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Thursday, February 2, 2012

MOST RECENT POLL: A majority of Palestinian youth express their support for a two-state solution (Israel and Palestine within the 1967 boarders).

AWRAD

Fieldwork: 15-17 January 2012

Sample Size: 1200 Palestinian Youth (18-30 years old)
West Bank & Gaza
Margin of error: + 3 %

Highlights:

•The majority of youth are skeptical about the direction where the Palestinian society is heading.

•48 percent of youth respondents describe themselves as politically very active.

•20 percent of the youth participated in activities directed at ending the internal division.

•72 percent are willing to participate in protest activities against the occupation.

•A vast majority of youth (87 percent) have confidence in the ability of their generation to lead the country into the future. However, 57 percent of Palestinian youth feel that they personally cannot have an impact on public life.

•43 percent of the youth respondents believe that the changes taking place elsewhere in the Arab world will positively affect the Palestinian situation.

•A majority of youth (52 percent) express their support for a two-state solution (Israel and Palestine within the 1967 boarders).

•A majority of youth (59 percent) blame Fatah and Hamas equally for the division.

•Half of the youth believe that non-violence is the best means to end the occupation and establish an independent state.

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ATFP World Press Roundup: Middle East News

ATFP is dedicated to advocating that it is in the American national interest to promote an end to the conflict in the Middle East through a negotiated agreement that provides for two states - Israel and Palestine - living side by side in peace and security. The Task Force was established in 2003 to provide an independent voice for Palestinian-Americans and their supporters and to promote peace. AFTP’s Board of Directors is made up of a large group of noted Palestinian-Americans who agree with these principles.

ATFP works primarily in Washington, DC, and seeks to build strong working relationships with government departments and agencies, think tanks and NGOs and the media. It has developed lines of communication with the US, Palestinian, Israeli and Jordanian governments in order to pursue its policy advocacy goals. ATFP has also engaged in humanitarian fundraising to support health and education causes in the occupied Palestinian territories.

ATFP is strictly opposed to all acts of violence against civilians no matter the cause and no matter who the victims or perpetrators may be. The Task Force advocates the development of a Palestinian state that is democratic, pluralistic, non-militarized and neutral in armed conflicts.

AFP News: Palestinians return 'lost' Israeli soldier to unit

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http://news.yahoo.com/palestinians-return-lost-israeli-soldier-unit-115443209.html

An Israeli soldier who became separated from his unit during an operation in a Palestinian West Bank village was safely returned to his fellow troops by local residents, Israeli media said Thursday.

The Israeli army confirmed that the soldier appeared to have gotten lost in the incident, but said they were still investigating how he was able to regain contact with his unit.

"From an initial investigation he was separated from his unit on Wednesday night but the rest of the matter is under investigation," an army spokesman told AFP.

According to Israeli media reports, the soldier entered the village in a convoy of jeeps, but at some point alighted from his vehicle.

When the convoy left the village, close to the West Bank city of Ramallah, the soldier found himself stranded.

A group of local residents then escorted him to a nearby military base, where he was reunited with his unit, the media reports said.

The army confirmed that the incident occurred in the village of Budrus, which gained a measure of fame for its non-violent fight against the route of Israel's security barrier....READ MORE

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Greenwashing the Occupation By Julie Holm for MIFTAH

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Greenwashing the Occupation By Julie Holm for MIFTAH February 01, 2012

One of the things that have affected me greatly from all the horrors of the Israeli occupation is the uprooting of Palestinian olive trees. In Palestine, olive trees are valued for their historical presence, their beauty, symbolic connotations, and most importantly for their economic significance. Unfortunately it is not rare that we hear of Palestinian olive trees being uprooted or burned by the Israeli army or by settlers. Often, if the trees are not burned or destroyed by bulldozers they are brought to settlements and replanted as a kind of war token, a symbol of everything the Israelis rob from the Palestinians.

But it is not just the uprooting and stealing of trees that is used by Israel as a tool in the occupation. They actually plant trees on Palestinian land, covering up ethnic cleansing with environmental concerns. This is called ‘greenwashing’; using greenery to cover up evidence of violent displacement and destruction. After destroying villages, bulldozing agricultural land, uprooting olive trees and stealing land and vital water sources the State of Israel together with the Jewish National Fund (JNF) disguises the obliteration and claim the land by replanting it, under the pretense of environmentalism. It is not saving the environment that is the goal here, however; these actions have explicit colonial purposes. By banishing Palestinians from their land, Israel seizes the property held by Palestinians for thousands of years. Planting a forest of trees to cover up the destruction, the JNF turns one of the most life affirming symbols into a weapon of occupation and colonialism.

The JNF is most commonly known for its campaign to ‘plant a tree in Israel’ to ‘make the desert bloom’. The fund was created in 1901 to acquire land for a Jewish state in Palestine, and by 1948 around two-thirds of the Palestinian population had been forcibly removed from their homeland. On the ruins of hundreds of depopulated and destroyed Palestinian villages the JNF built forests and parks. This served two purposes: to hide the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and to prevent the Palestinian refugees from returning to their homes.

These practices are still ongoing today, especially in the Naqab desert in the south and in the Jordan Valley, where ‘development’ projects continue to forcibly displace Palestinians to make way for Jewish settlements and JNF parks and forests. This only gets worse by the fact that the Israeli state and the JNF hides behind the pretence of caring for the environment. The truth is that historically the JNF has not been concerned about the environment at all. Partnering with the state of Israel they destroy the natural habitat and way of life of Palestinians who have lived in the area for thousands of years. By using hazardous chemicals and planting trees that are not native to the land, the JNF has inflicted serious harm on the natural environment in Palestine. The extensive planting of pine trees has killed off much of the native habitat in addition to causing massive forest fires.

On Sunday, February 5, the JNF is having a ‘Green Sunday’, encouraging people to donate money to ‘plant trees in Israel’. The planting of trees has powerful symbolic value for the propaganda and fundraising purposes with the Jewish diaspora. The JNF continues to serve as a global fundraiser for Israeli ethnic cleansing and occupation. Each year they raise more than $60 million in the United States alone. Further the JNF and its affiliate organizations enjoy charitable status in over 50 countries. The JNF continues to promote its ‘environmental’ credentials at global summits and international conferences.

In relation to ‘Green Sunday’ the ‘Stop the JNF Campaign’ is asking the international community to take a stand against the greenwashing. The campaign is an international effort aimed at ending the JNFs role in the Israeli occupation. Palestinian civil society calls on international environmentalists to stop the JNF and expose them for what they really do; covering up ethnic cleansing with a fake concern for the environment.

Julie Holm is a Writer for the Media and Information Department at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH). She can be contacted at mid@miftah.org.

MIFTAH VISION

An independent, democratic and sovereign Palestinian state, which grants Palestinians their basic rights, preserves their dignity, and enjoys international recognition and respect.

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

The Middle East's "invisible refugees"

[LIBYA] Photo: Heba Aly/IRIN The Alhelis camp in Benghazi for displaced people from the town of Tawergha. Some Palestinians were specifically targeted - their homes were ransacked and people disappeared - in Benghazi and elsewhere, by both sides in the conflict

Evacuated where? And by whom?

"Where Palestinian refugees should, could, or might want to be safely evacuated to, and by whom is a... complex issue," Fiddian-Qasmiyeh writes. "Can the international community either expect, or indeed responsibly allow, Palestinians to `return' to Gaza, the refugee camps in Lebanon, or the explosive situation in Syria?"

Despite vulnerability for Palestinians across the region, Arab states have resisted permanent resettlement solutions outside of the Middle East out of a fear that they would jeopardize the Palestinian right to return to their original homeland, putting the collective goal to return at loggerheads with the individual's best interests of safety.

But resettlement remains an option, current UNHCR representative in Libya Gignac said, albeit a sensitive one. Palestinian refugees in Iraq who tried to flee the violence there after the 2003 US invasion and were refused entry at the Jordanian border were eventually resettled in Brazil after being stranded in the Rweished border camp for years.

"Technically, there is no protection gap," he said. "If you're a Palestinian in Libya, you do fall under UNHCR. It shouldn't be an issue mandate-wise or legal-wise. But in practice, Palestinians being so political and all these sensitivities being around them, if we apply our mandate which includes [certain] solutions, there are issues. They are not always wanted...Palestinians themselves have internalized this notion and feel guilty about integrating in countries because they feel they lose the right of return... that they have somehow betrayed the cause," Gignac added.

As far as UNHCR is concerned, a refugee never loses the right to return to his or her homeland, even if citizenship in another country is acquired. Still, Fiddian-Qasmiyeh told IRIN the Libyan example shows that theory and practice can diverge, raising many questions about the real options available to Palestinian "refugee-migrants".

"We do need to take the protection needs seriously. That requires that conversation [about gaps and solutions] takes place."

Analysis: The Middle East's "invisible refugees"

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Time Magazine: “The People Are Suffocating”: West Bank Economy Struggles Under Pressure From U.S. Congress

"In a donor economy – which Palestine emphatically is – tides and waves are governed by the whims of distant overlords as much as by global finance. Since 2007, Washington has sent some $4 billion to the West Bank, intent on encouraging the moderate governance of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, whose secular Fatah party the militants of Islamist Hamas had just chucked out of Gaza. While Israel enforced a siege on the coastal strip in hopes of making Hamas less popular, the international community gushed dollars into Ramallah. Thus did the city just north of Jerusalem take on the look of a boom town, its hills stippled with construction cranes and flashy new restaurants, especially on the north end, where aid agencies and “non-governmental organizations” set up shop.

Most of the U.S. money was funneled through NGOs, groups dedicated to “build the capacity” of, say, the Palestinian legal system, or to encourage equality or empowerment for women. And if, as in any aid economy, the demonstrated success of any program was open to debate, the effort put money in the pockets of the educated, Western-oriented locals who worked there. Those are the people being laid off now.

Next to go will be government employees, whose salaries form the backbone of the economy. It’s a peculiar situation. Palestinians are so good at business that they dominate economic life in countries where they began as refugees, like Jordan and, no kidding, El Salvador. But the West Bank is not an ideal business setting: Israeli troops control the borders, Israeli civil servants the ports, Israeli settlements block access to some 40 percent of the land, and on several occasions, Israeli politicians have held back the tax and custom revenues they are obliged by treaty to collect on behalf of the Palestinians."

“The People Are Suffocating”: West Bank Economy Struggles Under Pressure From U.S. Congress http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2012/01/30/the-people-are-suffocating-west-bank-economy-struggles-under-pressure-from-u-s-congress/
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Monday, January 30, 2012

This Week in Palestine: Palestinian Women in Resistance

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Palestinian Women in Resistance
By Cairo Arafat

Hana rises early each morning. She lovingly, but hurriedly awakens her young children. She prepares breakfast and sandwiches for them. She makes sure that they have properly washed up and dressed for school. They all eat a very modest breakfast and rush out the door. The youngest one is dropped off at the preschool, while her eldest son runs to his school. Hana and her two daughters hurry on to the local primary school where Hana is a mathematics teacher. After teaching all day, Hana rushes home … many more chores and duties remain. She gathers up her children as they chatter about the day’s events and what they have to do for homework. She will be there to feed them, to help them with their studies, to listen to them, and to provide guidance. Hana and her children still live in a temporary shack that she and her husband built when their home was demolished by the Israeli Occupation Forces. Life goes on. Hana resists the occupation by maintaining her humanity, her insistence that she and her family have the right to life, education, and health despite the challenges and violations of Israeli occupation. They remain firmly rooted in their homeland and are preparing themselves for tomorrow.

Layla sits quietly by the window and gazes out at the hills around her. She stares at budding shoots of flowers and greenery that are in abundance due to the recent rains. She pulls out her little sketchbook and starts to draw them. Later on she will transfer the drawing to her book of squares. The flowers she has seen will be formed into patterns that she shares with other women who will embroider them onto dresses, tablecloths, pillows, and bookmarks. These women hope to be able to sell their handicrafts in local and international markets. The small xxxx’s of the cross-stitch provide meagre income for many women, but they persist. It is a cherished traditional handicraft. The colours, the patterns, and the women embroidering together, sharing their jokes and their resources, are integral to resistance. They will not be crushed. They continue to create and are creative and productive members of Palestinian society. They resist oppression by using the tools available to them to ensure their own livelihoods and the well-being of their families. Layla quietly rolls her wheelchair across the carpet and opens the door to greet her fellow embroiderers. Layla was injured while demonstrating in her village. Despite her physical injury, she continues to challenge the occupier’s attempts to take away her land - the source of her inspiration and being.

The occupation strives to kill the spirit of our people. It cuts people off from water, land, roads, services, and one another. People in villages such as Nabi Saleh and Walajeh are prevented from accessing their own springs and wells. Women wanting to harvest olives from their trees in the hills and valleys of Nablus, Ramallah, and Khalil do so at risk of being shot at by Israeli soldiers and settlers. Each day, thousands of young children are blocked from going to school by Israeli-imposed electric gates, checkpoints, closures, and the Wall. Pregnant women have to cross Israeli-imposed roadblocks and closures in order to reach their “local” health clinics. Nevertheless, women refuse to give in to these challenges. They still carry water from distant sources to be used at home, and they pick the olives from their olive groves. They work hard alongside their husbands, brothers, and fathers to ensure that they can provide the basic necessities for the family. They walk their children to schools and stumble over rock and cement barriers to reach their doctors. They defy the occupier’s wish that they desist in their love and steadfastness for Palestine, their homeland. This is resistance.

Resistance takes many forms. Palestinian women have been at the heart of sustainable development in Palestine. Although they only represent 15 percent of the official workforce, they provide a substantial contribution to the informal labour market. In addition, they are underpaid and are not equitably compensated when they provide the same services and contributions as men. They continue to be productive members of society, however, and are slowly moving towards greater representation and participation within civil, economic, political, legal, and judicial forums. These gains have demanded much effort and perseverance on the part of women. Despite the toll, women continue to persist in their demands to be heard and to be given equal opportunities to assist in the state-building process. These efforts have taken place despite the Israeli occupation, which attempts to disempower Palestinian women, men, youth, and children, and despite the negative social and cultural norms and attitudes that seek to limit women’s influence and participation within society.

It is easy to belittle the day-to-day contributions of average Palestinian women. Yet it is the small details of our existence that have allowed us to continue in our fight for freedom. It’s the young girls heaving their heavy schoolbags onto their backs and trekking long distances to reach their school. But they are rewarded. They find a classroom and a capable teacher who is eager to educate them. They can continue to achieve their dreams of becoming future teachers, engineers, and computer programmers. It’s the mother who has planted a small garden in order to provide her family with fresh vegetables to keep them strong and healthy. It’s the businesswomen who contribute to vocational training and awareness-raising programmes for other women. It’s the nurse and doctor who cross checkpoints to vaccinate young children living in isolated villages. It’s the mother who sells her last piece of jewellery so that she can fund her child’s operation. These actions have become the norms of our lives, but they are the foundations of our resistance. They are built on our humanity.

Resistance is embedded within all Palestinian women. Girls going to schools, youth going to colleges and universities, women doctors, nurses, teachers, lawyers, judges, farmers, caregivers, Palestinian women who are detained in Israeli prisons, those participating in demonstrations, visiting their families and loved ones imprisoned within Israel, and the infant girl born early this morning are all “resistance fighters.” They defy Israeli occupation by seeking life, liberty, and happiness within their homeland … Palestine.
Palestinian women drawing a mural.


Cairo Arafat works at Save the Children UK and UNICEF and has numerous years of experience in establishing national programmes to safeguard the well-being of Palestinian children. She has worked as the director of the National Plan of Action for Palestinian Children as well as with the Government Media Center and the Ministry of Planning. Her work has focused on children’s rights and children’s psychosocial well-being.

UNWRA NEWS: Refusal to grant travel documents traps family in Gaza for 10 years

10 December was International Human Rights Day, the day the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted. To mark the day, OHCHR (oPT) and UNRWA are putting the spotlight on human rights stories and rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territory. In this series, we look at how the occupation and its associated regime affect the daily lives of ordinary Palestinians, raising questions about the protection of their human rights.

Mona Khrais, 26, her mother and father, and five of her siblings, are trapped in Gaza. Whether border crossings to Egypt or Israel are open, or they receive prestigious invitations abroad, is irrelevant. The Khrais family does not have travel documents or passports and cannot obtain them.

Mona’s father, Abd Elfattah Khrais, has experienced double exile. He fled to Gaza in 1948 as a refugee. During the 1967 war, he was studying abroad, and was forbidden from returning by the occupying Israeli authority. Israel re-categorised him as a “displaced person” and refused to identify him as Palestinian.

Abd lived in exile for 33 years, married, and had eight children in Saudi Arabia. The family was able to obtain Egyptian travel documents, which Egypt grants to Palestinians living outside of Palestine. They used these documents to enter Gaza in 2000 as visitors. Two of Mona’s siblings travelled to Canada and the United Arab Emirates instead, and are now unable to rejoin the family.

Trapped in Gaza since age 16

Mona has not left Gaza since she entered at age 16. “Now, I have local identification to use just inside Gaza,” Mona explains. “But outside these borders, it is meaningless.” Mona’s situation and treatment are in direct violation of Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.”

They are caught in a complicated conflict of identification and denied their right to citizenship: Egypt cannot re-issue the Khrais family’s expired travel documents, which are only given to Palestinians living outside of Palestine. However, the family cannot apply for travel documents from the Palestinian Authority, as Israel denies them official Palestinian identification. “Everyone has the right to a nationality”, states Article 15 of the UDHR. By denying identification to Palestinians who lack second citizenship, the Israeli authorities also violate the human right to nationality.

Mona has tried to make the best of the past 10 years. She works at the Centre for Human Rights in Gaza and is completing an advanced degree in Business Administration. However, she dreams of travelling to see her brother and sister abroad, and of being able to complete her degree outside of Gaza.

Tags: blockade | Gaza | human rights | protection

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A Tool Box... for those already involved... a poem by Anne Selden Annab

A Tool Box
for those already involved

If you believe
in Palestine
you might need a tool box
to break away
from those who don't

Take pliers
and carefully unscrew
the nuts attached
to nay saying ninnies
the cynics and the usurpers
the la la landers
going no where-
the religiously confused
and the politically naive.

Take a screw driver
and to tighten solid bolts
turn right- firmly.

Turn left to loosen and dislodge
all the many distractions
attached to negations and nastiness
of one type or another-
toss them gently into a toy box
for tinkering with when bored...
they are not serious state building stuff
but they can be quite entertaining.

Wheels are already round,
no reason to reinvent them.

Keep in mind small cogs move fast,
large ones slow- but with more torque.


poem copyright ©2012 Anne Selden Annab

Resenting the Lights of Jerusalem By: Joharah Baker for MIFTAH

The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy

VISION

An independent, democratic and sovereign Palestinian state, which grants Palestinians their basic rights, preserves their dignity, and enjoys international recognition and respect.

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Resenting the Lights of Jerusalem

Date posted: 30/01/2012

By: Joharah Baker for MIFTAH

The first time I came to Palestine I was nine years old. This was also the first time I saw what my parents simply called “the lights of Jerusalem” visible from the balcony of my grandparents’ house in the village of Bir Nabala. One clear summer night, my mother stood with me on the open balcony overlooking lush green hills covered in olive groves out between the mountains on the horizon. In the distance were the colored lights of a city. This, said my mother, is Jerusalem, before she proceeded into a lively recap of her childhood years trudging along those same mountains to her elementary school in Beit Hanina. While that was interesting, the lights, the beautiful lights were what caught my attention. They were so distant, yet so close and they were the lights of Jerusalem, the city we were weaned on as children, the name that cropped up in conversations and songs as we sat in our American living room and went to our American schools to always remind us that we were Palestinian.

That was many many years ago and the lights of Jerusalem do not hold that same warm nostalgia that they did before. Today, when I go out on that same balcony (now inhabited by my uncle’s family), the lights are noticeably closer, practically in Bir Nabala’s back yard. And now, knowing what I know and having seen the encroachment first hand, I resent the lights and what they stand for.

It is one thing to hear about Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem and it is quite another to witness them first hand, even if from a distance. The “lights of Jerusalem” which meant so much to me as a child, are now a bitter reminder that more Palestinian land – the land my mother and uncles would walk through to get to school – is being stolen to ensure that Jerusalem remains under Israeli rule.

What makes this revelation even more bitter, is the sad state of our political reality. Palestinians bent over backwards to appease the United States, the Europeans and the Jordanians. They bit the bullet, they went to Amman, I’m sure against their better judgment and were shot down yet again. Even as Palestinians and Israelis sat across from each other, new settlement units were being built, or approved or planned. Even where new construction wasn’t going up, Palestinians homes were coming down, all for the sake of the settlements.

This is not about statistics, but about what an average person sees with the naked eye. And what all of us see, all of us who have lived in Palestine, who have lived in Jerusalem or are banned from even reaching it, is that Israel is not interested in any real solution. If only the likes of Mitt Romney, the ignorant and arrogant Republican presidential candidate who so self-righteously decided that it was the Palestinians who did not want peace could look out across my uncle’s balcony, he would see the difference that 30 years can make in the theft of a land.

Unfortunately, what we “see” is just the tip of the iceberg. While actual settlement buildup of structures may occupy just over one percent of the land, it is the infrastructure and the land allotted to the settlements which devours so much of the West Bank and Jerusalem. According to a Peace Now factsheet, “more than 40 percent of the West Bank is under the direct control of settlers or settlements and off-limits to Palestinians.” This is because, according to the organization, “10 percent of the West Bank is included in the "municipal area," or the jurisdictional borders of the settlements,” adding that, “These borders are so large that they allow settlements to expand many times over onto land that is completely off-limits to Palestinians.”

Furthermore, “34 percent of the West Bank has been placed under the jurisdiction of the settlements' "Regional Councils." That is, more than an additional one-third of the West Bank has been placed under the control of the settlers, off-limits to Palestinians.

The truth is, when the Palestinians, along with the Europeans and even the Americans say that settlements are an obstacle to peace, it is a gross understatement. With the network of settlements in the West Bank and especially in and around Jerusalem, there is zero chance for a viable, independent Palestinian state to ever come into being. That is hardly an obstacle; it is a train wreck.

Joharah Baker is a Writer for the Media and Information Department at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH). She can be contacted at mid@miftah.org.

Sunday, January 29, 2012

My letter to the Philadelphia Inquirer RE Point Counterpoint: The upcoming Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Conference

Point Counterpoint: Aim to promote human rights of the Palestinians. By Ali Abunimah
http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/inquirer/20120129_Aim_to_promote_human_rights_of_the_Palestinians_.html
& Point Counterpoint: Anti-Israeli agenda expected at Penn conference By R. James Woolsey and Jonathan Schanzer
http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/inquirer/20120129_Anti-Israeli_agenda_expected_at_Penn_conference.html

Dear Editor,

R. James Woolsey and Jonathan Schanzer carefully crafted calculated objections to firmly condemn the upcoming Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Conference, using the idea of the conference as a launching pad for their own ardently pro-Israel/anti-Palestine story lines. Their approach totally entrenches the conflict, empowering and exasperating extremists and dismissive attitudes on all sides.

Abumimah is absolutely right that the very real plight of the Palestinians is an intolerable situation and "is at the root of problems that affect the whole world." BUT... there is more to the story than what one can read in one op-ed. Fact is I'd have more faith in Ali Abunimah's advocacy for Palestine and his Boycott Israel efforts if he weren't so obsessed with promoting a one state agenda in addition to his work to promote the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign.

One-state advocacy is a continuation of the Israel/Palestine conflict, as one-state advocacy foolishly dismantles the leverage of international law and existing UN Resolutions and The Arab Peace Initiative which can and should be used to stop Israel from usurping even more Palestinian land and rights.

Universal basic human rights (including but not limited to full respect for every refugee's very real right to return to original homes and lands) are a crucially important element in creating a just and lasting peace with a negotiated two state solution to once and for ALL end the Israel/Palestine conflict... A fully secular end to the conflict, and a fully secular beginning to peace, progress and true security for ALL.

Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab

NOTES
The Golden Rule... Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

"Understanding individuals as citizens, and not subjects or wards of states, reframes the state as the guarantor of the individual and collective rights of the citizenry rather than the solution to all social challenges. The idea that governance requires legitimacy that can only be achieved through the consent of the governed has become widespread in the Arab world." Ziad Asali, founder of The American Task Force on Palestine: Arabs deserve a party of the citizen

"The grass isn’t much greener on the other side of the wall, though. Israel is supposedly the sole democracy in the Middle East (even if this seems to be changing), and yet gender segregated streets and buses is becoming more and more common. It has been estimated that 500 bus journeys in Israel are segregated daily, which means that women are expected to sit in the back." Julie Holm for MIFTAH: Gender Divides on Both Sides of the Green Line

"
This year at Davos, I want to talk about social and economic equity. I want to see the needs and aspirations of women, young people, our poorest and most marginalised brothers and sisters on the global agenda. It is the responsibility of each one of us to make their voices heard and to build a world that is worthy of them - a world worthy of all of us." Elders blog: Time to close the gap

"... there are analysts, both in the Arab world and outside it, with a solid grounding in the region who try to act as a compass on the path to a better understanding of events.... For a lively and challenging take on events in the region, there is a regular blog by Hussein Ibish, Senior Research Fellow at the Washington-based American Task Force on Palestine and a tireless Tweeter." NYTimes blogs Harvey Morris Attempting to Answer the Arab Question