Twelve-year old Firas El Yateem is negotiating the string of his kite around an electric line. A few days ago Firas feeling that things have gotten quite yet unable to go places with his family because of the Israeli siege, decided to begin making and flying kites. Within days the skies of Beit Jala, where he lives with his extended family, has been filled with kites of all shapes and sizes. When I saw the scene during a visit to his family, who are relatives, I remembered how many Palestinians drew the Palestinian flag on kites as a sign of Palestinian nationalism. “There is no more need to do that.” Firas’ mother told me. The Palestinian flag is no longer illegal and therefore kids don’t feel the need to fly kites with the national flag. Continue Reading »

The Bush administration is in the process of falling in the same Israeli trap as that of the former Clinton administration as far as the Middle East is concerned. Favoring form over content will not bring about lasting peace.

Favoring the Israeli direction, the latest US policy push has been to shore up a short term cease-fire at the expense of the long term political process. Continue Reading »

It was late Tuesday night and Saleem Sweidan, who runs Nablus TV, was trying to figure out where to sleep that night. The day before he had tried to get back to Nablus and the normally 45 minutes trip took him five hours. The taxi driver deposited him and the other passengers near Salfit, they had to walk, hitch rides and walk some more before getting home near midnight. ‘I haven’t seen my children in days,” he told a group of colleagues from other West Bank cities who were meeting in Ramallah to hammer out an agreement regarding training and support for local television stations. Others from Hebron and Bethlehem had decided earlier that they will be staying at a local hotel. Continue Reading »

Israelis often misunderstand the political meaning of the word Nakba which Palestinians apply to the events in 1948 that led to the dispossession and disbursement of the Palestinian people.

Watching CNN on Tuesday, I was surprised to hear the interpretation by former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu. His explanation was that, since Palestinians remember 1948 as the year of the catastrophe, then that means that they consider the creation of Israel a catastrophe, and therefore, Netanyahu went on to claim, Palestinians have yet to come to terms with the existence of Israel. The Palestinian remembrance is meant as a sign that Palestinians want to destroy Israel, the former Likud leader said.  Continue Reading »

So finally we have it. A Middle East leader has finally pronounced the two-syllable word. Cease-fire. Sure, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s words were barely out of his mouth before denials and surprises came from Israel. But the fact is that after more than seven months of hell, the word has finally been introduced to the Palestinian-Israeli lexicon.

True, in 1982 the term was also used, and then, as now, the key players were the same, Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon. But the occupied Palestinian territories are not Lebanon and everyone who tries to make the comparison is wrong.  Continue Reading »

More and more Israelis and their supporters in the US are making a major issue of the fact that the peace process is dead in its tracks because of the absence of public support for it in Israel support for it in Israel. They cite negative public opinion and the absence of a credible peace movement as proof that Palestinians have squandered the last remaining hope for getting their lands back once they lost Israeli public opinion. Continue Reading »

David Landau has been writing for Ha’aretz for some time. His path and mine have often crossed, usually when we are on different ends of a debate regarding the Middle East. More often than not, we agreed more than we disagreed. Until Tuesday.

The prestigious US radio program “All things Considered” on National Public Radio invited David and I for a discussion on the current situation, especially after Israeli tanks rolled into Gaza Tuesday morning. Continue Reading »

Is there a law for war? This was the way I have interrupted the various comments that friends of mine made this week.

It started at around noon on Monday. Arthur and Anderson auditors who have been working at our office get a call from their office saying that all the Ramallah staff have been told to go home. Some of our own staff get calls from friends with similar sentiment. The rumor is that the Israelis are planning to shell Ramallah indiscriminately. Two Israeli soldiers were killed near Betunia and one colleague rushes in saying that the Israelis are about to reoccupy Ramallah. Continue Reading »

Mrs. Asfour, a respected Palestinian woman in her late fifties had a problem the other day getting to her home in the Jerusalem district of Dahiat Al Barid. Coming from Jordan, where she had visited her daughter and the new born granddaughter, she had no idea that in the week she was absent her house would no longer be accessible. Having a number of suitcases with her, she had to figure out how to get them to her house, as the Israelis had put up cement blocks in order to stop Palestinians from circumventing the checkpoint. Continue Reading »

The new Israeli government wants to create international precedent by its demands that Palestinians unilaterally end what it calls violence and terrorism as a condition for the renewal of the Israeli –Palestinian negotiations. The Israeli government’s request seems oblivious to its own violence and that of its citizens as well as the fact that people under military rule have an internationally- sanctioned right to resist occupation. Peoples around the world have acted to rid themselves of foreign military rule, and have never been known to stop their resistance as a condition to begin talks. Continue Reading »