In an article published May 15, 2013, American historical social scientist Immanuel Wallerstein wrote, “Nothing illustrates more the limitations of Western power than the internal controversy its elites are having in public about what the United States in particular and western European states should be doing about the civil war in Syria.”

Those limitations are palpable in both language and action. A political and military vacuum created by past US failures and forced retreats after the Iraq war made it possible for countries like Russia to reemerge on the scene as an effective player.

It is most telling that over two years after the Syrian uprising-turned bloody civil war, the US continues to curb its involvement by indirectly assisting anti-Bashar al-Assad regime opposition forces, through its Arab allies and Turkey. Even its political discourse is indecisive and often times inconsistent.

Concurrently, Russia’s position remains unswerving and constantly advancing while the US is pushed into a corner, demonstrating incapacity to react except for condemnations and mere statements. This is to the displeasure of its Arab allies. Russia’s recent delivery of sophisticated anti-ship missiles and its own buildup of warships in the eastern Mediterranean is a case in point. The move was condemned by the Obama administration as one that is “ill-timed and very unfortunate,” according to a statement by Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as reported in the LA Times on May 17.

But this American attitude in the region is fairly new. Behind it stands a history so bloody and filled with imprudent foreign policy. Regardless of how the US decides to move on Syria, the chances are that a return to its old dominant approach is no longer an option.

Indeed, the current American political impotence in the Middle East is unprecedented, at least since the rapid disintegration of the Soviet bloc in the early 1990’s. The dissolution of the Soviet Union had ushered in the rise of a unipolar world, wholly managed by the United States. The rise of the uncontested American hegemony represented a shift in historical dialectics, where great powers found their match and the rest of the world, more or less, accommodated the ensuing competition.

Then, the US acted quickly to assert its dominance starting with hasty military adventures such as the invasion of Panama in 1989. A much more calculated move followed with a devastating war against Iraq in 1990-91. In Panama the objective was to remind the US’s southern neighbors that the region’s cop was still on duty and was capable of intervening at a moment’s notice to rearrange the entire political paradigm in any way that Washington deemed necessary – As this has been the case since the CIA-orchestrated coup and war in Guatemala in 1954 and even earlier.

The US’s massive military involvement in Iraq, however, was that of a conqueror who arrived with an entourage of many countries – regional and western allies – to claim the spoils resulting from the end of the protracted Cold War. It was an arrogant show of force since the target was a single Arab country with humble military and economic means vs. major military powers from near and far. The war devastated Iraq, as its initial aerial bombing campaign alone involved the dropping of 88,500 tons of bombs. Many new weapons were used and tested, while the US media and public celebrated the prowess of their military. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died or were wounded as a result of one of the most asymmetrical wars in history.

Trying to capitalize on its military triumph, Washington quickly pushed for a political settlement between its closest ally, Israel, and Arab countries. The logic behind the Madrid Conference in 1991 was achieving pseudo peace that catered to Israel’s interests, while opening up the gate of normalization between Israel and its neighbors. Moreover, the US hoped to achieve some sort of ‘stability’ that would allow it to manage the Middle East region and its ample resources in a less hostile environment. Eventually, Israel managed to negotiate its own political deal with the Palestinians, thus dividing Arab ranks and ensuring that the ‘peace talks’ outcome was entirely consistent with Israel’s colonial ambitions.

As years passed, the US and Israeli political visions moved even closer, but with Washington eventually becoming a mere conduit to Israeli colonial objectives. This fact was underscored repeatedly under the George W. Bush administration, which compounded US failure in the region with even more disastrous and dangerous wars.

A major fault in US foreign policy is that it is almost entirely reliant on military power – as in the ability to blow things up. The US war on Iraq which, in various forms, extended from 1990 to 2011, included a devastating blockade and ended with a brutal invasion. This long war was as unscrupulous as it was very violent. Aside from its overwhelming human toll, it was placed within a horrid political strategy aimed at exploiting the country’s existing sectarian and other fault lines, therefore triggering a civil war and sectarian hatred from which Iraq is unlikely to cover for many years.

But limitations of US military power became quite obvious in later years. The empire was no longer able to bridge the divide between translating its dominance on the ground – itself increasingly challenged by local resistance groups – into a level of political progress required to achieve the minimum amount of ‘stability’. Moreover, an economic recession, coupled with the Iraqi retreat and an equally costly debacle in Afghanistan – forced the new administration in Washington, under the leadership of President Barack Obama to rethink Bush’s earlier quest for global hegemony. Massive military cuts were soon to follow. Concurrently, the imbalance of global power was slowly, quietly but surely being equalized with the rise of China as a new possible contender.

In the midst of the US transition and policy rethink, an upheaval struck the Middle East. Its manifestations – revolutions, civil wars, regional mayhem and conflicts of all sorts – reverberated beyond the Middle East. Shrinking and rising empires alike took notice. Fault lines were quickly determined and exploited. Players changed positions or jockeyed for advanced ones, as a new Great Game was about to begin. The so-called ‘Arab Spring’ was rapidly becoming a game-changer in a region that seemed resistant to transformations of any kind.

The transformation of the Middle East – promising at times, very gory and bloody at others – arrived at a time when the US was making forced adjustments in its military priorities. Putting greater focus on the Pacific region and the South China Sea are such examples. Without much notice, it was forced to reengage with the Middle East, as a whole – not a country at a time. Only then, its weaknesses were seriously exposed and its lack of influence became palpable.

Bankrupt is maybe an appropriate term to use in describing the current US policy in the Middle East. Imprudent military adventures devastated the region but achieved no long term objectives. Reckless policies that are predicated on trying to exploit, as opposed to understand the Middle East and its complex political and historical formation and the insistence on keeping Israel a main priority in its approach to the vastly shifting political lines, will unlikely to bode well for US interests.

However, unlike the early 1990’s, when the US moved to reshape the entire region and established permanent military presence, new dynamics are forcing US hands to change tactics. In this new reality, the US is incapable of reshaping reality but merely trying to offset or control its unfavorable outcomes.

“What the United States (and western Europe) want to do is ‘control’ the situation,’ Immanuel Wallerstein argued. “They will not be able to do it. Hence the screams of the ‘interventionists’ and the foot-dragging of the ‘prudent.’ It is a lose-lose for the west, while not being at the same time a ‘win’ for people in the Middle East.”

This ‘lose-lose’ scenario might not necessarily translate to a complete American foreign policy meltdown in the near future, but will certainly open the possibility for new/old players to main serious gains, Russia being a lead example. This will likely compel the US to change tactics, despite the incessant objections of neoconservative forces and the Israeli lobby.

- Ramzy Baroud (ramzybaroud.net) is a widely published and translated author. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London).

“We do not want the tunnels in the first place,” said Ghazi Hamad. “They burden citizens and cause hundreds of fatalities, but they are essential because there is no alternative.”

“The tunnels issue can be resolved by finding a solution that balances the security needs of Egypt and the humanitarian needs of the Gaza Strip through lawful commercial transactions monitored by both,” he added in a statement.

The tunnel industry thrived under Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip, providing a lifeline by smuggling goods into the besieged enclave. Egypt has cracked down on the network, flooding tunnels with sewage over fears that they are being used to smuggle weapons and fighters into the restive Sinai Peninsula.

Egypt’s reopening of the Rafah crossing on its border with Gaza in May 2011 eased travel for Palestinians, many of whom had not been able to leave the enclave since 2007. However, commercial goods do not pass through the terminal, and Palestinians in Gaza still rely on the tunnels.

On Friday, Egyptian police closed the Rafah terminal in protest at the kidnapping by gunmen of seven Egyptian servicemen, several of whom worked at the crossing.

Hamad said the closure had added to the misery of Palestinians in Gaza, particularly students and sick people stranded at the border.

He added that Israel was the only beneficiary of strained relations between Egypt and Gaza, and that residents of Gaza suffered the most from the tension.

Egyptian authorities kept the Rafah crossing with Gaza closed for a fifth consecutive day on Tuesday, despite efforts by Palestinian officials to reopen the terminal.

A Gaza based center for human rights said that over 2,400 Palestinians were stranded at both sides of the crossing. The group urged Egyptian authorities to open the crossing and “exclude it from the internal affairs of both sides.”

Passengers told Ma’an on Monday that they were making do with cardboard and newspapers to sleep at night, and to avoid the heat of the sun during the day. Some sleep in mosques, and very few can afford to pay for a hotel room in el-Arish.

Some passengers have managed to enter Gaza through smuggling tunnels.

(Ma’an – maanews.net)

Since 2009, Voices for Creative Nonviolence has maintained a grim record we call the “The Afghan Atrocities Update” which gives the dates, locations, numbers and names of Afghan civilians killed by NATO forces.  Even with details culled from news reports, these data can’t help but merge into one large statistic, something about terrible pain that’s worth caring about but that is happening very far away.

It’s one thing to chronicle sparse details about these U.S. led NATO attacks. It’s quite another to sit across from Afghan men as they try, having broken down in tears, to regain sufficient composure to finish telling us their stories.  Last night, at a restaurant in Kabul, I and two friends from the Afghan Peace Volunteers met with five Pashtun men from Afghanistan’s northern and eastern provinces. The men had agreed to tell us about their experiences living in areas affected by regular drone attacks, aerial bombings and night raids.  Each of them noted that they also fear Taliban threats and attacks. “What can we do,” they asked, “when both sides are targeting us?”

The First Responder’s Tale

Jamaludeen, an emergency medical responder from Jalalabad, is a large man, with a serious yet kindly demeanor. He began our conversation by saying that he simply doesn’t understand how one human being can inflict so much harm on another. Last winter, NATO forces fired on his cousin, Rafiqullah, age 30, who was studying to be a pediatrics specialist.

“A suicide bomber had apparently blown himself up near the airport.  My cousin and two other men were riding in a car on a road leading to the airport.  It was 6:15 AM.  When they’d realized that NATO helicopters and tanks were firing missiles, they had left their car and huddled on the roadside, but they were easily seen. A missile exploded near them, seriously wounding Rafiqullah and another passenger, while killing their driver, Hayatullah.”

Hayatullah, our friend told us, was an older man, about 45 years old, who left behind a wife, two boys and one daughter.

Although badly wounded, Rafiqullah and his fellow passenger could still speak. A U.S. tank arrived and they began pleading with the NATO soldiers to take them to the hospital.  “I am a doctor,” said Rafiqullah’s fellow passenger, a medical student named Siraj Ahmad.  “Please save me!”  But the soldiers handcuffed the two wounded young men and awaited a decision about what to do next.  Rafiqullah died there, by the side of the road. Still handcuffed, Siraj Ahmad was taken, not to a hospital, but to the airport, perhaps to await evacuation. That was where he died.   He was aged 35 and had four daughters. Rafiqullah, aged 30, leaves three small girls behind.

And Jamaludeen knows that those girls, in one sense are lucky.  Four years ago, he tried to bring first aid as an early responder to a wedding party attacked by NATO forces.  Only he couldn’t, because there were no survivors. 54 people were killed, all of them (except for the bridegroom) women and children.  “It was like hell,” said Dr. Jamaludeen.  “I saw little shoes, covered with blood, along with pieces of clothing and musical instruments.  It was very, very terrible to me. The NATO soldiers knew these people were not a threat.”

The Manual Laborer’s Tale

Kocji, who makes a living doing manual laborer, is from a village of 400 families.  His story took place three weeks ago.  It started with a telephoned warning that Taliban forces had entered the Surkh Rod district of Jalalabad, which is where his village is located.  That day, at about 10:00 p.m., NATO forces entered his village en masse.  Some soldiers landed on rooftops and slid expertly to the ground on rope ladders.  When they entered homes, they would lock women and children in one room while they beat the men, shouting questions as the women and children screamed to be released.  On this raid, no one was killed, and no one was taken away.  It turned out that NATO troops had acted on a false report and discovered their error quickly.   False reports are a constant risk. – In any village some families will feud with each other, and NATO troops can be brought into those feuds, unwittingly and very easily, and sometimes with deadly consequences. Kocji objects to NATO forces ordering attacks without first asking more questions and trying to find out whether or not the report is valid.  He’d been warned of a threat from one direction, but the threats actually come from all sides.

The Student’s Tale

Rizwan, a student from the Pech district of the Kunar province, spoke next.

Twenty-five days ago, between 3 and 4 a.m., twelve children were collecting firewood in the mountains not far from his village.  The children were between 7 and 8 years old.  Rizwad actually saw the fighter plane flying overhead towards the mountains.  When it reached them, it fired on the twelve children, leaving no survivors.  Rizwad’s 8 year old cousin, Nasrullah, a schoolboy in the third grade, was among the dead that morning.

The twelve children belonged to eight families from the same village.  When the villagers found the bloodied and dismembered bodies of their children, they gathered together to demand from the provincial government some reason as to why NATO forces had killed them.  “It was a mistake,” they were told.

“It is impossible for the people to talk with the U.S. military,” says Rizwad.  “Our own government tries to calm us down by saying they will look into the matter.”

The Farmer’s Tale

Riazullah from Chapria Marnu spoke next.   Fifteen days previously, three famers in Riazullah’s area had been working to irrigate their wheat field.  It was early afternoon, about 3:30 p.m.  One of the men was only eighteen – he had been married for five months.  The other two farmers were in their mid-forties.  Their names were Shams Ulrahman, Khadeem and Miragah, and Miragah’s two little daughters were with them.

Eleven NATO tanks arrived.  One tank fired missiles which killed the three men and the two little girls. “What can we do?” asked Riazullah.  “We are caught between the Taliban and the internationals. Our local government does not help us.”

The Story of US/NATO Occupation

The world doesn’t seem to ask many questions about Afghan civilians whose lives are cut short by NATO or Taliban forces. Genuinely concerned U.S. friends say they can’t really make sense of our list – news stories merge into one large abstraction, into statistics, into “collateral damage,” in a way that comparable (if much smaller and less frequent) attacks on U.S. civilians do not.   People here in Afghanistan naturally don’t see themselves as a statistic; they wonder why the NATO soldiers treat civilians as battlefield foes at the slightest hint of opposition or danger; why the U.S. soldiers and drones kill unarmed suspects on anonymous tips when people around the world know suspects deserve safety and a trial, innocent until proven guilty.

“All of us keep asking why the internationals kill us,” said Jamaludeen.  “One reason seems to be that they don’t differentiate between people.  The soldiers fear any bearded Afghan who wears a turban and traditional clothes. But why would they kill children?  It seems they have a mission.  They are told to go and get the Taliban.  When they go out in their planes and their tanks and their helicopters, they need to be killing, and then they can report that they have completed their mission.”

These are the stories being told here.  NATO and its constituent nations may have other accounts to give of themselves, but they aren’t telling them very convincingly, or well.  The stories told by bomb blasts or by shouting home-invading soldiers drown out other competing sentiments and seem to represent all that the U.S./NATO occupiers ever came here to say.  We who live in countries that support NATO, that tolerate this occupation, bear responsibility to hear the tales told by Afghans who are trapped by our war of choice.  These tales are part of our history now, and this history isn’t popular in Afghanistan. It doesn’t play well when the U.S. and NATO forces state that we came here because of terrorism, because of a toll in lost civilian lives already exceeded in Afghanistan during just the first three months of a decade-long war – that we came in pious concern over precious stories that should not be cut short.

- Kathy Kelly, (kathy@vcnv.org), co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence www.vcnv.org  She is living in Kabul for the month of May as a guest of the Afghan Peace Volunteers – http://ourjourneytosmile.com/blog. She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

A large majority of Jordanian Members of Parliament (MPs) voted last week to pass a resolution to force the government to expel the Israeli ambassador from Amman over Israeli settlers attacks and attempts to occupy the Islamic holy site Al Aqasa Mosque in Jerusalem.

The resolution was sponsored by MP Yehiya Al Suad and was passed by a majority of 89 votes, enough to topple the government of Prime MinisterAbdullah Nsour from power if he declined to act on it. Although the resolution is not binding, the MPs however can force a vote of no confidence against his government and bring it down if the government did not expel the ambassador.

On the surface this sounds like a very serious hard politics and democracy in action by the MPs. But according to many Jordanian analysts and experts I talked to here in Amman, this whole thing was nothing but a show for the cameras and that the Israeli ambassador will not be expelled from Amman and the government will not be brought down. During a visit to the Parliament where I spent a considerable amount of time this past week speaking to several MPs including Speaker Saad Hayel al Souror, I found no indication during my conversations that there was any serious attempt or even a hint that  the Israeli ambassador  will  be expelled from Jordan.

MP Mohamad al Hejuj told me that although 89 MPs signed off on the resolution there were no real expectations and even skepticism by MPs about the likelihood of the seriousness of their resolution.

Why then 89 member of Parliament decided to create  a false perception of solidarity with the Palestinians  and  with al Aqsa Mosque  in Jerusalem fully knowing that their actions have no real value or even an honest effort.

Representative Mohamad Jamil Thahrawi explained to me saying that the whole issue was a spontaneous charade that grew out of hand. He said that none of the sponsors of the resolution thought that their resolution was serious enough to threaten the government. But since it garnered 89 votes, it created a constitutional quagmire whereby the government has to act on it and therefore risk a diplomatic battle with Israel and the US or risk losing a vote of confidence.

As a result several representatives who sponsored the resolution held a private session and decided to essentially kill it by allowing every sponsor to withdraw his vote including the main sponsor Yehya al Soud. Although this resolution stands at this point, but it is by all accounts a dead on arrival.

Political columnist Osama Rantisis who writes for the daily Al Arab al Youm thinks that this whole thing was a ploy by the Intelligence department who activated its allies in the Parliament to create this whole show. The Jordanian Intelligence department (the Mukhabarat) is accused of running the Parliament in accordance to its own agenda through members it help “electing” by rigging the Parliamentary elections.

Abdel Rahman Qatarneh a former candidate for parliament in 1993 told me that he was asked to meet with the former head of the intelligence department at that time Mustfa Qaisy in order officially declare him the winner of that seat 3 days before the elections took place or two other people will be declared the winners. The reason for that Qatarneh explained was to have him as the Muhkbarat’s man inside the Parliament. Qatarmeh refused and he lost the elections to the same two people the Mukhabrat told him they would win it.

Mohamad Khalaf al Hadid a well known anti-regime activist stated that “The current Parliament is filled with the Mukhabrat’s men who function by remote control from its headquarters in Amman.

- Ali Younes is a writer and analyst based in Washington D.C. He contibuted this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at: aliyounes98@gmail.com. and on Twitter @clearali.

An accountant by training and practice, I was forced by circumstances to learn how to cook, and to enjoy it too. My mother says that every decent woman must know how to cook, and that is where this story starts, with the search for a vast selection of my authentic recipes from Palestine that were adapted to modern life in Canada. That would open my eyes to the suffering that my people have gone through, and continue to go through.

I love food, but for some reason, I have never loved cooking. I left my parent’s home young, my mother taught me how to clean, knead the dough, but not how to cook.  However, my interaction with my mother in law taught me the importance of cooking. In her opinion, every woman, no matter what high-flying career she was in, should know how to cook.

And that is how I came to start searching for Palestinian recipes, a search that almost yielded nothing. To date, I continue cooking the indigenous recipes from my motherland and I can say that my folks really knew how to eat. Sadly, my yearning for more knowledge about my land Palestine led me to discover how oppressed my people have been, and so my story took a twist.

Having lived in Canada for a long time, with ghost memories of my land continually haunting me, I knew that my soul would find no peace and my heart no joy until I got something that would give me a tangible feel of the way my people lived or until I went for a sojourn in my motherland Palestine.

While Palestinians lived a good life in Kuwait, where I was born and grew up, they were segregated. Fathers and mothers in reunited families, told their children about Palestine. They spoke about the land from whence they had come and which they could not forget. My husband worked as a science teacher. He was always taken back to the events of 1967 when he walked on foot from Palestine to Jordan.  He was frustrated by the country’s unjust system. It was difficult to find a good job, to be promoted through one’s own efforts. It was all about who you knew.

He knew without a doubt that the days of the Palestinians were numbered in Kuwait, and that we would have to leave, for the second time, to a place unknown to us at this point. My husband was educated in French, he applied for immigration to Quebec and so we came. Few years after leaving Kuwait, the traumatic events of the Iraqi occupation, Palestinians in Kuwait were declared persona non grata. Kuwait expelled most of its Palestinians in retaliation of the PLO’s stand with Iraq.

I got married at age 17 and I only knew how to cook an egg, I was happy to marry as I thought that was more interesting than school, but didn’t know that cooking is part of marriage. I got so intimidated. I so badly needed to read a book about how to cook! Being in the kitchen was a horrific experience for me. To my surprise, my mother in law came to me and assured me in a sweet motherly tone. She promised to teach me how to cook; she really put me at ease.

It was surprising because she believed that I was never good enough for her son. She felt that I should have been fair skinned, light eyed in defiance of the dark Arab features resembling a Barbie doll. Nevertheless she wanted me to become a suitable wife for her son and grow “under her eyes”.

My mother prepared my aprons and bonnets made on her Singer 1950 sewing machine.  Throughout the years, there were epic failures, I pushed forward to challenge myself, I had to learn to cater to my husband’s palette and this was a valuable lesson which has made me appreciate my home and my material goods.  Going through the cooking tuition/apprentice from two passionate home cooks, with a keen interest in the tradition and culture of Palestinian food, the two women handed down their wisdom that was given with love, cooking free of complications and cheats, their advice was always right.  I thank them for imparting such wisdom. I appreciated every single moment spent in their company.

To date, I have written many Palestine solidarity articles, about the perpetual misery, torment, persecution, enslavement, and dehumanization of the occupation. I feel frustrated because I cannot communicate to you the full extent of this enduring evil. It transcends reality. However, I have never written even a single article on Palestinian dishes, because whatever was known of them could not be pieced together, not after Israel took our cuisines, branded them as their own without giving credit where it was due. Food is part of the history of a people. It tells a lot about people.

Hatred can be sparked by some little mishap maybe, but it can grow if it is given a sense of the injustices in human life. A defining moment in my life and journey occurred when I clearly realized that I was the child of a Palestinian mother who had filled our home with an atmosphere of love and optimism despite its being punctuated by grief and loss.

Born and raised outside Palestine, I was always yearning to go back there, to the land that my father had left to keep his children safe. As a child, I got addicted to watching the news; my parents cut news clips from the newspapers for me to read.  I kept thinking that things would eventually get better. A person killed every day on average in occupied Palestine is not that bad after all, I would tell myself. But I could not help facing reality. The loss of my parents’ home was an irreplaceable loss. Ever since I was little, I knew that I was attached to this land and that going back there would give me fulfillment. However, I just could not up and go because there were so many restrictions.

With so many beguiling accounts of the Intifada, the Israel occupation and general imprisonment of the masses in occupied Palestine, to an extent where a Palestinian had to have a permit to come back home, there is every reason to leave Palestine and never look back again. While that is true, strife, trouble, death and war seems to tie people tightly to their motherland and that is why no Palestinian is ashamed to call their country home.

Mention Palestine and the first thing that pops to mind is the never-ending conflict between Palestine and Israel. Depending on which side of the story you have heard, you will blame one of the two. However, the truth is that Palestine has been attacked time and again simply on the basis of its lack of as much muscle and firepower as Israel! Palestinians are a proud people. They know their history. Most important, they know the boundaries of their land. They have faith that one day they will be free and then life can go on as normal.

It is a story of sadness. It is hard to imagine that a sick person would be left to die just because Israel has the borders closed. As the world sits and watches as Gaza which is a part of Palestine is annexed away, the people of Palestine are only fighting for the most basic of rights, that of ownership and for a town that they have owned since time immemorial. While Israel seems determined to separate Gaza from where it belongs, that of course cannot be allowed, and no country would allow that. This is what has led to open Israel aggression against defenseless women and children.

Growing up, my father has shared tales and painted images that were very vivid in my mind of the dire situation of life in Palestine. This, and the urge to go verify whether it was all true made me want to go all the more.

When I talked to my family and friends in Palestine, it hit me how hard life had become there. Ok, so I had seen it in the Western Media, but most of the scripts that we got from those were pro-Israel and therefore they never showed the whole picture. But for that inborn Palestinian resilience, I know that I would never have ventured to go there.

However, deep into my preparations, I had a change of heart. How could I write of cuisines of a people who had been displaced from their home, a people who were free but everywhere in chains? People, grown up, supposedly independent but who could not even visit their kin in their former hometown just because their town had fallen under Israel? This is why the split must not be allowed at all! How can you be restricted from visiting your own home, visit the neighbors that you grew up with, be asked to show a permit to visit the village where you were born?

Israel was created by usurping Palestinian rights, Israelis find it necessary to deny Palestinians of their national rights and identity. This Israeli insecurity (or paranoia) increases whenever Palestinians assert their national identity. The simple truth is that the Palestinian people are a normal people with normal aspirations. They are no better but they are no worse than any other national group. What they aspire to, above all, is a piece of land to call their own, to live in freedom and dignity. As so often in the tragic history of Palestine, the victims were blamed for their own misfortunes. Establishing the state of Israel in May 1948 involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians.

I believe that all people are born equal. That is why I have never been pro-Arab or anti-Jewish, and I will never be. However, I am against the injustice that the Palestinians living in Occupied Palestine are facing, the depravity, the hunger, sickness, pain and death. Ok, my gourmet journey is stayed away for now, but it is not over because I believe that one day Palestine will be free and that she will bloom as is her right. God help me and if it is His will that I be alive by then, I will surely go in search of the indelible cuisines of my people. Then I will tell the world about it and for all the cuisines that Israel has taken from my people, I will let the world know.

Anger? I am not angry, I am just disappointed that the world has just closed its eyes to the Palestinians side of the story about the occupation. The western Media has been upbeat about how Palestinian militants launch attacks in Israel and then later on when Israel retaliates; they front women and children to portray attacks on civilians by Israel. However, in my research and follow up of the Palestine situation, I came across some really disturbing situations. In my time that I have been in the west, I can comfortably say that not even a single time have they ever reported anything right.

For example, in the BBC coverage of the wall that Israel was building, encroaching on the Palestinian territory, destroying farms and building in the process, the BBC, never once in its’ so-called ‘fair coverage’ of the affair showed how Palestinians were suffering as they were displaced to give way to the building of the illegal wall. In contrast, the media largely concentrated on spreading the notion that the illegal occupiers of Jewish land were bound to face a hard time when the wall would finally be in place.

How unfair, and what a wrong image that portrays. However, one thing that is for sure is that the media in the west will never come out with the true story about the Palestinian Intifada and that is why it is our duty now to do it online. What makes it even harder is that the western media is the most watched and followed in the World. However, I and other likeminded people who have seen how the western media reports this have taken it upon ourselves to help our motherland. Like my mother used to tell me, it is not what we can do collectively, you know, enmass that counts, but it is what we do individually. What will my outcry do, amongst so much loss? Amongst the hunger and pain, and what with the electronic Intifada going viral with stories from Palestine that people find hard to believe?

It is like a story I read one day of a boy who walked along the seashore that had many where he found an abundance of beached starfish that would perish on shore. He picked them up one by one and tossed them back into the water. Seeing that the starfish were so many, in thousands, one man asked the boy what he thought he could do about all of them. The boy replied that knew he could not save all of them but that the one he tossed back to the sea would live, and that would make all the difference. That is my position.

The world may have given up on the Palestinians, but we know that our identity matters a lot. We will not give up. We will each do our small part. The people who come out of Palestine will tell others what life is like there. We will continue telling the truth until everyone’s ears are ringing with the truth, for the truth is the truth is the truth!

Honesty is the best policy but what happens when it is only one sided? Well the smart thing would be for the honest party to continue being honest and that is what Palestinians will continue doing. Even if the whole world sides with Israel in its policy of open aggression against Palestine, we will continue getting out, and we will tell the truth. For those of us who have been born and brought up in the west, one of the greatest honors that we can do our beloved nation is to go there, see, taste, feel, hear and even partake of the pain that our kith and kin are going through, then come out and tell the world what is really going on.

I have had a very eventful life in the West. Ok, by the western standards, I know it looks boring but considering what my brothers and sisters in my motherland go through, it is a rich life. However, on the other hand, it is an empty life because I could not even eat Palestinian food. Remember about looking for a recipe indigenous to Palestine? Now, at last I understand what they mean when they say that home is always best because it is. There is that wanton feeling in me, to go out, to suffer with my people, to go through what they are going through because I feel that only that way will I be able to give a firsthand experience.

Above all, I want the world to hear the whole truth one day, and appreciate for what it is; the truth. The world should know that the sympathy seeking stories about how missiles are shot at Israel is just a curtain, to cover what is really happening behind the scenes. Israel is powerful, has powerful allies and is sadistic in the way that it locks ordinary citizens out of their homes, out of their ancient homeland where they have lived for generations and suddenly, they have to get a permit to go home. If this is not the definition of inhuman, what is? Why does the western media refuse to tell the truth as it is?

As I prepare to sojourn into Palestine, there is only one thing in my mind; to see, to experience and then continue with the push for freedom. That is not terrorism, is it? If we do not stand up for our rights, we know very well that no one will and that is why the fight must go on relentlessly. Unlike our Israel Brothers though, we will not fight with guns and brutality, but we will continue raising our voices, louder until someone listens.

That’s my story. Not a pretty one, is it? It started out as a search for the best Palestinian recipes but later on, it became a search for identity, for establishment and for liberty. The struggle for human rights must continue.

- Rana Abdulla lives in Canada. She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

“Every year the Israelis come up with a new narrative,” Jamal al-Dura told Ma’an. “Yes, Muhammad is still alive in our hearts and in the hearts of the Arab and Islamic nation as well as all the noble people who support the Palestinian cause.”

France 2 reporter Charles Enderlin’s reportage on the incident shows the death of 12-year-old Muhammad in the arms of his father in Sept. 30, 2000 after being caught in the crossfire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants at the start of the second intifada.

An Israeli report by the ministry of international affairs and strategy said raw footage of the incident showed that Muhammad was seen alive in the video.

“Israel committed that crime in cold blood, and they know quite well that Muhammad and the Palestinian people are going after them,” Jamal al-Durra told Ma’an.

“Who showered Muhammad and his father with bullets while they were unarmed?” he asked.

Muhammad was the eldest son in the al-Dura family. A year after his death, the family had another boy and named him after Muhammad. He is now 11 years old.

“I am proud that my father named me after my brother who died a martyr,” he told Ma’an.

In response to an AFP query Enderlin, the Jerusalem correspondent for the television channel that broadcast the original news report, said: “We are ready for an independent public inquiry.”

“We have always said, including to the supreme court, that we were ready for an independent public inquiry by international standards.”

Philippe Karsenty, director of watchdog group Media Ratings, was convicted of defamation in 2006 for accusing France 2 of doctoring the images in the original report, but the ruling was overturned in 2008.

An appeals court in Paris will issue its final ruling on the affair on Wednesday.

Israeli forces have killed 1,397 Palestinian children in the occupied Palestinian territories since 2000, the year of Muhammad al-Dura’s disputed death, according to Defense for Children International Palestine.

(Ma’an – maannews.net)

Palestinian-American Raed Zidan became the first Palestinian to reach the summit of the earth’s highest mountain last Saturday, dedicating his climb to Palestinians – especially political prisoners.

Zidan was one of 35 foreigners, along with 29 Nepalese Sherpa guides, intent on reaching the summit and raising a million dollars to promote education in Nepal. Calling themselves “Arabs With Altitude,” Zidan was joined by two men from Qatar and Iran, and by 25-year-old Raha Moharrak, who became the first Saudi Arabian woman to reach the world’s tallest peak.

According to Ynet: “Raed Zidan was born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents who immigrated from a village near Qalqilya. Zidan, who is living in the US, is a seasoned mountaineer who had previously scaled Mount Kilimanjaro. There, as on top of Nepal [Everest], he erected a Palestinian flag, saying he dedicates his feat to Palestinians, especially those “languishing” in Israeli prisons.”

This video will give you chills in more ways than one.  In a previous expedition, clad in his keffiyeh, Raed Zidan placed the Palestinian flag on the summit of Mount Vinson in Antarctica:

Raed Zidan is a United States citizen residing in Indianapolis and Dubai. He owns and operates Zidan Management Group, an Indianapolis multi-housing real estate development, acquisition and management business.  He is 41 years old, married, and has three children. Along with mountaineering, his passions are flying and auto rally racing.

It is ironic that the only news website that reported Zidan’s acts of political solidarity was the Israeli Ynet. I emailed the writer of the article, Elior Levi, who covers what is termed “Palestinian Affairs,” congratulating her on the scoop.  So far I have not received a reply. Maybe Levi did not find my reference to the climb as “Raed’s excellent aliyah” all that funny. Aliyah is the Hebrew word for ascent, which is more commonly used to denote Jewish immigration to Israel, considered a great achievement among Israelis.

A look at the comments about Zidan’s ascent under Levi’s report will give you an idea just how racist Israelis can be. Out of the first 15 responses there was only one that viewed the Palestinian climber’s accomplishment as something praiseworthy, and that comment elicited an angry reply.

The Emirati website Khaleej Times focused its report on the remarkable achievements of local “Arabs With Altitude” member Raha Moharrak, the Saudi woman who lives in the United Arab Emirates:

“The UAE’s fame has reached new heights with a Dubai-based Saudi woman scaling Mount Everest on Saturday and three other Arabs, with links to the country, inching to reach the top of the world.

“Mountaineering officials in Nepal said the 25-year-old graphic design graduate from the American University of Sharjah was among 64 climbers who successfully scaled Everest from Nepal’s side of the mountain, during a charity expedition.

“Raha Moharrak, the only female in the four-member ‘Arabs with Altitude’ group, has become the first ever Saudi woman to climb to the top of Mount Everest. “I really don’t care about being the first … so long as it inspires someone else to be the second,” Moharrak said ahead of her expedition.”

Moharrak, like Zidan, is an accomplished mountain climber.  Her achievement is noteworthy since Saudi Arabian culture is extremely restrictive for women; Moharrak would be legally prohibited from even driving an automobile there.

The ascent of Raed Zidan to the summit of Everest and his commitment to solidarity serves as a reminder that Palestinians will keep moving forward until they reach their ultimate goal:  a land which is free of Israeli oppression and a country where human and political equality is the birthright of all citizens.

- Ira Glunts is a retired college librarian who lives in Madison, NY. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. (This article was first published in http://mondoweiss.net)

This new short-film was produced by BADILs Ongoing Nakba Education Center which uses multi-media advocacy tools to document Palestine’s Ongoing Nakba. To view more films, photo-stories and audio pieces, please see the project website:

www.ongoingnakba.org

For further in-depth information about Palestine’s Ongoing Nakba please see BADILs main website: www.badil.org.

“This once again brings into question the American role in negotiations as a credible mediator,” Ashrawi said in a statement.

“Rather than providing Israel with immunity, the Obama administration should act responsibly and promote prospects for a just peace and Palestinian self-determination and freedom.”

The senior PLO official said the EU should go further than simply labeling settlement products by enforcing a “serious ban” on their sale.

“The US has used the so-called peace process as an instrument of Israeli impunity; it is about time to end such a policy.”

EU foreign ministers from 27 member states agreed over a year ago to enforce EU legislation and label products originating from illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

On February 22, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton called on EU foreign ministers to enforce legislation on labeling settlement goods and in April, 13 EU foreign ministers expressed support for the initiative, with the issue currently in discussion.

US Secretary of State John Kerry and senior US officials reportedly asked Ashton to delay enforcement of the proposal, with the Americans saying that it would harm Kerry’s efforts to restart peace talks, Israeli daily Haaretz reported.

A senior Israeli official told the Israeli daily that Israel had asked the US administration to intervene to delay the EU’s decision to follow through on labeling settlement products.

The decision to label settlement goods will likely be delayed until June.

“The EU decided to give Kerry the time he asked for and see whether the negotiations are resumed,” a European diplomat said, according to Haaretz.

(Ma’an – maannews.net)

(The following is part of an outtake from Pamela Olson’s book Fast Times in Palestine, published by Seal Press in March 2013.  The full story, with photos is posted on her blog.)

A friend from college named Cameron was in Israel visiting family for Passover. He was an adventurous soul, a world traveler and entrepreneur, with curly brown hair, blue eyes, and a slim athletic build. When his family learned I was in the Holy Land, they invited me to their Passover seder — until they realized I lived in Ramallah, at which point they promptly rescinded the invitation.

Cameron was a strong supporter of Israel and hawkish on security issues, but he was embarrassed by his family’s behavior. I told him he could make it up to me by visiting the West Bank for a week and seeing the occupation for himself. To my pleasant surprise he agreed. In order not to upset his family, he told them he was heading to the Sinai for a week.

He arrived in Ramallah just as the Dancing Traffic Cop was beginning his shift in Al Manara. Tall, lanky, and graceful, wearing reflective silver aviator sunglasses, the man didn’t just direct traffic. He made a show of it. Cameron and I watched in amazement as his long arms moved in quick, precise, exaggerated arcs and twirls to match his intricate, impeccable footwork.

Even when he took a break and headed to the coffee stand under the palm trees, he didn’t just walk. He strutted, smiling with his razor-sharp Robocop jaw line, tipping his hat to passers-by as if he were the uncontested king of Al Manara.

Cameron looked at me, demanding an explanation. I could only shrug. I didn’t question it anymore. I just enjoyed it.

* * *

A few days later, Cameron and I took a service taxi to the Dheisha Refugee Camp near Bethlehem. I found a receptionist at the Ibdaa Cultural Center and asked if there was anyone who could show us around the camp.

“Probably you should talk to Jihad,” she said.

Cameron tensed beside me, unable to parse the strange sentence. He didn’t know ‘Jihad’ was a common name in the Arab world.

Jihad arrived a few minutes later. He had a medium build, a light beard, and the sporty wardrobe and tightly-coiled defensiveness of a ghetto youth. He greeted us politely without meeting our eyes and took us on a quick walking tour. It was standard fare for a Palestinian refugee camp — narrow streets, concrete buildings, cramped alleys, and occasional touches of bougainvillea or decorative tiles to lend a whiff of dignity. The residents were mostly from villages west of Bethlehem that had been depopulated and destroyed in 1948. The ruins of their villages were just a few miles away. Their hilly lands had been forested with conifers and turned into an Israeli national park.

Jihad took us back to the Ibdaa Center and showed us a game room where two middle-aged men in tank tops were playing a fierce game of ping pong. When one missed a tough shot he muttered under his breath, “Allahu akbar!”

Cameron looked at me, alarmed. This was another word like jihad that only meant political hate speech in Cameron’s mind. I whispered, “They say Allahu akbar in a lot of different ways. Sometimes ironically. Right now he’s saying it like, ‘Good Lord!’ or ‘God Almighty!’”

“Ah.” Cameron relaxed. He even seemed to smile a little, as if the world had suddenly become slightly less dark.

As Jihad got to know us better, his bored affect began to melt away. He told us a performance would take place that night in the center’s small theater and invited us to attend.

The performers were a group of disarmingly self-possessed children from the camp who sang and danced with the names of their destroyed villages hanging around their necks. They all held keys in their hands, symbols of the homes their parents and grandparents had left behind.

The implication was unmistakable: Sooner or later, one way or another, they would reclaim their birthright and return home. Cameron looked deeply shaken.

* * *

Nablus was our final stop. We made it through the Huwara checkpoint without problems, and Nick met us in Nablus’s main traffic circle. He looked restless and excited as he led us to the Balata Refugee Camp, where he said a militant rally was taking place. Cameron looked anxious but gamely followed.

The crowd thickened as we neared a small stadium packed with onlookers. Nick muttered, “The rally’s being put on by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. The PA is just starting to assert control over ‘lawless’ areas. Balata Camp is one of them, and it’s an Al Aqsa stronghold.”

“Aren’t the Al Aqsa Brigades part of Fatah?” I asked.

“Yeah, they’re an armed offshoot of Fatah. But they have cells all over the West Bank, and the cells usually have some level of autonomy. Right now Palestinian police can’t even go into the Old City. They don’t dare. It’s the militants’ stomping grounds.”

His eyes widened and his voice dropped further. “The police are coming in now. You see them?”

“Yeah,” I whispered back. “What are they doing?”

“I think they’re just here to assert their presence.” We could see them and the militants eyeing each other with the tension of estranged brothers in the same room. I began to feel nervous. The first big clash between the Al Aqsa Brigades and the PA police might be brewing right here.

A militant started giving a speech. At one point he stopped, stared at the policemen, and fired a single shot in the air. The policemen didn’t react other than clutching their guns more tightly.

We quietly slipped out, and the rally ended later without incident. But it was another harbinger of changing times. Over the next few years, nearly all the militants in Nablus would be finished off, bought off, disbanded, or absorbed into the police.

They still ruled the city now, and as we walked through the Old City, a group of young militants surrounded us and started chatting with us. They didn’t seem threatening, just bored. One of them, a goofy, awkward youth, had a baby face and was missing an arm. His gun was slung over his stump, and he was constantly adjusting it as he shuffled down the alley. Cameron ducked and shifted every time the gun momentarily came to rest pointing at him.

It was like looking at ghosts in a way. They had essentially called a death sentence upon themselves by picking up guns in this environment. This young man would be killed by Israeli soldiers in the next few months. Nick would see his face on a poster.

We walked to the Yasmina Hotel. An Egyptian film from the sixties was playing in the lobby. Cameron did a double-take when he saw it. The women wore skimpy clothes and the main character, played by Egyptian actor Adel Imam, looked and acted like Cheech Marin.

“Things were a lot more liberal and laid-back in the sixties and seventies,” I explained. “The religious revival didn’t really start until after Israel defeated the secular Arab nationalists in 1967.”

When we got to our room, Nick asked Cameron what had struck him most during his stay in the West Bank.

“Those kids with the names of their villages around their necks in the Dheisha Refugee Camp,” he said. “Israel will never let the refugees return. It would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish-majority democracy. But the way those kids are being brought up, I don’t see how they can be happy without it. With that kind of thinking, I don’t see how there can ever be peace.” He shook his head bleakly. “It’s a lot more hopeless than I thought.”

I couldn’t help but reflect on the irony of the fact that he was criticizing the refugees for their inflexibility in demanding their rights, when he was just as rigid in his unquestioned belief that their rights must necessarily be denied.

(To read the full entry on Pamela’s blog, click here.  To learn more about Fast Times in Palestine, see the book’s website.)

- Pamela Olson grew up in small town Oklahoma and studied physics and political science at Stanford University. She lived in Ramallah for two years, during which she served as head writer and editor for the Palestine Monitor and as foreign press coordinator for Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi’s 2005 presidential campaign. She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.