"UNRWA acts decisively whenever staff misconduct is identified, while all employees are regularly screened, trained and required to comply with UN standards... Israel receives the names of all UNRWA staff twice a year for security screening"... "Nobody has the infrastructure, the experience, the skillset or the staff to be able to do what we do now on behalf of Palestine refugees," Christian Saunders said. "That doesn't mean UNRWA needs to exist forever. As soon as there is a recognised Palestinian administration able to assume these responsibilities, UNRWA should hand over those services. Until then, we have a mandate and an obligation to ensure that Palestine refugees have access to these critical services."

UNRWA, established in 1949, now serves around six million registered Palestine refugees, with approximately 2.6 million people currently receiving assistance across Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

UNRWA

@UNRWA 

https://x.com/UNRWA/status/2084882200881766562 

Every day, UNRWA delivers education, healthcare, relief and social services to millions of Palestine Refugees. We will continue to do so until a just and durable solution is found and we can hand over to empowered Palestinian Institutions..  #UNRWAworks  Read the full article: https://chronicle.lu/category/polit

Luxembourg Reaffirms Long-Term Support for UNRWA's Humanitarian Mission

".....  Responding to a question about criticism from Luxembourg politicians who have accused UNRWA of being infiltrated by Hamas and alleged that Luxembourg's financial support benefits terrorism, Minister Bettel rejected the claims. He said Luxembourg had seen first-hand the projects it supports and continued to trust the agency. "To blame the whole organisation is really unacceptable," he said. "I trust UNRWA, and I will continue to trust UNRWA as long as there is no one able to replace it."

Christian Saunders also dismissed the allegations, describing them as "a smear campaign with a political end." He stressed that UNRWA acts decisively whenever staff misconduct is identified, while all employees are regularly screened, trained and required to comply with UN standards. He added that Israel receives the names of all UNRWA staff twice a year for security screening and "has the opportunity to raise concerns if it believes any staff member has links to a militant group or has committed a criminal act." "

https://www.chronicle.lu/category/politics/62440-luxembourg-reaffirms-long-term-support-for-unrwas-humanitarian-mission 

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

"Lethal Israeli attacks on an engineer and drivers transporting water have intensified the water crisis that is fuelling the spread of infectious diseases; Médecins Sans Frontières has called the weaponisation of water supplies a campaign of collective punishment. Never mind the estimated $70bn cost of reconstruction; homes are still being flattened. Families in tents face a rat infestation. Essential medicines are unavailable. Hospitals and schools lie in ruins." The Guardian view on ceasefires that aren’t: Israel never stopped killing in Gaza

‘Never mind the estimated $70bn cost of reconstruction; homes are still being flattened. Families in tents face a rat infestation. Essential medicines are unavailable.’ Photograph: AFP/Getty

"The meaning of the term “ceasefire” should be self‑evident. Yet Israel’s strikes have killed scores of people in Lebanon since it agreed a truce with Hezbollah under pressure from the US, with the two sides trading fire. There was a strike on Beirut on Wednesday. Benjamin Netanyahu’s government would be delighted to resume war with Iran. But it is wary of Donald Trump’s wrath as he seeks an exit from the conflict.

In Gaza, the Israeli military has killed more than 800 people since the truce there was declared in October, striking almost every day. This, too, is not a true ceasefire but a de-escalation, however necessary. Lethal Israeli attacks on an engineer and drivers transporting water have intensified the water crisis that is fuelling the spread of infectious diseases; Médecins Sans Frontières has called the weaponisation of water supplies a campaign of collective punishment. Never mind the estimated $70bn cost of reconstruction; homes are still being flattened. Families in tents face a rat infestation. Essential medicines are unavailable. Hospitals and schools lie in ruins. An analysis of the war’s impact on education described children feeling “like the living dead”.

Israel agreed to end attacks, massively increase the aid allowed into the territory and withdraw its forces to within a “yellow line” – still accounting for 53% of the territory. Yet strikes have continued, aid flows yo-yo and essential items are blocked on the claim that they are “dual use”. The military has expanded its zone of control substantially – and the..." READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/07/the-guardian-view-on-ceasefires-that-arent-israel-never-stopped-killing-in-gaza-allies-must-reject-any-escalation

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

In Gaza, reconstruction is urgently needed. Despite the ceasefire, hundreds of thousands of displaced people are still living in overcrowded make-shift sites, with nowhere else to go. Thousands of people continue to live in UNRWA buildings, where our teams supply clean water, sanitation staff maintain hygiene, and children engage in learning activities. #UNRWAworks

UNRWA

@UNRWA

 

In #Gaza, reconstruction is urgently needed. 

 

Despite the ceasefire, hundreds of thousands of displaced people are still living in overcrowded make-shift sites, with nowhere else to go. 

 

Thousands of people continue to live in UNRWA buildings, where our teams supply clean water, sanitation staff maintain hygiene, and children engage in learning activities.  

 

 #UNRWAworks

 https://x.com/UNRWA/status/2052026334587633843/photo/1

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

The water fountain is called a sabil [in Arabic], a word that originally meant path. Later, it came to mean path to God. Sabils were widespread in the Muslim world until the early 20th century. They were charitable water fountains refilled by water carriers at specific times of the day

 Jerusalem-  Naqshbandi Zawiya-  a historical little mosque built from about 300 years ago and also used as Islamic information center offers a free rest station for tourist free Islamic books free drinks and give an intro about Islam

Bukhari Mosque in Jerusalem

Arabs in Pictures   The water fountain is called a sabil, a word that originally meant path. Later, it came to mean path to God.

Sabils were widespread in the Muslim world until the early 20th century. They were charitable water fountains refilled by water carriers at specific times of the day. 

ALERTNET: Gaza not "liveable" by 2020 barring urgent action - U.N.

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 15:31 GMT

Source: reuters // Reuters 

A Palestinian mourns during the funeral of a gunman in Gaza. Mohammed Salem / Reuters

 http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/gaza-not-liveable-by-2020-barring-urgent-action-un/

* U.N. foresees nearly 25 percent more people by 2020
* Safe water one of Gaza's greatest concerns
* About 80 percent of Gaza is aid-dependent
* No sign of Hamas-Israel peace or end to blockade

By Nidal al-Mughrabi
GAZA, Aug 27 (Reuters) - Gaza will no longer be "liveable" by 2020 unless urgent action is taken to improve water supply, power, health, and schooling, the United Nations' most comprehensive report on the Palestinian enclave said on Monday.

"Action needs to be taken now if Gaza is to be a liveable place in 2020 and it is already difficult now," U.N. humanitarian coordinator Maxwell Gaylard told journalists when the report was released on Monday.

Five years into an Israeli blockade supported by Egypt, and living under one-party rule, Gaza's population of 1.6 million is set to rise by 500,000 over the next eight years, say the authors of the U.N.'s most wide-ranging report on the territory.

Gaza has one the youngest populations in the world, with 51 percent of people under the age of 18.

"Action needs to be taken right now on fundamental aspects of life: water sanitation, electricity, education, health and other aspects," Gaylard said.

Since 2007, Gaza has been under the control of the Islamist Hamas organisation, an armed political movement which rejects permanent peace with Israel. They fought a three-week war in January 2009, and Israel is resisting international pressure to lift its blockade, which it says prevents arms reaching Hamas.

Gaza has no airport and no sea port. The border is tense, with frequent clashes over rocket or mortar fire from Gaza and air strikes by Israel. Gaza rockets hit Israeli land on Sunday, damaging a factory in the town of Sderot, east of the enclave.

Israel partly eased restrictions in mid-2010, and Gaza's crippled economy began to revive from rock bottom. Real GDP is estimated to have risen by 28 percent in the first half of 2011 as unemployment fell to 28 percent in 2011 from 37 percent.

But the report, involving expertise from more U.N. agencies and making projections further into the future than before, said growth over the next eight years would be slow, since Gaza's current isolation renders its economy essentially non-viable.

RECONSTRUCTION BUT NO PEACE
The people in the narrow coastal strip live mainly on U.N. aid, foreign funding and a tunnel economy which brings in food, construction materials, electronics and cars from Egypt.

But the smuggling trade is no solution. Robert Turner, director of operations of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), said Gaza by 2020 will need 440 more schools, 800 more hospital beds and over a 1,000 additional doctors.

Gaylard called on international donors to increase their aid to a population which is 80 percent aid dependent.

"Despite their best efforts the Palestinians in Gaza still need help," he said. "They are under blockade. They are under occupation and they need our help both politically and practically on the ground."

Israel in fact withdrew from Gaza in 2005, removing troops and settlers after 38 years of occupation.

A lack of clean drinking water is the greatest immediate concern, said Jean Gough of the UNICEF. The report projects a 60 percent increase in the enclave's water needs, while urgent action is already needed to protect existing water resources.

By 2016, Gaza's aquifer may become unusable, she said. Palestinians are already drilling deeper and deeper to reach groundwater and there is a need for more desalination plants. A seawater plant costing about $350 million is planned.

The U.N. says only a quarter of Gaza waste water is treated. The rest, including raw sewage, goes into the Mediterranean Sea.

Gaylard said Gaza needs peace and security to improve the lives of its people. "It will certainly have to mean the end of blockade, the end of isolation and the end of conflict."

There is as yet no sign of an end to the conflict between Hamas and Israel. The Islamist movement is shunned by the West as a terror organisation and there is no prospect of diplomatic contacts leading to peace talks as long as Hamas rejects Israel's right to exist....READ MORE

This Week in Palestine: Odysseus, Al-Nakba, and the Sea By Dr. Ali Qleibo

Issue No. 146, June 2010

Jaffa….. The Bride of the Mediterranean. Photo by Abdulrahman Hashem.

Akka’s harbour. Photo by Abdulrahman Hashem.

The Pisan Harbour in Akka. Photo by Abdulrahman Hashem.

Boats in Akka’s harbour.

Reconnaissance Family visit to Innabeh.

Walking through the rubble of Innabeh.

http://www.thisweekinpalestine.com/details.php?id=3127&ed=183&edid=183

Odysseus, Al-Nakba, and the Sea
By Dr. Ali Qleibo
“The regal nymph Calypso,
once she’d heard Zeus’s message, went off to
find
great-hearted Odysseus. She found him by
the shore,
sitting down there, with his eyes always full of
tears,
because his sweet life was passing while he
mourned
for his return.… That great-hearted man sat
crying on the shore,
just as before, breaking his heart with tears
and groans,
full of sorrow, as he looked out on the
restless sea
and wept.”
Homer, The Odyssey, Book V

Summer glistens with the shimmering waves of turquoise-blue sizzling into white foam which fizzles into splinters as it breaks against the sun-baked yellow ochre beaches stretching from southern to northern Palestine. Gaza, Jaffa, Haifa, and Akka, the jewel coastal cities of Palestine, punctuate this immense stretch of blue hemmed in by the golden shores and provide an outlet from the scorching heat of the mountainous hinterland. The Mediterranean, once a symbol of infinite horizon and a promise of boundless adventure, has become the symbol of Palestinian grief. The sea now is inaccessible to West Bankers. In the sweltering summer heat in Jenin and Tulkarem, close to the coast, they smell the sea but cannot reach it. The Wall stands as a barrier, a witness to the twentieth-century historical political processes that have displaced and alienated millions of Palestinians from their motherland - and sent them into exile all over the world. In the quiet of the night, between the ebb and flow of the cascading waves, the promenade between Jaffa and Tel Aviv still echoes with the last moments of panic as mothers and fathers, carrying the young and the elderly, rushed into the small boats in search of safety from the Jewish terrorist groups. As the final moments drew to an end, a majority left their homes in haste. The image of a terrified mother running into a Jaffa boat believing that the pillow in her arms was her swaddled baby is a recurring theme in the mythology of Palestinian refugees.

The loss of Palestine is a trauma that our longing for the sea has come to symbolise. The sea breeze, once associated with the citrus blossom from the orchards that stretch along our coastal plains, dissipates under the weight of the tragic accounts describing the flight of the frightened Palestinians from their homeland to shores of safety in foreign lands. Following our defeat in the 1967 War West Bankers could once again visit their homeland along the Palestinian coast. Reconnaissance visits to their villages and ironic encounters with Israelis who had moved into their homes deployed a new discourse with a fairy-tale mythological quality.

As a Jerusalemite whose destiny chose that the 1948 War should stop one kilometre from his ancestral home I was always puzzled by the endless love between my friend Ibrahim Abu-Lughod and Jaffa. The great scholar, driven by the dream of the return, came at an advanced age to teach at Birzeit University. Every Sunday he would go to his hometown to swim. I could never understand how he could return to the city of his childhood, now a mere shell, emptied of family, friends, and the life that once populated its homes, markets, and streets.

“As I swim, once I am deep in the sea,” he told me, “Jaffa becomes alive. I see it as it has always been.” He became sentimental and laughingly told me, “Al-Hajjeh (his old mother) always kept the keys of the Jaffa house. I would tease her: Why don’t you throw them away? … You know you will not return.”

“Even were I to be paid millions, I would never sell my home in Jaffa.” The key to a house either already demolished or inhabited by Israelis and the deed to the land of the ancestors are invariably the only concrete mementos that furnish the proof that the homeland was a reality and not a phantasm. The nostalgic narratives conjure the way of life and the landscape they have left behind. These anecdotal tales provide cathartic outlet for the grief over the lost paradise and recreate a way of life and an urban and agricultural landscape from which they are now distanced.

Summer warm weather and the balmy fragrance of the night allows for long evening visits. Apart from extending traditional hospitality to the visitor, both host and guest regale each other with anecdotal narratives. Among my refugee friends folktale-quality stories pertaining to the lost homeland assume an elevated position. Through the story, told on the balcony or terrace saturated with the aroma of jasmine, ful (gardenia), and the sweet fragrance of colonia, the past is regained. The blatant absence becomes a presence. The emptiness of being, the manque à être, regains its fullness. Distance and time dissolve under the spell of language in a moment of great intimacy. Reality is deferred in preference for magic.

Though the English term “nostalgia” is modern, it was coined in the seventeenth century by a Swiss scholar, J. Hoffer, who juxtaposed the Homeric word, algos, “pain” and nostos, “homecoming,” into the compound “nostalgia”; the idea itself is as ancient as humanity. Imprisoned on an island by the Goddess Calypso, Odysseus’ longing for the homeland, his Ithaca, gave expression to the human sense of territoriality bound up with the sense of identity and meaning long before the term was created. On the other hand, Al-haneen ala al-Awtan (longing for the homeland) is a classical theme in Arabic prose and poetry and is the title of one of the books by the great ninth-century Abbasid scholar, El Jaheth الجاحظ.

The sense of personal identity is inextricably linked in Palestinian individual consciousness to group identity. To the existential question, “Who am I?” the answer is resolved geographically. “I am from Salamah, Jaffa, Yazure, or Haifa.” Despite the six decades since the Nakba, neither the elapsed time nor the distance from the fatherland, now accentuated by the Separation Wall, has succeeded in building a buffer between the refugee and his/her homeland: the village whence the family was forced to flee in terror in 1947/48.

It is the aroma of his soil - spring, summer, winter, and fall - for which the refugee yearns. It is his sky, his sun, his moon, the birds in the field, the sunrise dew on the grass, the breeze that ruffles the leaves as the sun sets imprinted in his heart that sustains his solitary life away from the motherland. Reconstructing the way that life used to be in the form of a folktale - albeit cathartic - has deployed a rich discourse that passes the memory of a place, a time, and a society which shapes the identity of second, third, and fourth generations of refugees into a socio-cultural-ecological map of Palestine. In my repertoire of collected oral accounts, the story of the family picnic in the ruins of Innabeh stands out.

During the summer of 1990 a family reunion took place in Al-Jalazon Refugee Camp for the first time since the 1967 War. Three brothers in their sixties were able, within the summer programme that allows Palestinians a one-month visitor permit, to gather in the homeland. The eldest, the hosting brother, lived in the Occupied Territories while his two brothers lived in Al-Wahdat Refugee Camp in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. They came with their respective spouses, children, and grandchildren.

Before the visit permit expired they decided to take a trip to their birthplace in the village of Innabeh on the outskirts of Ramleh. They rented a few cars and drove from the West Bank through the Green Line to their ancestral town near the Palestinian coast. They parked the cars under the shade of some wild carob trees on a promontory on the outskirts of the village. The children started to unpack their picnic food, the kanoon (charcoal brazier), the coal, the icebox, the meat, their vegetables, their fruits, and the ever-present watermelon. They were still unpacking the blankets, the footballs, the arageel (water pipes), the coffee, and the tea kettles when an armed Arab suddenly appeared.

“What are you doing here?” he asked belligerently in a Bedouin dialect. “What do you mean?” the host answered in surprise. “Obviously we are having a family picnic. Itfaddal, welcome, welcome...”

“No, you have come to steal my fruits. All of you West Bankers think that the land is still yours and keep on coming in droves to steal my trees. Yes, do not look surprised, they are mine. I rent all these lands from the Israeli government.”

They showed him the quantity of food they had brought for the occasion. The sight of the preposterous amounts they had considered necessary for a one-day trip put him to shame.

“All right; you may stay.”

They invited him to join them. He would not. He walked away but remained in the vicinity keeping an eye on them.

The fire was lit. When the flames subsided and the charcoal turned into red embers they proceeded to grill the kebab and shish kebab. As soon as the first skewer was cooked, a sandwich was made and the eldest son, Walid, took it to the guard. The Bedouin initially refused the hospitality. But later he joined them under the cool shadow of the ancient carob tree.

The three families had come with the special intention of visiting the remains of their hometown. Unlike the majority of the Palestinian coastal towns and villages, Innabeh had not been bulldozed and levelled to the ground. Its buildings were left intact and were not integrated either within a kibbutz or into a moshav compound. After the Palestinian inhabitants fled in terror in 1948, Innabeh remained deserted; only erosion caused by the natural passage of time had made some of its house walls and ceiling beams give way and collapse.

The three brothers walked in the desolate streets of Innabeh trying to find their bearings and remember the people who once populated the forlorn houses. The elementary school, a landmark, was easily recognisable. The homes, however, required specific cues and some guesswork in order to remember their proprietors.

“The lemon tree was in the hakouret (courtyard) Um Isa,” the youngest brother Fat’hy told his children who were born in a refugee camp in Jordan. “You know her, the woman living next door to your aunt ‘Afifeh in el-Baq’a.”

“The mulberry tree, this must be Al-Haj Yasser’s house.” Abu al-Walid, the eldest brother, looked at Yihya and continued teasing him. “Do you remember when you got caught up in the branches and could not come down?”

“Not in front of the children,” Yihya smiled awkwardly. He looked fondly at the tree, sighed deeply and added, “So much time has passed since those days. But God bless his soul, he was the best father one could ever hope for.” Changing the sentimental mood, he pointed to some dry branches and reflected, “Look, it is old and dying.”

The sun was still high on the horizon and they felt thirsty. “Ah, this is a problem,” said the Bedouin. “Whenever I have my sheep I always have to walk them to a well ten kilometres away from here.”

“Let me see,” Abu al-Walid said. He bent down and picked up a broken branch that had fallen from the mulberry tree. “Follow me,” he gestured to him.

A few metres away in the shadow of an extremely dilapidated house, he started to tap the branch on the floor listening attentively as though for a familiar sound. Suddenly his face beamed and he said excitedly, “Over here!” He started clearing the dust from the ground. Soon enough the rusty metal lid of a well appeared. He lifted the cover. The well was filled to the brim with crystal clear cold water. They drank happily. The Bedouin, no longer a roaming nomad, was especially delighted since the discovery would save him a lot of trouble.

Back in the cool shadow of the carob tree they smoked their arageel, drank coffee, ate more watermelons, and lounged around talking and remembering the old days.

The sun began to fall quickly into the horizon. It was time to leave. They started to pack their belongings, fold the blankets, and gather the garbage they had produced. At that moment the two brothers from Al-Wahdat Refugee Camp in Amman took out two clean plastic bags that they had specially brought along. They bent down to the ground, scooped soil into each bag, closed them tightly, got into the car, and drove back to Al-Jalazon Refugee Camp.

Longing for the motherland is constitutive of Palestinian collective identity. The post Nakba Palestinian has developed an identity as an image of his/her homeland’s landscape, as one who knows all its paths, its hidden corners, every mound, every ravine, and every flower and plant. The yearning for the lost paradise has become an unequivocal expression of a generations-old tradition of keeping alive the memory of the landscape, the physical and chronological dimensions of the Land. Though the post Intifada generation has never been to the motherland, it is thoroughly familiar with the name of every valley, water spring, well, wild bird, and hairy cassia - let alone every planted tree and house. In Innabeh trees had proper names. Al-Aroos, the bride, is the name of a huge olive tree whose branches reached to the sky. As the grandfather described to me how a ladder was mounted on the camel back to reach its lofty branches the grandchildren gathered, hanging on very word he said, to hear the magic of the country they were forced to leave behind. In a photograph from the seventies an aged couple on their visit to Innabeh pose next to another ancient olive tree which carried the proper name, Al-Sheikha, the old woman.

More than sixty years have passed and the memory remains fresh through oral sagas. Reality is that of the heart. Palestine and the homeland are a wound that time will not heal. The love of the fatherland is a chronic condition and not a passing illness.

Before the Wall, before the Oslo Agreement, we often went to Gaza where we would stand at the seashore inhaling the sea air. We would stare wistfully into the distant horizon to where the sea and the sky dissolved into one blue line. Standing by the seashore of Gaza we would feel a mysterious sense of freedom

The political conflict has circumscribed our vision to such an extent that the sea itself has acquired an ethnic identity. In Gaza, the Mediterranean is Arabic. For what a great difference we feel between the sea of Tel Aviv and the sea of Gaza! There in Tel Aviv, barely five kilometres from the empty shell of Jaffa, the sea stands as a blue wall and reminds us of our grim reality. Both sky and sea close in on us. Standing on the seashore of Gaza, we would breathe deeply and sense our freedom. The sea becomes an endless horizon wherein our dreams soar high.

It is summer 2010. We have lost our last sea. The Nakba continues.

Dr. Ali Qleibo is an anthropologist, author, and artist. A specialist in the social history of Jerusalem and Palestinian peasant culture, he is the author of Before the Mountains Disappear, Jerusalem in the Heart, and the recently published Surviving the Wall, an ethnographic chronicle of contemporary Palestinians and their roots in ancient Semitic civilizations. His filmic documentary about French cultural identity, Le Regard de L’Autre was shown at the Jerusalem International Film Festival. Dr. Qleibo lectures at Al-Quds University. He can be reached at aqleibo@yahoo.com.

From Growing Garden for Palestine: Playing God ... poem by Anne Selden Annab

Growing Gardens for Palestine

Playing God ... poem by Anne Selden Annab

Playing God

If I were to make a flag today
for a one state Israel/Palestine,
a confederation to stop the conflict
with full and equal rights for all,
I would blend the sky blue of Israel
with the earth green of Islam,
to make each stripe a deep blue green... a teal
like around the eye of the dabbing duck
indigenous to Eurasia... a tertiary teal
blending primary and secondary colors.

Minority and majority rights
play hopscotch:
Every home
and every child is safe...

Every student ready and able
to learn real science... & art.

I'd add six tips to the central six point star.
One new point in between each old point,
transforming it into a twelve point star... a gear.
Each tip color might be a different hue...
... like a color wheel... a rainbow in the round.

And the flag would be hoisted
to help save the River Jordan
from being sludge

"The only deadly sin I know is cynicism" HLS

poem copyright ©2010 Anne Selden Annab

We need a Golden Rule Peace for Israel and Palestine

Why it's a good thing that Palestinians are returning to negotiations with Israel: "I find the reality of the occupation totally unacceptable and even a slim chance to end it is worth pursuing, and also because I have very grave concerns that if the conflict continues, it will further metastasize and morph into a religious conflict led by bearded fanatics on both sides over the will of God and holy places and therefore become much harder to resolve and much more dangerous for Israelis, Palestinians and all of their neighbors, if not the whole world." Hussein Ibish

Ziad Asali: The sensible Palestinian statehood plan