Welcome to Bethlehem, Secretary Kerry: A call for humanity by Bethlehem Mayor Vera Baboun

 [AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

"Secretary Kerry, just as our city received Joseph and Mary more than 2,000 years ago, in 1948 Bethlehem received waves of refugees expelled from their homes in the Jerusalem area. Today they live mainly in three refugee camps in and around the city: Duheisha, al-Azza and Aida. Many have held onto the keys of their original homes for generations. Their keys, dear secretary, are not a symbol of revenge, but a call for humanity."Bethlehem Mayor Vera Baboun

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=644870

Published Wednesday 06/11/2013 (updated) 09/11/2013

Bethlehem Mayor Vera Baboun pictured in front of the Church
of the Nativity.

By Vera Baboun

Dear Secretary Kerry,
You are most welcome to the holy city of Bethlehem. It is an honor for me, as the mayor of Bethlehem, to welcome you on your most recent trip to our occupied homeland, in order to achieve the two-state solution, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security. The nobility of your goal makes me extremely proud of your visit, and particularly because Bethlehem serves for many as an eye-opener.

Our biblical city could be one of the driving forces for our state. Just to give you an example: The distance between the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem is only 10 kilometers, and a highway would link us with the Dead Sea in less than 20 minutes. However, Palestinian control in Bethlehem has been reduced to 13 percent of the district. The rest of our land has been taken either by Israeli settlers or by a foreign army. In fact, just as when Vice President Joe Biden visited back in 2010, some hours before your arrival, Israel approved hundreds of new housing units for settlements around our besieged city. This approval included units in Gilo and Har Homa, both built on our land with the goal of severing the historic connection between Bethlehem and Jerusalem.

Secretary Kerry, just as our city received Joseph and Mary more than 2,000 years ago, in 1948 Bethlehem received waves of refugees expelled from their homes in the Jerusalem area. Today they live mainly in three refugee camps in and around the city: Duheisha, al-Azza and Aida. Many have held onto the keys of their original homes for generations. Their keys, dear secretary, are not a symbol of revenge, but a call for humanity. They reflect an open wound that will only heal with the restoration of their dignity through the respect of their right to choose their future.

Secretary Kerry, we are a nation of refugees. We all have been victims of Israeli policies of forced displacement and replacement with foreign settlers by the State of Israel. This war crime must be stopped in order to give peace a chance. Today, while foreign settlers continue to flow into our district, thousands of daughters and sons of Bethlehem are spread all over the world, in places as far flung as Australia, Chile and the US, all of them denied right to return to their homeland. This is morally unacceptable.

Dear Secretary, we have heard about your economic projects for Palestine. They seem to be very positive and the people of Bethlehem are grateful for the attention you have given to our city. But please allow me to reiterate that no true economic development is possible as far as Israel continues its occupation of our country. As the World Bank confirmed a few weeks ago, we continue to lose billions of dollars because of the Israeli occupation.

Once we are free we are ready to develop our state just as successful Palestinian professionals have helped to develop the economies of wherever they have lived. Now it is their time to freely develop their own country without any foreign intervention. It is Palestine’s time to reach her potential, beginning with freedom of movement, and genuine sovereignty, including control over our international borders. In our case, Secretary Kerry, the same wall that you will come through to enter our city must fall in order to revitalize our historic ties with East Jerusalem, our national capital.

In Bethlehem we resist the occupation with love and hope. I hope you will have the chance to participate in one of the weekly Catholic masses that our community organizes at Cremisan; a time where we pray against the latest expropriation orders that will leave 58 Palestinian Christian families without access to their lands in one of the last green areas left in our district. I hope you might also find time to witness the steadfastness of the people of Walaja, a community that was originally displaced in 1948 and that today is being completely encircled by the Israeli annexation wall. Perhaps you might see the peaceful demonstrations of the people of Maasara, who are violently repressed by Israeli occupation forces, or the advocacy work of the people of Artas, Khirbet Nakhle and the southern Bethlehem area against new plans to expand the settlement of Efrat on their lands.

Dear Secretary Kerry, you are most welcome in Bethlehem, a city surrounded by 27 ever-expanding Israeli settlements, sealed off by an annexation wall built deep inside our district’s land. Even under these circumstances, we are working hard to look after our city. The restorations to the Nativity Church supported by UNESCO after Palestine obtained full membership in the organization, is another great example of how, in Bethlehem, we defy the occupation with love and creativity. Dear Secretary Kerry, you are most welcome to our city, please feel at home.

Sincerely,

Vera Baboun, Mayor of Bethlehem

"The direct threat to Israeli and Palestinian existence — and, in fact, to the existence of all peoples in the region — is the absence of peace in Palestine." Ahmad Y. Majdoubeh in The Jordan Times

IN CONTEXT: Nov 14, 2013 Palestinians look on at damages inside a house that was attacked overnight by suspected Jewish extremists in Sinjil, a village in the West Bank, northeast of Ramallah (AFP photo)...

Five Palestinian children suffered from smoke inhalation when suspected Jewish extremists set fire to their West Bank home on Thursday in an apparent revenge attack, the family said.

The attackers torched the front of the Dar Khalil home in Sinjil, a village northeast of Ramallah, and spray-painted the words “Regards from Eden, Revenge!” in Hebrew in blue on a wall outside the house.

“Eden” is an apparent reference to Eden Atias, a soldier who was killed on Wednesday by a 16-year-old Palestinian while sleeping on a bus in northern Israel. He was buried on Wednesday night.

The Dar Khalil family had no apparent connection to the Palestinian attacker.

“I woke up at 2:00am (0000 GMT), and four or five people came out of a white car and started breaking windows, then poured gasoline, then threw fire into the house,” mother-of-five Ruweida Dar Khalil told AFP.

“My kids were sleeping. I was scared to death. My kids almost died. I couldn’t even touch the doorknob it was so hot...”

 [AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

http://jordantimes.com/why-should-palestinians-negotiate

Why should Palestinians negotiate?

by Ahmad Y. Majdoubeh | Nov 14, 2013 | 21:42

The withdrawal of the Palestinian negotiating team from the US-sponsored peace talks with Israelis is more than justified. Israel has made it impossible for them to continue.

The current Israeli government is not serious about peace; actually it is doing all it can to subvert the fragile peace talks and impose its expansionist, Judaisation agenda in Palestine.

If the Israeli government had been genuinely interested in making peace, it would have done several things. For example, it would have stopped all settlement activity at once to give the peace negotiators a chance and would have made focus on peace a priority.

It, however, is doing the exact opposite. Since the start of the latest round of peace talks, the Israeli government sped up settlement activity. The latest move by the Israeli prime minister to halt — not to cancel — a plan for a huge settlement project is another of his endless gimmicks.

The reason he gave for halting this project, which would affect the peace talks and the future relations and existence of Israelis and Palestinians, was that it could anger the international community and thus affect Israel’s proposals regarding Iran!!

What a misguided, disrespectful thing to say when the Palestinians have joined peace talks even though they made clear that settlements should be halted until they come to an agreement with Israel about the future borders of a Palestinian state.

In other words, the Israeli premier would halt settlement activity to give a chance to his weird, paranoid proposals regarding Iran, but he would not do it for the sake of talks which are crucial to both Israelis and Palestinians.

Iran, of course, is another gimmick used in a delaying tactic.

The direct threat to Israeli and Palestinian existence — and, in fact, to the existence of all peoples in the region — is the absence of peace in Palestine. It is not the Iranian nuclear project.

And yet, the Israeli government is creating much fuss about the Iranian project to focus attention away from peace making in Palestine and sideline, and thus subvert, the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

The timing here is crucial. Had Iran been threatening Israel with a nuclear bomb, or had Iran come even close to producing one, the Israeli government may have had an excuse for devoting so much energy and attention to Iran. At this moment in time, however, the Israeli obsession with the Iranian issue is utterly unjustified.

For one thing, the new Iranian leadership is negotiating in earnest with the international community about inspection of its nuclear facilities; for another, American diplomacy regarding the Iranian issue appears to be bearing fruit.

In fact, the US secretary of state announced a couple of days ago that an agreement with Iran is imminent.

Furthermore, the current Iranian government is no longer provocative or hostile to Israel, as some were in the past.

So, why should the Israeli government choose to create a huge fuss about Iran now?

The only answer is that it wants to distract the focus from the peace talks.

The fact of the matter is that the Israeli government does not want peace. It only wants all the Palestinian land.

So, why should the Palestinians continue to sit uselessly and fruitlessly at the negotiating table with the Israelis when the Israeli government continues to sabotage peace?

The reason they sit and negotiate — and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he will try to form another negotiating team — is that they have an inalienable right to an independent Palestinian state in their homeland Palestine.

And because the international community — including Europe and the US — insists that there should be justice in Palestine and that the Palestinians are entitled to their state on land that Israel has occupied and continues to swallow.

The European and American positions on Palestinian statehood and on Israel’s illegal settlement are highly appreciated. However, one expects them to close the loop by pressuring the Israeli government to stay focused on peace in Palestine and take concrete measures to show that it is serious about peace, including, first and foremost, immediately halting all settlement plans and activities.

Without such a firm position, it would be useless for the Palestinians to continue sitting at the negotiating table, while the Israeli premier is playing his games and sanctioning further settlement and occupation measures.

My letter to the Washington Post RE CIA declassifies documents on Egypt, Israel and Camp David Accords brokered by Jimmy Carter

CAMP DAVID ACCORDS: The UN General Assembly rejected the Framework for Peace in the Middle East, because the agreement was concluded without participation of UN and PLO and did not comply with the Palestinian right of return, of self-determination and to national independence and sovereignty. December 1978, she declared in Resolution 33/28 A, that agreements were only valid if they are within the framework of the United Nations and its Charter and its resolutions, include the Palestinian right of return and the right to national independence and sovereignty in Palestine, and concluded with the participation of the PLO.

RE  CIA declassifies documents on Egypt, Israel and Camp David Accords brokered by Jimmy Carter
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/cia-declassifies-documents-on-egypt-israel-and-camp-david-accords-brokered-by-jimmy-carter/2013/11/13/66940598-4cc2-11e3-bf60-c1ca136ae14a_story.html

Online: Camp David papers: www.foia.cia.gov/collection/carter-camp-david-accords

Dear Editor,

How differently things would have played out had President Carter- and all of America (including our newspapers and our Congress and our CIA), taken a firm and pubic and principled stand for our own ideals concerning secular freedom and democracy... and justice.. and equality.

By 1977 decades had passed since the Nazi Holocaust and the subsequent United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights ( adopted by the UN General Assembly on 10 December 1948) which was created to remind all the world that " All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood..."

By 1977 America had heard and acted on Martin Luther King Jr.'s diplomatic pleas for freedom and an end to the pernicious institutionalized bigotry and injustice that plagued our nation and harmed many innocent men, women and children.

Stop and Think: Would Iran have taken 52 American hostages months after the Egypt-Israel treaty if the Camp David Accords had achieved not only a treaty between Egypt and Israel but also an actual end to the Israel-Palestine conflict and an end to the largest, longest running refugee crisis in the world today.

How many more Palestinian homes and workplaces will Israel destroy, how many more Palestinian individuals will Israel imprison, how many more Palestinian families will Israel fragment, how many more Palestinian men, women and children will Israel push into forced exile ... and how much more Palestinian land and resources will Israel usurp?

Israel as a Jews-preferred ego trip and business investment for those lucky enough to be Jewish has been quite a lucrative success for some people, but not for most, and it has certainly set a very bad example for its neighbors. Religion should be a personal private choice and religion should most certainly not be armed with lethal weaponry- or with tax payer funds.

A fully secular two state end to the Israel-Palestine conflict, for everyone's sake, is the best way forward. 

Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab

NOTES

IMF: Arab Spring economies hit by uncertainty Ahmed said that governments in the Arab world and the rest of the world need to find a way to "arrest this situation with its downside risks and try to find ways to boost jobs and growth in the short term and lay the foundation for a private sector-led recovery."

Palestinian villages subject to Israeli mock raids not told they are exercises: Israeli military rejects complaints by Israeli human rights group Yesh Din over 'training' arrests of Arabs and raids on homes

Israel 'plans 20,000 new settler homes in West Bank'

Washington Post 2013: Israeli hard-liners eye West Bank

Israeli Settler Violence Map

Israeli police seized computers and detained 25 Palestinians because of Facebook posts in East Jerusalem on Thursday

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Article 1

• All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

'It is where religious freedom is most dishonored or repressed that the forces of violent religious extremism are likely to thrive.' Katrina Lantos Swett, vice chairwoman of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom: JFK's call for religious freedom can transform places like Pakistan.

Palestinian Refugees (1948-NOW) refused their right to return... and their right to live in peace free from religious bigotry and injustice.

"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world." Eleanor Roosevelt

"Legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Paine: "Of all of the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny of religion is the worst."

"In every country and in every age, the priest [rabbi/imam/...etc...] has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own"
Thomas Jefferson

The Office of International Religious Freedom ( http://www.state.gov/j/drl/irf/)   Given the U.S. commitment to religious freedom, and to the international covenants that guarantee it as the inalienable right of every human being, the United States seeks to:

Promote freedom of religion and conscience throughout the world as a fundamental human right and as a source of stability for all countries

Why Muslims should love secularism: Though secularism is widely misunderstood as anti-religious and iconoclastic, all it means is the neutrality of the state on religious affairs ...  "Muslims must recognize secularism as the only real path to religious freedom, rather than confusing it with an attack against religion." Hussein Ibish

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

Live by the Golden Rule

Dear President Obama... Let Freedom Ring

194

Globalizing Martin Luther King, Jr.

This Week in Palestine: In Palestine we have no physical control over our borders, and therefore have no say in how anyone could be treated at any given moment in time. But what we do have control of is the Palestine we write about, describe, and photograph in the folds of this issue’s pages.

U.S. 'working tirelessly' to restore UNESCO funding... UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova: "This is not only about financing. This is about values. This is the 'smart power' that is in such need today, to lay the foundations for lasting peace and sustainable development,"

U.S., Israel lose voting rights at UNESCO over Palestine row

UNWRA ... a crucial lifeline for Palestinian refugees

Dr Zogby: Focus on Palestinians’ Rights

"Can you imagine the world today without letters or without music?"

At ATFP Gala, White House Reaffirms Commitment to Palestinian State, Opposition to Settlements and Settler Violence

"The only way to honor our tragic histories is to create a future for our children free of man-made tragedy. This means making peace fully, completely and without reservation, between Israel and Palestine." ATFP's Ziad Asali: To honor a tragic history, we must work for peace

"So let us put the narrative of injustice away and find the joy, if it’s the last thing we ever do. " Tala Abu Rahmeh, Palestinian poet and writer

A quest to preserve Palestinian heritage in the digital stacks: Sami Batrawi's struggle to open an online Palestinian Library of Congress is part of a broader effort to recover lost Palestinian intellectual heritage.

Pomegranates in season along the path!

The Arab Peace Initiative

1. Requests Israel to reconsider its policies and declare that a just peace is its strategic option as well.

2. Further calls upon Israel to affirm:

I- Full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967, including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the June 4, 1967 lines as well as the remaining occupied Lebanese territories in the south of Lebanon.

II- Achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194.

III- The acceptance of the establishment of a sovereign independent Palestinian state on the Palestinian territories occupied since June 4, 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

3. Consequently, the Arab countries affirm the following:

I- Consider the Arab-Israeli conflict ended, and enter into a peace agreement with Israel, and provide security for all the states of the region.

II- Establish normal relations with Israel in the context of this comprehensive peace.

Ancient stone villages in the occupied West Bank have become trapped in rural poverty, while investors and donors shy away from a zone of seemingly endless conflict... Israel's restrictions affect much of Palestinian economic life. It controls every access point, which enables it to oversee all imports and exports, creating bureaucratic hurdles that Palestinians say stifle or kill entrepreneurship.

The Israelis also impose strict limits on water supply, which affects industry and agriculture. Israel has not allowed Palestinians access to 3G mobile technology, citing security concerns, rendering many smartphone apps largely useless....READ MORE

Jordan's King Abdullah II explains that extremism has "grown fat" off of the longstanding conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

We Need to Talk... Ziad Asali has proven that Palestinian-Americans can work within the system as first-class American citizens and Washington has paid attention: The status quo is clear: occupation. Asali's mission is to change that status quo.

"Compassion is not religious business, it is human business. It is not luxury, it is essential for our own peace and mental stability, it is essential for human survival."~Dalai Lama

"Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate."~ Albert Schweitzer,1952 Nobel Peace Prize

"I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again."~ Stephan Grellet, a prominent French-born American Quaker missionary

The Charter for Compassion is a call to restore the Golden Rule to the center of religious, moral and civic life. The path to a just economy and a peaceful world requires listening, understanding and treating all others as we wish to be treated ourselves.

Freedom for Palestine - OneWorld

AP Interview: Palestinian PM blasts Arab donors... In an interview Sunday Fayyad said that the cash crunch is pushing an additional 25 percent of the Palestinian population, or 1 million people, into poverty.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad gestures during an interview with The Associated Press in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Sunday, Jan. 6, 2013. Fayyad is blaming Arab countries that haven’t delivered promised financial aid for an escalating financial crisis in the Palestinian territories. In an interview Sunday Fayyad said that the cash crunch is pushing an additional 25 percent of the Palestinian population, or 1 million people, into poverty. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

http://news.yahoo.com/ap-interview-palestinian-pm-blasts-arab-donors-154050442.html
by KARIN LAUB and MOHAMMED DARAGHMEH | Associated Press

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — The Palestinian self-rule government is in "extreme jeopardy" because of an unprecedented financial crisis, largely because Arab countries have failed to send hundreds of millions of dollars in promised aid, the Palestinian prime minister said Sunday.

The cash crunch has gradually worsened in recent years, and the Palestinian Authority now has reached the point of not being able to pay the salaries of about 150,000 government employees, Salam Fayyad told The Associated Press. The number of Palestinian poor is bound to quickly double to 50 percent of the population of roughly 4 million if the crisis continues, he said.

"The status quo is not sustainable," Fayyad said in an interview at his West Bank office.

The Palestinian Authority, set up two decades ago as part of interim peace deals with Israel, is on the "verge of being completely incapacitated," Fayyad warned. Only a year ago, he said he expected to make great strides in weaning his people off foreign aid.

The self-rule government was meant to be temporary and replaced by a state of Palestine, which was to be established through negotiations with Israel. However, those talks repeatedly broke down, and for the past four years the two sides have been unable to agree on the terms of renewing the negotiations....READ MORE

Palestinians change their name following UN bid... Abbas instructs embassies to refer to State of Palestine

Palestinians change their name following UN bid

http://news.yahoo.com/palestinians-change-name-following-un-bid-151559216.html

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — The Palestinian president has ordered his government to officially change the name of the Palestinian Authority to "State of Palestine."

The move follows the November decision by the United Nations to upgrade the Palestinians' status to that of a "non-member observer state."

President Mahmoud Abbas said Sunday that all official Palestinian stamps, stationery and documents will now bear the new name.

A statement from his office said the move was aimed at enhancing Palestinian "sovereignty on the ground" and was a step on the way to "real independence." Israel still controls most of the West Bank.

Israel objected to the Palestinian statehood bid at the U.N., calling it a unilateral step aimed at bypassing direct peace negotiations. Abbas denied that.

Israel had no comment Sunday.

Abbas instructs embassies to refer to State of Palestine

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=553741
06/01/2013 10:05

RAMALLAH (Ma’an) -- President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday issued instructions to Palestinian embassies around the world to change all references to the Palestinian Authority to State of Palestine after the UN vote in November.

Palestine was voted in as a non-member state by the UN General Assembly on Nov. 29, 2012.

No amendment should be made to references to the PLO, which remains Palestinians' legal representative on the world stage, the presidential order said.

1) If Palestinians don't work to create their state, they will never have one

2) Peace depends on reasonable people on both sides compromising in order to reach an agreement based on the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. 

 http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/12/31/a-serious-look-at-fayyad.html

A Serious Look at Fayyad by Hussein Ibish

Open Zion....Hussein Ibish: Beware "Creative Alternatives"

 [AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine] 
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/17/beware-creative-alternatives.html

It's easy to understand why so many people are giving up on negotiations and a two-state solution, and instead are looking for “creative alternatives.” Israeli-Palestinian talks are at an impasse. The two sides haven't seemed this far apart since the second intifada. The number of settlers and settlements continues to baloon relentlessly. Israel's government appears united behind recalcitrant policies, while the Palestinians appear hopelessly divided.

But any purported “creative alternatives” to a negotiated two-state solution need to be subjected to a simple litmus test before they can be taken seriously. They have to be plausibly acceptable to all parties that would need to agree in order for them to be realized. If any such “alternatives” are by definition unacceptable to any of the parties, then they're not serious ideas. In most cases, they quickly reveal themselves to be thinly disguised versions of long-standing maximalist fantasies.

A man places a sticker on a car in Jerusalem. (Awad Awad / AFP / Getty Images)

Take, for instance, the perennial fantasy on the pro-Israeli right that “Jordan is Palestine” or that Egypt can somehow be induced to take responsibility for Gaza. Palestinians, Jordanians and Egyptians all categorically reject any such idea, so it can't happen.

Similarly, in pro-Palestinian circles the idea of a South Africa-style “one-state” solution of a single entity for all Israelis and Palestinians, including refugees, based on "one-person one-vote," is a total nonstarter for the overwhelming majority of Israelis. So that, too, simply won't happen.

Some of the most dangerous “creative alternatives” are being increasingly floated on the pro-Israeli right, especially the idea of a greater Israel including the occupied territories but without full or equal citizenship, or voting rights, for its Palestinian population. In other words, formalized, permanent apartheid...READ MORE