement measures - such as the transfer of its own population to territories under occupation - that are clear violations of international law, than does its subject population.

It is not reasonable, to say the least, to expect that Palestinians would renounce violence and rely instead on their occupiers - who covet their land and are frantically settling their own population on it - to serve as judge and jury of their grievances. The demand that they renounce violence without being provided a credible non-violent alternative, such as a third-party monitoring authority that is empowered to adjudicate grievances from both sides, is neither defensible nor implementable.

Hamas' religious agenda
What surprises about Hamas' rule in Gaza is not the visible increase in public religiosity - some of it undoubtedly out of fear of Hamas' authorities - but Hamas' relative restraint in imposing such religious behaviour on Gaza's population, especially when compared to certain other Islamic regimes in the region.

That restraint, and Hamas' formal commitment to democratic governance notwithstanding, there is no greater danger to democracy - or to any kind of civilized existence - than the toxic combination of religious zealotry and xenophobic nationalism. That holds as much for Israel as for Islamic movements and regimes. When the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) prepared their onslaught on Gaza, the chief chaplain distributed to the soldiers religious literature authored by nationalist rabbis from the settler community, instructing them that Palestinians must be considered descendants of the Biblical enemy of the ancient Israelites, the Amalekites, whom God wants utterly destroyed. The pamphlet stated it is a sin to show compassion towards Palestinian civilians, including children. What impact that "religious" literature had on the appalling disproportion of Palestinian civilian casualties in that operation, including large numbers of Gaza's children, we will probably never know.

Hamas not an al-Qaeda proxy
Israel would like the world to believe that Hamas is nothing other than a terrorist enterprise, and that Hamas' "resistance" is in the service of a global Salafist effort to defeat the West and restore an Islamic caliphate. That is a lie intended to place Israel in the vanguard of a Western war on "global terrorism", in order to justify its demand that the West make allowances for the illegal measures it claims it must resort to if the terrorists are to be defeated.

In fact, Hamas does not share al-Qaeda's goals, or its hostility to the West and the US. It has consistently rejected al-Qaeda's urgings that it target American and Western interests, limiting itself instead to the Palestinian national struggle, for which it would like American and European support, understanding how critical that support is to the achievement of Palestinian national aspirations. Opposition from more extreme anti-Western jihadist factions and would-be al-Qaeda supporters within Gaza has been brutally put down by Hamas, for ideological reasons no less than the threat these factions pose to Hamas' hegemony.

In his interview in Al-Sabeel, Meshal rejected violence for its own sake, or as dictated by ideology or religion. He argued violence may be necessary for pragmatic reasons, because "negotiations and peace require a balance of power, for peace cannot be made when one party is powerful and the other weak; otherwise this will be surrender." Those who are forced to negotiate out of weakness and on terms that disadvantage their rights "are the ones that will pay the price of the negotiations," he said.

Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. Like its parent body, it has little in common with a Salafist purism that calls for a literalistic Islam insulated from modernity and from a modernizing pragmatism that seeks to adapt Islam to the modern world.⁹ Predictions of its likely behaviour when Palestinian statehood will have been achieved can no more be based on its behaviour during a revolutionary struggle against a powerful occupier than the Yishuv's¹⁰ resort to terror during its pre-state struggle was an indication of its comportment after the founding of the state.

Jewish terror
The targeting of Arab civilians by Jewish terror groups in the 1930s is documented in painful detail by Benny Morris, Israel's leading chronicler of the Jewish struggle for a homeland in Palestine. In Righteous Victims, Morris writes that the upsurge of Arab terrorism in 1937 "triggered a wave of Irgun bombings against Arab crowds and buses, introducing a new dimension to the conflict." While in the past Arabs had "sniped at cars and pedestrians and occasionally lobbed a grenade, often killing or injuring a few bystanders or passengers," now "for the first time, massive bombs were placed in crowded Arab centers, and dozens of people were indiscriminately murdered and maimed." Morris notes that "this 'innovation' soon found Arab imitators."¹¹

That there may also have been yet untold Israeli violations of international law well after the establishment of the state too incriminating to be revealed seems evident from Netanyahu's recent decision to restrict access to government archives on subjects that include, according to a Haaretz editorial entitled "A state afraid of its past,"¹² expulsions and massacres of Arabs during and following Israel's War of Independence.

Zionist terrorism does not condone Hamas' terrorism. But its history serves to make two points: the inevitability of such abuses when non-violent paths to the achievement of legitimate national goals are denied, and the fallacy of the Israeli claim that a state that comes into existence by terrorist means must inevitably become a terrorist state. The leaders of the two major pre-state Zionist terror organizations, Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin, became prime ministers of what Israelis like to believe is "the only democracy in the Middle East." (Not that there are many other democracies in the region, but Israeli democracy increasingly stands on the most fragile of foundations.)

The Israeli charge that, unlike the Zionists who abandoned past excesses once they achieved statehood, Hamas continued its terror assaults on Israel even after Prime Minister Sharon withdrew every Jewish settlement and settler from Gaza is disingenuous. The dishonesty of that comparison lies in its implication that with the withdrawal from Gaza, Palestinians achieved their goal of statehood and independence in a part of Palestine.

Not only the West Bank, but Gaza has remained under Israel's occupation, for it has been surrounded by the IDF on land, sea and air, and subjected to an Israeli campaign of de-development that has completely devastated what had remained of Gaza's economy. The stability that Hamas has achieved in Gaza despite Israel's relentless efforts to bring it down is at least as impressive as what the Palestinian Authority (PA) has achieved in the West Bank, given the vast European and American resources endlessly poured into the PA's treasury.¹³

Breaking the stalemate

Political Islam cannot be ignored
Having decided to join the Palestinian political process in 2005 and won a free and fair democratic election (the first in the Arab Middle East) in 2006, Hamas is surely as legitimate a stakeholder in the Israel-Palestine conflict as is Fatah, the party that lost that election. A peace accord that ignores legitimate stakeholders cannot hope to succeed. But there are fundamental reasons for changing Israeli and US policy towards Hamas that go well beyond Hamas' capacity to prevent a peace accord reached only with Abbas.

Political Islam has emerged as the dominant religious, cultural and political movement in the Arab world and in much of the larger Islamic world. Most Muslim governments recognize this reality and have come to realize that competition with political Islam "can neither be suppressed nor ignored."¹⁴ Israel is a Middle Eastern country, and cannot expect to achieve security by conducting an endless war against political Islam. Its misguided effort to do so is not a sustainable national policy.

If the unresolved Israel-Arab conflict is not to bring the region to more radical instability and deeper conflict that will inevitably exact a heavy price from America as well, the Obama administration must lead an international initiative to define the parameters of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement and actively promote Palestinian political reconciliation. If Obama cannot provide that leadership, Europe must do so, and hope America will at least follow. Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet - not even American-sponsored parameters - that can guarantee the goal of "two states living side by side in peace and security." But President Obama's present course absolutely precludes it.

* Henry Siegman is president of the US/Middle East Project (USMEP), an independent policy institute. He is also a research professor at the Sir Joseph Hotung Middle East Programme of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Mr. Siegman has published extensively on the Middle East peace process and has been consulted by governments, international agencies, and non-governmental organizations. Major studies directed by Mr. Siegman for the Council on Foreign Relations include Harnessing trade for development and growth in the Middle East (2002), and Strengthening Palestinian public institutions (1999), conducted on behalf of the European Commission and the government of Norway. In 2002, he directed a study commissioned by the US Department of State and the US National Intelligence Council on the implications of "viability" for Palestinian statehood.

1. Daniel Byman, "How to Handle Hamas", Foreign Affairs, vol 85, no. 5, September/October 2010,
http://sabbah.in/cAe7gj , accessed 31 August 2010.

2. Shahar Smooha, interview with James Wolfensohn, "All the dreams we had are now gone", Ha'aretz, 19 July 2007, http://sabbah.in/aMRnZX , acccessed 21 August 2010.

3. David Rose, "The Gaza Bombshell", Vanity Fair, April 2008, http://sabbah.in/a55MCL , accessed 21 August 2010.

4. Afro-Middle East Centre, "Hamas' Meshal lays out new policy direction", 30 August 2010, http://sabbah.in/cr8GCc , accessed 30 August 2010.

5. Barak Ravid, "Meshal offers 10-year truce for Palestinian state on '67 borders", Ha'aretz, http://sabbah.in/bb21v0 , accessed 21 August 2010.

6. Charlie Rose, transcript of interview with Khaled Me- shal, 28 May 2010, http://sabbah.in/bUzAOn , accessed 21 August 2010.

7. Mark Perry, "Red Team", Foreign Policy, 30 June 2010, http://sabbah.in/bufmrQ , accessed 21 August 2010.

8. Ethan Bronner, "Olmert says Israel should pull out of West Bank", New York Times, 28 September 2008, http://sabbah.in/ajJ46D , accessed 21 August 2010.

9. Marc Lynch, "Veiled truths: the rise of political Islam in the West", Foreign Affairs, July/August 2010, http://sabbah.in/clMfgb , accessed 21 August 2010.

10. The pre-state Jewish community.

11. Benny Morris, Righteous victims: a history of the Zionist-Arab conflict, 1881-2001, Vintage Books, 2001, p 147.

12. "A state afraid of its past", Haaretz editorial, 29 July 2010, http://sabbah.in/bbMj7q , accessed 21 August.

13. Yezid Sayigh, "Hamas rule in Gaza: three years on", Middle East Brief 41, March 2010, Crown Center for Middle East Stud- ies, Brandeis University, http://sabbah.in/b3k4ln , accessed 21 August 2010; Nathan Brown, "Are Palestinians building a state?", Carnegie Endow- ment for International Peace, June 2010, http://sabbah.in/9U9LJ6 , accessed 21 August 2010.

14. Ian S. Lustick, "Israel could benefit from Hamas", Forbes magazine, 17 June 2010, http://sabbah.in/cCy3Di , accessed 21 August 2010.

Source: Norwegian Peacebuilding Centre (PDF)

(Toronto and Montreal, Aug 19, 2010) - Canada's Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) got the message across last week that cutting off mail delivery to Gaza is another abusive measure intended to heighten the suffering and hardship of the besieged residents of the occupied strip.

The Canadaian Boat to Gaza Campaign salutes the union and its workers for their solidarity with our campaign and with the Palestinian people in their struggle for freedom. We look forward to working with Canada Post and CUPW to facilitate in the best way possible the delivery of mail to Gaza.

"The Canadian Boat to Gaza is eager to carry mail to Gaza if the ban is not lifted soon" said Sandra Ruch, spokesperson for the Canadian Boat to Gaza. "We will make every effort to deliver any mail we get to the postal authorities in Gaza. We ask senders to limit mail they send us to unsealed postcards of greeting and support to loved ones keeping in mind that it, as well as the rest of our cargo, may end up in Israeli hands if our boat is pirated."

CUPW called on Canadians to back efforts to break the siege by sending their Gaza-bound mail via the Canadian Boat to Gaza. The Canadian Boat to Gaza is urging those who wish to break this ban to send with us postcards with messages of support to the besieged strip. Article 25 of the fourth Geneva Convention guarantees the right to personal correspondence with family members under occupation.

"As postal workers, we know very well that cutting off mail creates suffering and hardship for people, who are isolated from their loved ones," said Denis Lemelin, National President of CUPW. "How many more abuses will the people of Gaza have to endure?"

Get the message through. Send your mail with us,
Send your postcards (only) for people in Gaza to
Canadian Boat to Gaza
C.P. 92087, Portobello
Brossard, Quebec
J4W 3K8

Media Contact
Ehab Lotayef
514.941.9792

Stéphan Corriveau
514 586-6810

http://canadaboatgaza.org

By Stuart Littlewood* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

In the five years since I became interested in the Palestinians, only two things of positive note have happened in the occupied territories.

The Palestinians held full and fair elections in 2006 to establish themselves as a democracy - and much good it did them.

And in Gaza these amazing people have resolutely survived a vicious land and sea blockade imposed by Israel and aided and abetted by the Western powers as soon as those elections put Hamas into government. They have resisted almost daily air strikes and armed intrusions for four years and courageously withstood the cowardly Israeli blitzkrieg of 20 months ago.

And during all that time they have endured unending barbarity and betrayal, which would have brought a lesser nation to its knees. They have come through.

I often wonder if the British could have clung on through the London blitz, which my family lived under, if they'd had nothing to fight with and nowhere to run and, in addition, they'd had to contend with Nazi tanks in the streets, thousands of checkpoints, Nazi rifle butts smashing down their front doors, and the foul stench of Nazi stormtroopers in their jackboots ransacking their homes and dragging off family members.

Palestinians have been put through that sort of mangle for decades. Death and misery still stalk their daily lives thanks to piss-poor Palestinian leadership and the international community's moral bankruptcy.

When Palestinians elected Hamas, sore losers Fatah set out to cause maximum trouble. The relentless pressures of occupation and bribery succeed in causing internal divisions and self-destruction. When an attempted coup was beaten off there were claims that Hamas "seized control" when it simply acted to enforce its legitimate authority.

With Palestine's internal squabbles continuing - even now - Yasser Arafat would be spinning under his mausoleum slab if he could see the depths to which his party has sunk.

Meanwhile, Israel's propaganda machine, unchallenged, churns out the lies that Western politicians and Western media feed on and broadcast in order to sustain the racist entity.

"Impossible to reach agreement with Israel"

Khalid Amayreh, writing in Desert Peace, describes how the Palestinian Authority's President Mahmoud Abbas is being pressed yet again by Washington to resume "seemingly futile" peace talks, while two of Fatah's veteran heavyweights speak out against any more concessions to the Obama administration.

Ahmed Qurei, a one-time aide to Arafat and a former prime minister of the PA, argued that, in view of Israel's refusal to give up the spoils of the 1967 war, it was pointless to keep talking just for the sake of it. Nineteen years of talks had achieved nothing. "It seems utterly impossible to reach an agreement with Israel. Therefore, the Palestinian people must seek alternatives... Israel is not willing to end its occupation and allow for the creation of a viable Palestinian state."

He didn't say what the "alternatives" might be, which is a little unhelpful.

At the same time Nabil Amr, former Palestine Liberation Organization ambassador in Cairo, condemned the Abbas leadership as "vacillating, inconsistent, and unable to withstand external pressure". He also had harsh words for "the mantra of American pressure", which was designed to push the Palestinian people into submission or capitulation. "There are those among us who are trying to portray American pressure as if it were expedient to our interests," said Amr. Actually, Obama is no friend. He has become a coercer, even a bully, while Netanyahu is given a free hand to dictate the rules of the game.

OK, so not all Fatah people are useless.

But there's a gaping hole at the heart of the Palestinian Authority's battered credibility - quite apart from a sickening lack of integrity. It's their failure to understand that the war of words, if conducted effectively, is more important than the war of bullets. Israeli spin doctor Mark Regev and his team of lie-mongers would be easy meat for a Palestinian media outfit that was properly trained, alert and reasonably well resourced.

Alas, the Palestinian Authority refuses to gear up to meet the challenge. So the Israelis run rings round their victim - though not as much as they used to. The Zionist regime's "crapaganda" effort has been significantly blunted not by the Palestinian Authority, which remains paralytic, but the actions of student groups and other pro-Palestinian activists around the world, who are beginning to put the Israelis in their place.

It is hugely disappointing to friends and supporters that Ramallah's hot-shots have failed to put a coherent message across, supposing they actually had one. When I was writing my book (in 2006) I tried several times through London and Ramallah to arrange a meeting with Fatah bosses. They wouldn't even give me the time of day. They simply didn't care about communicating with the outside world. So I joined the growing multitude who wrote them off as a waste of space. Their antics since then have confirmed my assessment.

It is vitally important for Palestinian embassies in London and other key capitals to become a ready source of newsworthy material, and to proactively set the news agenda with spokespeople speaking clear and faultless English. Until this happens it will not be possible to engage the interest of mainstream media, and Palestinians will continue to lose the propaganda battle even though truth and justice are on their side.

Yes, we all know the British media are biased. But editors say they receive press releases from the London embassy "once in a blue moon", while the Israelis take the initiative on the news front and fall over backwards to make a reporter's life easy.

"We are not trained like the Israelis," I heard one senior PA man say. Exactly. That's the problem. The PA was offered media skills training some four years ago and turned it down. There may be murky reasons. It has been suggested that the PA, in its game of "footsie" with the US, was made to promise not to embarrass Israel publicly. This has given rise to suspicions that Palestinian ambassadors around the world are gagged by the regime in Ramallah and prevented from crossing swords with their blood-thirsty opponents. Why else would headquarters have left its London office, in particular, so woefully lacking in the skills and resources needed to make a proper impact at this important time?

I don't believe they are batting for Palestine at all. But that's just a personal opinion.

The wreckage of Gaza, the great suffering and the day-to-day air-strikes against its civilians - these ongoing crimes are allowed to be lost in the smoke and mirrors of Netanyahu's scheme to divert attention towards Iran.

Netanyahu briefs Western journalists on his outrageous programme of conquest, implying that Palestinians must accept settlements declared illegal under international law and insisting that Israeli "sovereignty" over Jerusalem cannot be questioned. The PA's media experts - if they had any - could make mincemeat of Israel's preposterous claims and reframe the occupation in a way that told the world the truth.

"A house divided cannot stand"

Ordinary working people from countries far away, who put their hands in their own pockets and bravely drove with Free-Gaza convoys or sailed with mercy-mission ships, have done far more for the Palestinian cause than the internationally-funded, natty-suited poseurs who have no democratic mandate but strut the international stage achieving - well, achieving what?

Fatah have done themselves (and others) irreparable damage. They have shot their bolt. How will they command respect in the foreseeable future?

Meanwhile, it is four-and-a-half years since the fateful day Hamas was elected to power. They may have been surprised and unprepared then, but there is no excuse for squandering such a heaven-sent opportunity now. If, as the Islamic resistance movement has said before, it is prepared to accept the reality of Israel behind the internationally-recognized pre-1967 borders, its much criticized Charter no longer has a place in Hamas diplomacy. Why hasn't it been consigned to the wastepaper basket of Palestinian history and replaced with something more constructive?

Hamas must do (within chosen limits, of course) whatever it takes to abolish its sinister image and make the rest of the world feel comfortable. It must erase its 'terrorist' reputation, whether justified or not.

It must remove obstacles to cooperation. It must take the wind out of Israel's and America's sails. In short, it must reinvent itself as a matter of urgency.

It must re-brand, open the door and make itself more approachable.

This wouldn't be difficult. Hamas's government team are well educated and competent. They have been tested like no other. Some are described as hardliners but they are not generally seen as Islamic extremists, and I heard no serious complaints from the Christian community when I was there. There is every reason to believe that the tradition of getting along together is still cherished despite the best efforts of "Christian" warmongers of the West to drive a wedge between Muslim and Christian.

It seems to me that if Western politicians can enthusiastically hobnob with rabid Zionists, ignore their war crimes and persistent lawlessness, and even wave the Israeli flag for them back in London and Washington, they should find it perfectly agreeable to sit down with not-so-rabid Islamists.

But how do we get to that point?

Two years ago a Palestine strategy group produced a report called "Regaining the Initiative - Palestinian Strategic Options to End Israeli Occupation" (PDF). Besides reminding Palestinians what their strategic objectives should be, it urged them "to seize their destiny in their own hands" by refusing to enter into peace negotiations unless the international community dealt first with issues relating to national self-determination, liberation from occupation, individual and collective rights, and enforcement of international law.

Only when these priorities were met could peacemaking and state-building begin.

First things first, right?

Secondly it spelled out the need for national unity. "A house divided against itself
cannot stand... Palestinian strategic action is impossible if the Palestinian nation is unable to speak with one voice or to act with one will."

Right again. Well-wishers like me shake their heads in disbelief at the ongoing disunity.

The report, which was funded by the EU, concluded by saying:

What Palestinians must be prepared to undertake is nothing less than a final and conclusive strategic battle with Israel... The main conclusion of the strategic review conducted by the Palestine Strategy Study Group is that Palestinians have more strategic cards than they think - and Israel has fewer.

If that's the case, the authors might consider turning their report into a fully-fledged action plan taking into account what has happened in the last two years and what might happen next if the paralysis continues, and making it a working document for the international community as well as the PA and Hamas to study.

Perhaps they have already done so.

But whoever rules in Palestine will never win any battles with Israel or the US without a proper media set-up and an effective communications strategy.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart, or visit Stuart's website.

By Dr. Elias Akleh* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Israelis justify their genocidal economic siege against Gaza Strip, their December 2008 barbaric war crime onslaught against 1.5 million Palestinian civilians in Gaza, and their international piracy against the international "Break the Siege Campaign" and the humanitarian aid Freedom Flotilla with the false claim that the democratically elected Hamas leadership, in the Gaza Strip, is a terrorist organization.

Examining Hamas' history in order to validate/debunk this terrorism claim one discovers that Hamas did not invade and occupy any other country, but Israel did. In 1948 Israel occupied almost half of Palestine, and later in 1967 occupied the rest of Palestine, parts of Egypt, parts of Syria, and parts of Lebanon with it. This illegal occupation still stands up to date.

Hamas did not evict complete populations of cities, did not perpetrate massacres of civilians, and did not level and raze complete cities. Israel did. Israelis had forcefully evicted the residents of Palestinian cities in 1948 and again in 1967. Israelis had committed many massacres against Palestinian civilians, such as the massacres of Deir Yassin, Ein al-Zeitun, Al-Tantura, Al-Dawayima, Jenin, and many others in Gaza Strip and Lebanon. The Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi, in his book "All That Remained" had documented 500 Palestinian towns the Israelis destroyed and leveled to the ground in order to erect Israeli colonies in their places.

Hamas did not create the worst refugee crises in the world. Israel did. In 1948 Israelis expelled almost 800,000 Palestinians from their homes and towns, drove them to the neighboring Arab countries, and denied them the right of return as per UNSC resolutions. In 1967 Israelis, again, drove thousands other Palestinians from their town out of the country. For the last 62 years these refugees are living under the charity of the UNRWA.

Hamas did not send its army to attack its neighboring countries. Israel did. Israeli army attacked Jordan until it was defeated in Al-Karameh Battle in March 1968. Israel attacked Egypt and occupied the Egyptian Sinai until 1973 when the Egyptian forces destroyed the Israeli Bar Lev Wall on the eastern bank of Suez Canal. This led to Israeli withdrawal from Egyptian Sinai Desert. Israeli army invaded and occupied Lebanon twice; once in 1978 and again in 1982. The second occupation lasted eight years until Hezbollah's resistance defeated Israelis in 2000 and forced them to retreat from Lebanese land.

Hamas did not steal Palestinian land, farms and homes from their rightful owners to build illegal colonies (settlements) in violation of all international laws and despite opposition of many UNSC resolutions, and to forcefully introduce aggressive extremist religious Jewish Israelis within Palestinian communities. Hamas did not forge land and home deeds to illegally seize Palestinian properties. Israel did. Land seizure, home demolition, and home theft are routine attacks on Palestinian civilians. Such practices have intensified lately with the latest plan of demolishing 22 Palestinian homes in Jerusalem in order to build a tourist park.

Contrary to what pro-Zionist media wants us to believe Hamas is not the extreme religious fanatics intolerant to other religions with a psychotic fervor to kill Jews. True, they are fundamental Muslims, whose religion teaches tolerance and acceptance of the "People of the Book"; Jews and Christians. They are not against Jews per se, but against the Zionist occupation of their land. Israeli Jews are the most extremist religious fanatics, who prescribe to the religiously racist "God's Chosen People" ideology that is intolerant to all other religions.

Hamas did not bomb, torch, or destroy any Jewish synagogues nor dug up and razed Jewish cemeteries. Israel did. Since 1948 Israelis had destroyed hundreds of Mosques, turned others into Jewish bars or clubs or senior homes. Jewish colonizers (settlers) had torched and vandalized many mosques. Religious extremist Jews are threatening to demolish Al-Aqsa Mosque, third holiest Islamic place, in order to build third Solomon Temple in its place. Israeli government had confiscated land belonging to Christian church. The Israeli army had bombed Christian churched including the Nativity church in Bethlehem, a Sumerian church in Nablus, and an Orthodox church in Gaza.

When a Jewish cemetery gets vandalized Israel and Zionists cry anti-Semitism. Yet Israelis give themselves the right to destroy hundreds of Palestinian cemeteries. In a most presumptuous act the Israeli government is digging up and razing almost a thousand years old Islamic cemetery in Jerusalem to build a museum of tolerance in its place.

Hamas was not involved in human organ trafficking by murdering Jewish children and stealing their body organs. Israelis did. Rabbis, who suppose to respect life, with the cooperation of Israeli military officials and Israeli military physicians were caught red-handed into this despicable crime.

Hamas did not manufacture drugs and smuggle them into the US. A gang of Rabbis, American Zionist Jews, and Israelis are involved into manufacturing ecstasy drugs in Israel and smuggling them into the US to profit on American addiction.

Hamas did not send arms with military trainers to every corner of the Middle East to arm and to train terrorist groups to terrorize local citizens and to attack local governments. Israel did. Israel had armed and trained Lebanese Phalangist militia, who started the Lebanese civil war and later on became Israel's proxy army during Israel's occupation of Lebanon. Israel had, also, armed and trained Kurdish militia in north Iraq to terrorize Iraqi civilians and to attack Turkish troop in east Turkey. Israel had armed and trained Jundullah terrorist group to terrorize Iranian citizens, and to attack and bomb Iranian government buildings.

Israel's arming and training had expanded beyond the Middle East to reach South African government who terrorized and suppressed the local citizens. In Algiers Israel armed and trained terrorist groups, who perpetrated many massacres against civilians. In Sudan Israel armed terrorist groups to create a division between the North and the South Sudanese. Israeli military trainers reached Latin America, where they trained drug lords' militias in Mexico and Columbia.

Hamas did not send assassinating teams, with forged foreign passports, to other countries to murder political officials, scientist, and university professors. Israel did. In 1973 Israeli army and Mossad assassins, sent to Beirut, Lebanon, assassinated three political figures; Kamal Nasser, Kamal Adwan and Muhammad Youssef al-Najjar. An estimated 100 other Lebanese security personnel and civilian neighbors were also murdered in this raid. In 1988 Israeli assassins were sent to Tunis and murdered Khalil al-Wazir, a PLO leader, in front of his wife and son. Several security guards were also murdered in this raid. In 1997 Mossad agents with forged Canadian passports entered Jordan and attempted to assassinate Khaled Mish'al, a Hamas official, with poisonous chemical weapon. The Israeli assassins were caught by Jordanians. In order to appease Jordan's King Hussein, the then Israel Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who ordered the botched assassination attempt, was obliged to send the anti-dote to cure Mish'al from the poison, and to release the crippled Sheikh Yassin, the founder of Hamas movement. In February 2008 Israeli Mossad agents were sent to Damascus, Syria, where they assassinated by a car bomb Imad Mughniyah, a senior member in Hezbollah.

Not learning from his 1997 criminal botched assassination attempt against Mish'al, Netanyahu, becoming Israeli Prime Minister a second time, had authored the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel room in January 2010. A team of at least 29 Mossad assassins, carrying forged international passports, were sent to Dubai to assassinate al-Mabhouh; a Hamas official. The assassination was exposed internationally through Dubai's closed caption cameras.

Mossad assassins were also sent to Iran and Iraq to assassinate scientist, especially nuclear and physics scientists, university professors, and even medical doctors. According to Press TV Israeli Mossad agents were sent recently to Turkey to assassinate Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan but failed in the attempt. Erdogan has been a thorn in Israel's side lately.

The US, Israel's best friend and sponsor, was not saved from Israel's assassinations. The Mossad is accused of assassinating President John F. Kennedy because he opposed Israel becoming a nuclear power, and was about to change American policy towards the Israeli/Arab conflict (see Michael Collins Piper's book "Final Judgment"). There are also many evidence implicating Israeli Mossad agents in the 911 bombing of the Trade Center.

Hamas did not spy on the US, stole its nuclear fuel and nuclear technology. Israel did. Israel's spying on the US is a well known fact among the American intelligence. The story of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard is very well known. Pollard was responsible for the murder of 100 CIA agents, whose names were included in vital intelligence he turned over to the Soviet Union.

Israel's theft of American nuclear technology and fuel was exposed in the article "America's Loose Nukes in Israel" by Grant Smith, director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, where he explained how large quantities of America's highly enriched uranium and plutonium was smuggles to Israel via the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC). Besides building their own nuclear bombs, Israelis were trying to sell nuclear material and technology to apartheid South Africa.

Hamas did not commit any crime of high seas international piracy. Israel did. Israeli marine commandos had attacked, rammed, and hijacked "Break the Siege" boats, and lately had attacked Freedom Flotilla killing at least 9 international humanitarian peaceful activists, and kidnapping the rest to Israel, where they were imprisoned, roughed up, interrogated and deported. Twenty other activists are still missing, and feared being dumped in the ocean by Israeli terrorist commandos to cover their crime.

With such comparisons, and many others that could fill up volumes, one may ask why didn't Israel end up on the West's terrorist list but Hamas did? This "Terrorist List" was forced by Bush administration on the world. It is the American perspective and the American global hegemonic aspiration that determine who would be listed as a terrorist. Of course if the US would not put itself on the list for terrorizing Iraqis, Afghanis, and Pakistanis, why would it list Israel for terrorizing Palestinians and neighboring Arab Countries?

Hamas is a resistance movement with a branch of social services. It resists Israeli occupation and, at the same time, provides humanitarian and financial aid to families, who suffered from the Israeli occupation. It is not corrupt as what Fatah has lately become, and is not a collaborator with Israel as Fatah's officials. Thus it gained popularity and trust. When the American administration forced election on Palestinians in 2006 hoping to legitimize Fatah's collaborators again, Hamas won the election instead. This election was certified as fair and democratic by international monitors headed by Jimmy Carter, once an American president.

Hamas, rightfully, wanted to rectify the previous unjust agreements, expressed willingness to establish a long term truce with Israel, and accepted the two states solution providing that Israel would completely withdraw to 1967 borders. Israel rejected Hamas gestures the same way it had rejected all Arab peace initiatives in the past. Israelis refuse to be restricted within a defined border because that means the end of the Zionist expansionist scheme.

Israel, the Bush administration, and Abbas with his security chief Dahlan conspired to overthrow Hamas as was reported by Vanity Fair. Fortunately, Hamas was aware of the conspiracy and kicked Fatah's security forces out of Gaza. Since then the US added Hamas to the terrorist list, and Israel started its choking siege against Gaza.

* Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the "Nakba" of 1948, then from Beit Jala after the "Nakseh" of 1967. He lives now in the US, and publishes his articles on the web in both English and Arabic.

By Yousef Munayyer* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Hundreds of activists are on their way to the blockaded Gaza strip via a "flotilla" of boats carrying humanitarian and reconstruction supplies, which are badly lacking in the impoverished Palestinian territory.

Israel has promised to intercept the good-willed boats and arrest and deport the activists. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has exerted great effort in the past few days to convince onlookers to this confrontation on the high seas that the activists carrying humanitarian goods are terrorist sympathizers, and that everything is just fine and dandy in the Gaza Strip. The ministry has portrayed Israel (the country enforcing the blockade of Gaza's ports) as a benevolent victim, who despite the threat from Gaza's Hamas government is still caring for the civilian population.

There comes a point when an oppressive regime's propaganda crosses a threshold from mere lies to utter lunacy so extreme, in fact, that objective onlookers find it almost comical. This point came yesterday when the Government Press Office disseminated a link to a Gaza restaurant which appears to be luxurious. So what Israel is essentially saying is: "There you have it.  There is a website for a restaurant with cloth napkins in Gaza. How can there be any problems?"

The reality is, of course, that the situation in Gaza is very dire. A slew of reports from human rights organizations attest to the hardships faced by most Palestinians in Gaza. In the densely populated strip where 80 percent of the population are refugees, a similar percentage relies on international aid organizations for daily sustenance. That number was only ten percent a decade ago. That's how bad things have become. Malnutrition in children has reached ten percent and critical medicines are not available, according to the World Health Organization.

But no one is starving to death in Gaza--at least not suddenly. A tunnel industry has evolved and become the main supplier for most goods. That's all part of the plan. Israel seeks to squeeze the strip to the point of near catastrophe, bad enough to make people suffer, but just short of having to take responsibility for it. It's a form of torture kind of like water-boarding under the Bush administration: the objective is to bring the subject to the edge and break his will, but not kill him (lest they be charged with murder). But just because Gaza's civilian population has managed to keep its collective head above water doesn't mean things should be this way.

Like life in most prisons, if you "know a guy," anything is available for a price. Generators, for example, are in high demand because of the shortages of electricity. The shortages are due to the destruction of Gaza's only power plant in 2006 by Israeli jets. Since then, Israel has never permitted the full reconstruction of the power plant, forcing perpetual dependence of Gaza on Israel and Egypt, who take an eye-dropper approach to supplying Gaza with electricity. But even though generators smuggled through Gaza's tunnels provide some light, there is also a dark and often unheard downside that comes with them: explosions and fires. Several reports in the past few years of civilians being killed or maimed from overworked and exploding generators have become common. These are just some of the siege-related causalities we do not hear about.

The 10,000 tons of supplies aboard the Gaza aid ships are a drop in the bucket for what Gaza really needs. Israel's spokesmen have pointed out that they have permitted the entry of supplies in the past and argued that the aid boats are unnecessary. The reality is that aid which Israel does permit into Gaza is purchased by Palestinians, vetted and often rejected or held up for months. Israel has calculated the precise minimum necessary caloric intake for Palestinians in Gaza, and has often rejected things like pasta, lentils and coffee. So it's easy to understand why international humanitarian organizations and the activists aboard the aid boats are not about to trust the welfare of Gaza's civilians to Israel's benevolence.

The aid boats will have a far greater impact, however, than the 10,000 tons of aid they are bringing to Gaza. The aid boats compel us to have this discussion, a discussion that Israel desperately wants to avoid at a time when its international reputation has never been lower.

Hundreds of unarmed civilians carrying humanitarian aid are approaching a blockaded piece of land where 1.5 million civilians suffer from a life of uncertainty and despair, and Israel is going to stop them. While much of the focus on the Israeli-Palestinian issue has been on the settlements, the failed peace process and the long-awaited restart of talks about talks, Gaza has been forgotten. To their credit, the few hundred non-violent activists-turned-sailors have found a way to maximize their power as individuals to force one of the world's most powerful regimes into a corner. Whether the boats make it to Gaza or not, this is a tremendous victory for civil society in international affairs.

Headlines and stories covering this confrontation at sea will shift the focus back to Gaza, even if only for a few hours. For Israel, Gaza is the tortured and famished step-child it locks in the basement when visitors arrive, and the activists on these boats seek to expose what Israel is doing in the strip: imposing a draconian siege to collectively punish civilians for political aims.

* Yousef Munayyer is the Executive Director of the Jerusalem Fund and the Palestine Center.

By Brenda Heard* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Anniversaries measure time. In one respect, they are an artificial concept. We decide, for instance, that twenty-five years of marriage should be celebrated, but we ignore the subsequent days as merely marking the path to twenty-six years. And reaching twenty-six years, though obviously a greater length of marriage, will not be celebrated with the same gusto as the twenty-fifth anniversary that boasts pre-printed greeting cards and foil balloons.

As the contrivance of marking anniversaries in many ways defies common sense, we might ask ourselves why we do it. Perhaps it is because the infinite, amorphous magnitude of time must be taken in bite-size pieces. It would otherwise be overwhelming. When we stop the passage of time-no matter how arbitrarily, no matter how superficially-then we are in effect looking for significance in what we accomplish with our lives.

On the 25^th of May 2010, we observe the ten-year anniversary of the Lebanese Resistance and Liberation Day. A full decade has passed since the victory that baffled the Western world. A twenty-two year military occupation was virtually uprooted and expelled. The balance of global power was unhinged.

This tilting of the scales took time. It cost many lives. But in the end, the so-called mighty army created by the Americans for their Jewish state, an army protected politically by the Western superpowers, was soundly defeated by the persistent determination of ordinary Lebanese. These ordinary Lebanese were bound by their commitment to protect their homes and their families, their faith and their dignity. They fought back and they stood firm.

While the Western-"Israeli" alliance wanted to believe that they could intimidate and tyrannise the Lebanese into submission, they discovered that the more they pushed, the more the Lebanese resisted. The Resistance of Hizbullah would not relent. This bold defiance of the Islamic Resistance inspired Lebanese of other religious credence to focus on the fundamental principle they all shared: intolerance for subjugation. Their coordinated efforts paid off.

Failing to coerce either a physical or a political concession from the Lebanese, the occupying "Israelis" were forced to retreat. Beginning on the 21^st of May 2000, as families returned to Southern Lebanon on the heels of the exiting "Israeli" troops, members of the Resistance ensured the peaceful nature of the transition. And herein lies the greater significance of this accomplishment. Herein lies the reason it is imperative to mark this anniversary in order to reflect on an achievement that far exceeds the laurels of military victory.

We should remind ourselves that the Lebanese had endured, day after day for twenty-two years, the harsh and bitter realities of life under military occupation. They had lost their homes, their farms and their businesses. They had suffered deprivation and betrayal. They had lived with the anguish of having their loved ones disappear-maybe learning they'd been imprisoned or murdered, or maybe never learning anything at all. They had faced fear and hopelessness, knowing that their very lives were subject to the whims of a merciless political power.

For twenty-two years the armies of the Western-"Israeli" alliance and their proxy Lebanese militia-enemy-collaborators known as the "South Lebanon Army" (SLA)-inflicted death and destruction in Lebanon. The statistics we casually list off are typically rounded, averaged and often disputed. There are so many deaths that the injured are seldom counted. The sole undeniable fact is that there were far too many.

How do we begin to count the dead? We could stack up the civilians on one side and the Resistance fighters on the other. But, then again, those of the Resistance were not a standing army when the Zionists invaded Lebanon; had it not been for this military offensive, they too would have lived civilian lives.

We could stack up the Palestinians on one side and the Lebanese on the other. But, then again, the Palestinians would not have been in Lebanon had the Zionists not forced them there. Should they be viewed separately, when they were targeted as one faceless enemy?

We could survey sources to discern bias one way or another. There are dozens of reasons to inflate or deflate the body counts. Or maybe the repeated scenes of massacre were simply too murky with blood to be clinically accurate. Perhaps the man with the clip board came across a head lying on the pavement and ticked off the remnant as a victim, and then hours later he came across a headless body on a kitchen floor and ticked it off as another victim-not realising through his nausea that the two had the day before been one.

A few specific scenes will here suffice to illustrate the murderous rage of the "Israeli" military machine. The numbers give an idea of the magnitude. But more than statistics, these numbers represent individual people whose lives were grievously impacted.

Just warming up, in March 1978 the Zionist forces launched an aerial assault on Southern Lebanon. With the proclaimed intent of eradicating the Palestinians whom they had already driven from their homes, the "Israeli" assault destroyed 2500 homes and killed over 2000 Lebanese and Palestinians. Many fled to the North. Many of those who stayed behind were seized by "Israeli" troops on suspicion of supporting the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Those who were seized were then tortured and often killed.

In June 1982 the Zionist forces launched a series of air raids on Lebanon, while their army tanks paved the way to Beirut, leaving behind 9500 dead and 16,000 wounded. The army blockaded the city so that there were no supplies coming in; they cut both water and electricity. Then, for 70 days, "Israel" blasted Beirut with bombs and mortars. On 12 August, Beirut suffered 11 hours of non-stop, saturation bombing. Over 500 people died. The city was virtually destroyed.

In September 1982 over 8000 PLO members and their leader were exiled from Beirut. But this eviction, which seemingly met "Israel's" stated goal of ridding itself of the PLO, was not enough to end its military operations in Lebanon. Together with their collaborating allies, "Israeli" forces implemented the systematic murder of around 1500 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, mostly women, children and elderly, at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Over a two-day period, the people were penned in and wantonly slaughtered.

Other highlights include the 1985 opening of Khiam Prison, a detention and interrogation centre where thousands of Lebanese were held without trial, routinely tortured and often killed. But it was not only the ordinary Lebanese civilian that was targeted. In February 1992 "Israel" assassinated Hizbullah Secretary General Sayyed Abbas Moussawi, together with his wife and son. In response, the Resistance for the first time fired rockets into "Israeli" settlements in northern occupied Palestine. Incensed, "Israel" launched the "Seven-Day War" in July 1993. In a week's time, "Israel" launched 1224 air raids, killed 140, wounded 500, and displaced well over 200,000 Lebanese.

Their appetite for violence unabated, for sixteen days in April 1996 "Israelis" executed air raids over the whole of Lebanon, leaving massive damage to infrastructure, hundreds of thousands displaced, scores injured, and 250 dead. The Zionist rampage spared no one. The "Israeli" military wilfully bombed a UN installation at Qana, where some 800 civilians had sought refuge. Over 100 people were killed, with over a hundred more, including four UN soldiers, seriously wounded. Those who survived Qana, just as those who survived blitz after hateful blitz, suffered untold anguish. These are the dangerous and bloody days of military aggression and occupation. These are the atrocities from which the Resistance fought to defend the Lebanese people.**

Under such circumstances, in the hours of regaining control, how easy it would have been to lash out against the enemy-collaborators who had suddenly found themselves left behind without the shield of their Zionist chiefs. Under such circumstances, how easy would vengeance have been? How tempting. How understandable.

But the goal of the Resistance had not been power; it had been liberation. And that goal had been achieved. They had not sought to gain political position. The Islamic Resistance understood and respected that the strength to liberate their land was derived ultimately from God. Thus to have flaunted their position as victors-to have succumbed to the temptation of vengeance-would have been to disparage the source of that victory. Such a move, though ever so common in the history of the battles of men, would have violated the fundamental principles of the Islamic Resistance. Consequently, the victors expressly prohibited any act of vengeance. Any enemy-collaborators who had not fled with the "Israelis" were simply turned over to the Lebanese Army for legal processing.

To be sure, the Resistance had earned the right to be proud, even jubilant, for having rid their land of enemy occupiers. But throughout the years of resistance, their conduct proved that the liberation was not simply about land. Liberation was essential to safeguard Lebanese lives, honour and dignity. And so it was with ease that the Resistance fostered coordination rather than competition amongst those who would resist subjugation, no matter their religious or familial affiliations. And it was only natural that, as they faced the vulnerable enemy-collaborators, the Resistance maintained their composure.

Had the Liberation been merely a jostling for military and political superiority, they might have celebrated, revelled in their newfound status, and rested on their laurels. But given the threat of renewed aggression from the Western-"Israeli" alliance, the Resistance recognised that Liberation was as much a process as it was an accomplishment. And so they maintained their vigilance. The sacrifices they had made would continue if they were to validate the victory of May 2000.

As we consider the tenth anniversary of Resistance and Liberation Day, we look for its significance. Why should we of the English-speaking world see this decade-old conflict as anything more than someone else's problem? Because in this turning point in Middle East history lies the hope of something noble.

On the one hand, we find a military occupation born out of greed and arrogance. If we are honest with ourselves, we will recognise in this aggression our own impulse toward self-preservation in this our society of the survival of the fittest. We do not want to be the weakest link who is cast away. This twenty-two year occupation represents the darker side of human nature: a dog-eat-dog mentality.

On the other hand, we find a Resistance born out of faith and a commitment to protect. Again if we are honest with ourselves, despite our part-time inclination to be self-serving, we have also admired those who abide by principles beyond themselves. We will, for example, cheer the good-guys in a film, and we will walk away from the experience with firm approval of the character who acts selflessly to achieve something greater for another character, or for a cause. Then more often than not, we shake off the notion of principle being rewarded. It's just scripted entertainment, we remind ourselves, it is not real life.

But the Resistance and Liberation was very, very real life. As real as it gets. Ordinary people embraced principle, defied the odds and chose Liberation. They could have run away. They could have shrugged their shoulders and resigned themselves to life on someone else's terms. But they chose instead to resist-and it worked. Above all, they continued to act with integrity. This was not because it was necessary in practical terms, for surely it would have been more expedient to eliminate enemy-collaborators on the spot. This was because to have set aside the integrity they had fought to defend would have as surely tainted the Liberation they had achieved.

In marking ten years of Liberation, we realise that by adopting a perspective beyond the here and now, the Resistance was able with its limited means to turn back the aggressor of seemingly unlimited means. We realise that this perspective enabled the Resistance to foresee and to overcome renewed challenges to the Liberation in July 2006. And we realise that an ordinary man can triumph with his principle intact. He will find the strength to do what must be done, and he will find the strength to acknowledge what must not be done. The Resistance and Liberation represents the brighter side of human nature: altruism.

* Brenda Heard, founder and director of Friends of Lebanon, London. Email mail@friendsoflebanon.org

**These are merely the highlights of a sustained campaign to devastate the people of Lebanon. More detailed descriptions can be found at Arab Media Watch here, Al Arabiya here and Mostakbaliat-Future here. Reports are also available from organisations such as Amnesty International here (Stopping the torture trade, February 2001), and Human Rights Watch here (Persona Non Grata: The Expulsion of Lebanese Civilians from Israeli-Occupied Lebanon, July 1999).

By Yousef Munayyer* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

When will there be a Palestinian Gandhi? I'm often asked this question by people who sympathise with Palestinian suffering but are uncomfortable associating themselves with resistance movements that they see as violent or terrorist.

The reality of course is that Palestinian nonviolent resisters are not only active today but have a long and storied history in the Palestinian struggle. The real question is: why haven't we heard about them?

Like many resisting oppression, Palestinian Gandhis are likely to be found in prisons after being repressed by Israeli soldiers or police or in the hospital after being brutally beaten or worse.

In recent years, the Israeli repression of Palestinian nonviolent dissent has increased significantly and Israel is showing signs of transforming into a fully-fledged police state. Even Israeli citizens, both Palestinian such as Ameer Makhoul and Jewish, have faced intimidation in one form or another for being critical of Israel's policies. Surely, Israel has realised that its ongoing occupation, continued colonisation of Palestinian land, and its bombardment of civilian-packed Gaza have significantly and negatively impacted on its image abroad. The images of nonviolent Palestinian protests against the Israeli occupation aren't helping Israel's reputation either.

Perhaps that is why recently many nonviolent activists and initiatives have been shut down and repressed. Jamal Juma, Muhammad Othman and Abdallah Abu Rahman may not be household names like Gandhi or Mandela but they have been just as consistent in resisting Israel's illegal segregation wall in the West Bank by organising nonviolent demonstrations for years. And, like Gandhi and Mandela they have paid a price by being arrested on multiple occasions.

The Israeli repression efforts extend far beyond the arrests of nonviolent demonstrators against the wall. Last month, Palestinian and international activists sat in front of Israeli bulldozers about to confiscate more Palestinian land for the expansion of a settlement. Soldiers quickly dispersed the crowd and thoroughly pummelled and pepper-sprayed an organiser at point-blank range.

Most recently, several leaders of human rights organisations advocating Palestinian rights have been arrested and thrown into jail for allegedly posing security risks to the state. One of them, Izzet Shahin, is a Turkish national whose crime was organising boat shipments of humanitarian aid to the besieged people of Gaza. During past attempts to bring supplies to the blockaded strip, the boats were commandeered by the Israeli navy and the nonviolent activists were arrested before being deported even though they had never entered Israeli waters.

The list goes on, and despite the increase in Israeli repression, Palestinian nonviolent resistance is nothing new. While some have adopted an Israeli narrative that identifies nonviolent Palestinian dissent as something new, the reality is that Palestinians have consistently chosen nonviolent resistance before arms - from the general strikes of 1936, to the consistent appeals to international legal bodies, to the weekly demonstrations against the wall. It has been the continued dispossession at the hands of Israel, and the silence of the international community despite these nonviolent efforts, that has led some Palestinians to view violence as the only option.

Alas, it is often the major explosions that make headlines and not the nonviolent demonstrations or their violent repression by Israel's secret police or its military occupation. That's why some still wait for a Palestinian Gandhi despite the fact that they have taken many a beating and seen the inside of many a jail cell.

When an Iranian protester - Neda - was shot and killed last year, the world knew her name - so did President Obama. But most would be hard-pressed to name one of the many nonviolent protestors in Palestine who have been arrested, beaten, shot or even bulldozed to death.

The international community has an obligation to Palestinian nonviolent activists. Leaders cannot simply call on Palestinians to abandon violence in the face of Israeli occupation and remain silent when the nonviolent activists are politically repressed. This only reinforces the idea that the use of force reigns supreme and that Palestinians have no choice but to accept hardships at the hands of their Israeli lords.

Sadly, the same leaders who call on Palestinians to abandon violence have been silent in the face of Israeli repression. By condemning violent Palestinian resistance while remaining silent in the face of Israeli crackdowns and political arrests, they are simply endorsing violence against civilians by one side instead of the other.

The United States should take the lead in condemning Israeli repression of nonviolent dissent, just as they would in Iran, Burma or apartheid South Africa, because nonviolent dissent is not only a critical part of the Palestinian struggle but it is an American value as well.

* Yousef Munayyer is Executive Director of the Palestine Center.

SABBAH REPORT NOTE: (This is a Der Spiegel story in German, picked up from an Israeli Internet portal.... The google translation is all over the place but I have a German speaking friend who has provided me with a more coherent translation of the opening paragraphs:)

Online Espionage

The beautiful Facebook girlfriend of the Elite Soldier

by Sarah Stricker, Tel Aviv

An enchanting young woman befriends Israeli military men on Facebook – and elicits secrets from them. According to a press report, 20 elite soldiers fell into the trap. The Lebanese Shiite militia is presumably behind it.

Hizbolla is supposed to have infiltrated the elite unit with a faked Facebook profile. With the photo of a pretty young woman who logged in with an Israeli name, the Shiite military is supposed to have built up contact to elite soldiers and elicited secret information, this was reported by the Israeli News portal MySay.co.il

The facebook page of Reut Zuckerman, who is lying on a sofa beaming into the camera in her profile photo went online about a year ago. The people behind the site made contact with numerous Israeli army soldiers. MySay reports that about 200 soldiers and reservists were on Zuckerman's friends list.

Zuckerman concentrated particularly on an elite unite of paratroopers. Apparently many of the men suspected that the woman was herself an Israeli soldier in a special unit. The people behind the site worked slowly to gain the confidence of the soldiers and are reported to have gained key information regarding the activities of the unit in question.

The men in the unit gave their Facebook friend names of members of the unit, jargon, secret codes, and detailed descriptions of bases . Some of the soldiers began to be suspicious only after about a year when they realized how many soldiers in the elite unit were named as her friends. The army began investigating in January....

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,694582,00.html

Good one, Hezbollah!

Message by Desmond Tutu on behalf of The Elders On the Occasion of the Fifth Annual Bil'in Conference on Popular Resistance.

Dear Friends,

On behalf of the Elders, I send warm greetings to all of you attending the Bil'in Fifth Annual Conference on Popular Resistance. We are sorry that we could not be with you in person but we want you to know that we are very much with you in spirit.

During our visit to Bil'in last August, many of the Elders saw first-hand the incredible actions the residents of Bil'in - together with committed Israeli and international activists- are taking to resist the Wall and settlements. For five years now, you have continued your struggle against the de-facto annexation of more than 50 per cent of Bil'in's farmlands and the construction of the Wall that separates the village from the burgeoning Modi'in Illit settlement. The weekly non-violent demonstrations in Bil'in have become an international symbol of the Palestinian popular struggle against occupation and separation. And rightly so. Together with the progressive political actions employed in other villages in the West Bank, you are showing the world that ordinary people can help bring about positive change through non-violent resistance.

The Elders join you in celebrating the victory achieved at the Israeli High Court of Justice which has now resulted in the beginning stages of the Wall moving to its new location – a move that will return over 600,000 square metres to the village. While we welcome this important success, we recognize that the new wall will, however, continue to cut the village off from approximately 25 per cent of its land, on which the illegal Israeli settlement Modi'in Illit stands. Bil'in's popular struggle must continue until ALL of the village's land and its olive trees are returned to its people.

Efforts to stifle the demonstrations will not serve the cause of peace. The recent Israeli military order declaring a large area around the Wall in Bil'in a closed military zone every Friday for the coming six months is clearly a blatant attempt to prevent Israelis and internationals from standing in solidarity with their Palestinian partners for peace. It is also a direct attack on freedom of speech, the right to demonstrate, and every person's right to resist policies that violate international law and common notions of morality. We urge the Israeli authorities to cancel this order and to allow the protests to continue peacefully.

When we were in Bil'in we were able to visit the memorial site of Bassem Abu Rahma who was killed while peacefully demonstrating at the Wall. Despite the demands of his family, his supporters and his lawyers, the Israeli Military Advocate General has decided not to open a military investigation into the possibility that his death was caused by the illegal use of a high velocity tear gas canister. We are deeply troubled by this recent decision and call on the Israeli military authorities to reconsider this verdict and investigate the circumstances of Bassem's death.

We continue to also be deeply concerned about the ongoing detention of Adib Abu Rahma and Abdullah Abu Rahma. These two Bil'in residents, who regularly attended the demonstrations and consistently practiced non-violence, remain in custody awaiting trial, after nearly 10 and 4 months, respectively. We call on the Israeli authorities to release them until such time as a fair trial is held, considering all the evidence.

We want to tell you that we are with you. Don't give up. The spirit of those that fight for freedom and justice cannot be broken. Peace is possible. We look forward to the day when we will celebrate freedom and security for Palestinians and Israelis and there are no longer any walls.

God bless you.