Things you can say, things you cannot

Ran Hacohen - Antiwar.com   13 July 2011

http://original.antiwar.com/hacohen/2011/07/12/things-you-can-say-things-you-cannot/

by Ran HaCohen  -  Antiwar.com -  13 July 2011

The anti-boycott law passed Monday night. Much has been said about what the American administration — blind as always to Middle East realities — tagged “an internal issue.” Let me just add that my readers should remember, from now on, that there are things I am not allowed to say. For example, I expressed my support for the boycott on settlements products several times in the past; I am not allowed to do it anymore. I am not saying I could say whatever I wanted to before now: self-censorship is almost inevitable for critical writers living in Israel. But now you’ve got an official confirmation from the Israeli parliament: Israelis are not allowed to speak out their mind freely. The “only democracy in the Middle East” openly joins the “democracies” around it — when some of these “democracies” try to become democracies. We lag behind. Or better: we are moving backwards. Very rapidly.

The law might be overruled by Israel’s Supreme Court, but this will only spur the fascist coalition to curb the court as it has been eager to for years. Meanwhile, Gush Shalom — which initiated the boycott on settlements products many years ago — removed the list of those products from its Web site. “We cannot afford to publish the list anymore,” they say. The much more mainstream Peace Now, on the other hand, which never endorsed the boycott before (too “controversial”), now recognizes the outrage on the Left and tries to capitalize on it.

What is Gush Shalom afraid of? One revealing aspect of the new law is the way it is to be imposed. The State of Israel will not indict anyone for calling for a boycott —  that wouldn’t look good abroad. Instead, anyone who feels offended because of a boycott call can sue the one who called for it, and in court —  that’s the law — the plaintiff does not have to prove the damage caused to him.

In other words, every Israeli producer based in the occupied territories can sue anyone calling for a boycott. If I call to boycott all settlements products — I am not saying I do, I say “if” — each and every Israeli firm based in the occupied territories can sue me, and there are hundreds of such firms. So not only do they operate on stolen Palestinian land, not only do they enjoy generous state benefits from my tax money (that’s why they moved to the territories in the first place) — now they can sue me and take my money too for calling for a boycott (if I ever do). What started as a dispossession of the Palestinians now moves to the dispossession of any Israeli who dares oppose that dispossession. What started as enslaving the Palestinians may end in enslaving their supporters within Israel.

This may be an innovation, but using the settlers themselves to promote the occupation is a typical old Israeli strategy. The state relegates some of its more embarrassing functions to the settlers. It’s not always the Israeli state that steals Palestinian land and water. It’s not always Israeli soldiers who harass Palestinian men, women, children, and cattle, who throw stones at them, burn their fields, cut down their trees, rob their olives, and sell the oil. Sometimes it is the state or its soldiers, but ever more often it is the settlers, the so-called civilians, backed covertly (or overtly) by the state. The settlers do the dirty work that the state would rather not do. The state gives them the tools — money, guns, legislation, turning a blind eye, impunity — while the settlers do the work. It’s the typical function of a militia in a fascist regime: so far it has terrorized the Palestinians, now it gets a legal license to terrorize its Israeli opponents. Remember it next time you hear Shimon Peres speak about “the extremists on both sides.” The Israeli extremist has a government behind him.

Racism at the Bottom

Returning to Israel from abroad is always a crucial moment. I always wonder how long will it take before I sigh and say to myself, “Oh, yes, I am in Israel.” Last year, it was when I took the early train from the airport — 5 a.m., confused after a night flight, hesitating for a second whether it was the right train. Suddenly, a young man in uniform yelled at me: “Move on, get inside! Don’t you see we’re already late?!” Oh yes, I am in Israel. I had just spent two weeks in Ethiopia, and no one, young or old, black or white, dared yell at me.

This time, perhaps unconsciously traumatized by that return, perhaps simply because of the backward train service from the airport late at night, I decided to take a taxi home. I took my seat next to an elderly driver, who was polite enough to help me with the luggage. He started driving, took a glimpse at a bystander on the airport’s pavement, and all of a sudden burst out in a series of curses, four-letter words of all kinds, too horrifying even to repeat, extremely rich on the backdrop of his poor Hebrew. I was shocked. I turned my head backward: the innocent bystander was a Muslim, bearded and neatly dressed in a white gown. He was just standing there, perhaps waiting for a taxi.

The driver noticed my shock and immediately began to apologize. Putting his hand on my knee he swore he didn’t mean it. He didn’t mean to offend me or to curse me, just that f*cking dirty lousy Arab standing there; they should not be allowed to be there at all!

I considered getting out, but I was too tired. So I asked the driver whether he knew that man, and what the man had done to him. He said he didn’t know that individual Arab, but all Arabs were the same, so to hell with them.

I told him I was just coming back from Antwerp and no taxi driver there would even dream of speaking that way of the local Jews, who (being mostly Orthodox) also grow beards and dress differently.

He explained that Arabs were liars: he took another Arab to Kfar Saba the other day, and as they arrived, the passenger asked him to continue to nearby Qalqilyah, just a few minutes away.

Wasn’t the driver happy to earn a couple of cents more? Not at all; he does not go to Qalqilyah. It’s in the West Bank. He refused. “We don’t do the Territories.” Too dangerous. A few stories on notorious Palestinian car thieves followed.

I asked the driver what he would do if I asked him to take me to  Ariel or Tapuach, illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

“You are most welcome, my friend,” said the driver. “I’d be happy to take you there.”

“So it’s not that you don’t do the Territories; you do the Jewish settlements in the Territories, but you don’t do Arab places, right?”

“We do go to Arab places,” he said. “I can take you to Um-el-Fahm or Nazareth [inside Israel proper] — but not to the Territories. And that dirty Palestinian should have told me from the beginning that he wanted to Qalqilyah.”

“But if he had told you the truth, you would have refused to take him, right?”

The driver admitted that this was true.

“So what would you do in his place? What would you do if you had to get home to Qalqilyah, where no trains and no buses go?”

The driver finally conceded he had no solution for the Palestinian guy, whose only sin was having his domicile in Qalqilyah.

I returned to the other Arab, the bystander: What did he do to the driver? The driver now quoted something I said earlier: “You cannot generalize, every person is different.” And “Please do not misunderstand me, sir; I am not a bad person.”

He then told me he had emigrated 21 years ago from Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Where 90 percent of the population is Muslim, I now add. He goes back every year to visit old friends.

I don’t think the taxi driver is a bad person. He is just a symptom. He has learned from experience that in the Israel of 2011 it’s legitimate to send a person to hell with a backpack full of dirty words just because he is Arab. Or better: that it’s legitimate to share with your passenger a backpack full of dirty words against an innocent Arab, provided your passenger looks Jewish. He didn’t want to be rude with me: on the contrary, it was his way of being friendly, of appealing to our common denominator: hatred toward Arabs.

Historians speak of anti-Semitism in pre-Nazi Germany as a common system of beliefs and utterances shared by the average (non-Jewish) person as normal, acceptable, respectable, even obvious facts of life. Everybody hated Jews, just like everybody hates cockroaches — what’s the big deal? The taxi driver reflects the Israeli mainstream nowadays. With such a government and such a public atmosphere, the old taxi driver is the last person I can blame.

Dr. Ran HaCohen was born in the Netherlands in 1964 and grew up in Israel. He has a B.A. in computer science, an M.A. in comparative literature, and a Ph.D. in Jewish studies. He is a university teacher in Israel. He also works as a literary translator (from German, English, and Dutch). HaCohen’s work has been published widely in Israel. “Letter From Israel” appears occasionally at Antiwar.com. 

Turning the 'right of return' into reality - Ben White

Myths perpetuated by Israel as to why the "right of return" is impossible are easily debunked when looked at logically.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/05/2011527131738517819.html

31 May 2001  Al Jazeera

 by Ben White

The May 15 Nakba protests put the issue of Palestinian refugees back on the table [GALLO/GETTY]

After years of marginalisation in the peace process, the Palestinian refugees are back on centre stage.

On May 15, Nakba day, the refugees forced their way on to the news agenda; in the past two weeks, Israeli and Palestinian leaders have been compelled to comment on what has always been so much more than a "final status issue".  

During his remarks in the Oval Office, and in response to an op-ed in The New York Times by Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli PM Netanyahu dismissed the refugees' right of return as fatal to "Israel's future as a Jewish state". But the permanent expulsion of one people to make way for another is a hard sell, which is why Netanyahu and others rely on oft-repeated myths about the refugees. 

One myth is that the "creation" of the Palestinian refugee "problem" (a euphemism for ethnic cleansing) was a consequence of the Arab countries' war with Israel. This claim was undermined - almost despite himself - by Israeli historian Benny Morris, who though joining the attack on Abbas' op-ed, noted that 300,000 Palestinians had lost their homes before 15 May 1948. 

In fact, as serious historians and research have shown, Palestinians left their homes and villages through a combination of attacks, direct forced removals, and fear of atrocities.

The expulsion of the refugees was ultimately realised by the forcible prevention of their return, the destruction of villages, and the legislative steps taken to expropriate their land and deny them citizenship. 

A second myth manipulates the question of the Jews from Arab countries, around 850,000 of whom left between 1948 and the 1970s. Israel's apologists try and suggest that these "Jewish refugees" somehow "cancel out" the Palestinian refugees, as if the residents of Ramla or Deir Yassin were responsible for events in Baghdad and Cairo.

More than a hint here of "all Arabs are the same". 

In fact, most scorn the link, such as Israeli professor Yehouda Shenhav who wrote that "any reasonable person" must acknowledge the analogy to be "unfounded". When the US house of representatives in 2008 called for linking the issues of Jews from Arab countries and Palestinian refugees, The Economist wrote that the resolution showed "the power of the pro-Israel lobby in Washington".

Put simply, one right does not cancel out another. Ask those pushing this propaganda if they support restitution and redress for all refugees, Jewish and Palestinian, and they fall strangely silent.

What kind of return?

But it is the exposure of a third myth that is the most explosive: that a literal return is unfeasible. In the words of the excellent arenaofspeculation.org, engaging "in new ways with the spatial, political and social landscapes of Israel-Palestine" means that instead of asking "can we return?" or "when will we return?" Palestinians are suddenly allowed to ask "what kind of return do we want to create for ourselves?" 

A discussion on what implementing the right of the return would look like is taking place. There is the long-standing work of Salman Abu Sitta and the Palestinian Return Centre (PRC), as well as studies by Badil and Decolonising Architecture Art Residency. Recently, the Israeli group Zochrot published in their journal Sedek a fascinating collection of articles on realising the return. 

Many people are familiar with the words of Israeli military chief of staff Moshe Dayan at a funeral in 1956, when he reminded those present that Palestinian refugees in Gaza had been watching the transformation of "the lands and the villages, where they and their fathers dwelt, into our estate."

Less well known are the thoughts of his father, member of Knesset Shmuel Dayan, who in 1950 admitted: "Maybe [not allowing the refugees back] is not right and not moral, but if we become just and moral, I do not know where we will end up." 

There can be no doubt that the obstacle to a resolution of this central injustice is the insistence on maintaining a regime of ethno-religious privilege and exclusion.

After 63 years of dispossession, the refugees have been once again revealed to be at the heart of the issue, for it is they who best exemplify what it means to create and maintain a Jewish state at the expense of the indigenous Palestinians.

Ben White is a freelance journalist and writer, specialising in Palestine and Israel. His first book, Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner's Guide, was published by Pluto Press in 2009, receiving praise from the likes of Desmond Tutu, Nur Masalha and Ghada Karmi.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

Netanyahu: Erasing the Green Line

The alienation of Palestinians by the Israeli government has the aim of monopolising future polity in the Holy Land.

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/04/20114249812743504.html

Ben White Last Modified: 27 Apr 2011 13:13

Expansion of settlements remains a priority, but the focus since the 1990s has been on strengthening settlements already built [EPA]

In light of the Netanyahu-Lieberman coalition's newly proposed (or passed) laws that target the Jewish state's Arab minority, increasing attention is being paid to the discrimination and hate speech faced by Israel's Palestinian citizens. Issues like the struggle of 'unrecognised' villages, and phenomena like the 'don't rent to Arabs' rabbis' letter, for example, are being covered by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, international media, and even the UK Foreign Office.

The bigger picture, however, is being missed. Many of the proposed or recently passed bills were initiated before the current coalition sat down in the Knesset; simply blaming figures like Avigdor Lieberman for these developments is not correct. This post-2000 trend has been further accelerated, and represents a manifestation of the kind of ethno-religious discrimination that has shaped the Israeli state's relationship with its Palestinian minority since 1948.

Furthermore, few are making the connection between what happens on both sides of the Green Line: there is more than just pointing to the parallels between policies like home demolitions and 'Judaisation' that take place inside both pre-1967 Israel and the occupied West Bank.

By the end of the 1990s, Israel had, to a large extent, reached the limit of possible significant expansion and colonisation in the Occupied Territories. This is not to deny the acts of expropriation and settlement growth that continue to occur; but when comparing the rate of colonisation that took place in the 1970s-90s, there has clearly been a dramatic slowing down.

Demise of the Green Line

In other words, for the last decade, Israel has focused less on expansion, and more on the consolidation of the existing colonies, cementing (literally) the apartheid regime over Palestinians. This fine-tuning is the mechanism and infrastructure of control; it was also a key part of the context for the Gaza policy of redeployment and siege.

As the expansionist drive exhausts itself in the West Bank, the gaze turns inwards, to the 'unfinished' war of 1948, and the project of Judaising the Galilee and Negev. A good example of that linkage is Ariel Sharon's description, in a letter to President Bush, of the 'disengagement' plan in 2005 as "context" for bringing "new opportunities to the Negev and Galilee".

The Green Line has not been considered a border in any meaningful sense by the Israeli state since 1967. Annexation and colonisation commenced more or less immediately, and methods used to expropriate land in the Occupied Territories were similar to those previously deployed against the state's Palestinian minority post-1948 and through the 1950s.

This 'erasure' of the Green Line - both physical and political - has been continued and accelerated by the Netanyahu-Lieberman government, and well past a point of no return.

The demise of the 'peace process' means the final rites are also being read for the 'two state solution', even if some are still repeating that it is merely 'almost' dead. The different 'offers' made by various Israeli leaders share the same substance: the Green Line is irrelevant. The Palestinian "state" will exist as a non-sovereign reservation surrounded by Israeli-controlled territory.

In parallel, there is overt incitement against Israel's Palestinian minority, who are described as an 'enemy' or a 'threat': MK Haneen Zoubi is told in the Knesset to 'go to Gaza', while Lieberman proposes denationalising Palestinian citizens in a 'land swap'. Netanyahu says Israel must be recognised as a 'Jewish state', and Kadima's Tzipi Livni says that the creation of a Palestinian "state" means telling the state's minority, "the national solution for you is elsewhere."

With the irrelevance of the Green Line, what we are left with is a de facto one state: from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, the Israeli state maintains a regime that grants or denies different privileges to different groups.

Politicians, policy-makers, and campaigners need to catch up with the reality on the ground.

Ben White is a freelance journalist and writer, specialising in Palestine and Israel. His first book, Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide, was published by Pluto Press in 2009, receiving praise from the likes of Desmond Tutu, Nur Masalha and Ghada Karmi.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

Why is Acre afraid of old signs?

http://972mag.com/why-is-acre-afraid-of-old-signs/comment-page-1/#comment-7757

Sunday, March 27 2011|Yossi Gurvitz

An artist placed re-designed street signs, from the Turkish period, in Acre – and Israelis think this “undermines law and order.” Why?

Artist Walid Qashash took a political stand (Hebrew): He designed street signs for the Old City of Acre, as they would look under the Turkish rulers, and hanged them near the normal street signs. Suddenly, after sixty and more years of repression, the street of Sahed Abboud reemerges; Suddenly, Genoa Square, a relic of the town’s crusader past, emerges again from the mists. Qashash has invoked the ghosts the Jews of Israel have been trying to banish, unsuccessfully, for decades.

Which is why this act, which would seem logical in any other city with a historical quarter – so logical, the town would place the signs itself – raised so much anger. Of course, Israel is emphatically not a normal country. It is based on a huge act of theft, which it insists on whitewashing. This is why streets in Jaffa and Acre and Jerusalem are now named after unimportant generals and less worthy Zionist apparatchiks. The entire non-Jewish history of this tortured land – Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Muslim, Crusader, Mamluk, Turkish – had to vanish, to be erased, to be scraped away. The fact that during most of the recorded history of this place, only a small minority wrote or spoke Hebrew, had to pass away. The names of former Palestinian towns and villages had to become a fading memory. Majdl stands no more; Call it Ashkelon (and try to forget its last original residents were deported in 1950, a long time after the war of 1947-1948 ended).

Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomine nuda tenemus: Names are the most enduring things. Rabin Square will still be called, automatically, “Kikar Malkhei Israel” for at least one more generation, possibly more. Myanmar will remain, stubbornly, Burma. Nablus is so called by the entire world aside from Israeli Jews, who claim it is the biblical Shkhem – and its name is an Arab mispronunciation of Neapolis, the name given to it by its creator, the emperor Vespasian. People of my generation will always think of St. Petersburg as Leningrad, but it returned to its real name as soon as the Communist regime collapsed, and this artificial name will be remembered, in a generation or two, only by historians or Soviet enthusiasts. The Turks called their capital Istanbul, but the world still remembers its original name was Constantinople, even 550 after Byzantine Empire fell. The final loss of names, and their replacement with new ones, generally indicates a great catastrophe, in which several generations were lost, so that no one could recall the old names – a rate and traumatic event.

Israel is based on such a trauma – a manufactured one. A stubborn denial of reality despite all the facts. Elik, Moshe Shamir’s mythic character, was not really born from the sea. History did not begin in 1948 (or 1917, or 1897, or 1882). Israeli Jews know, deep inside, that they are inhabiting stolen lands of a people expelled or exterminated. Which is why the denial is so angry – and so old. Rashi starts his exegesis on Genesis by claiming the Bible begins as it does so that gentiles could not claim Jews have stolen Eretz Israel: It was given to them by He who spoke and made the world. But why is such a denial of the theft necessary, on the part of a Jew living in 12th century France? Because the taking of Canaan by storm, as described in the Book of Joshua, is an act of horror; it must be explained away: Jehova is the ultimate excuse. We were only following divine orders.

The Acre municipality threatens to have Qashash tried for… something. Presumably they’ll find an article that’ll stick. After all, Acre is the town where a Palestinian driver was arrested and indicted for driving on Yom Kippur – which is not in violation of any law (Hebrew) – for which he was nearly lynched. The municipality also allows itself an unusually coarse reply, which it almost certainly wouldn’t use towards a Jewish artist:

“We are sorry Mr. Qashash is venting, and is looking for despicable ways to sour relations between Jews and Arabs in the city. He’s better stop whining and join activity for the benefit of the city’s residents, Jews and Arabs alike.”

Ynet’s poll, always indicative of the Jewish mob’s mood, suggests as one of its options “This is a nationalistic act, undermining law and order.” Naturally, this is the preferred option of most people taking the poll. In Israel, mentioning local history is nothing less than a “nationalistic act,” which undermines some imagined “law and order,” that is the law and order which say this is a Jewish state; and that it always was so, even if it was under temporary management by someone else; it was not anyone important, anyone with a history, you see; just a nomad, a migrant worker. And should anyone dare say otherwise, we’ll huff and we’ll puff and we’ll cry “anti-Semitism,” perhaps even “de-legitimization.”

And one more thing: Following the events in the Arab world, it is customary to say that social networks are a tool of revolutionary change, or other such nonsense. Well, yours truly was surprised this weekend to receive an email from Flickr, which loudly informed me it decided to take down one of my pictures – it can be seen here, and used to be called “Fascists on the Prowl” – because, I was sanctimoniously informed, “Flickr is a personal photosharing site, not a venue for interpersonal conflict. In joining Flickr, you agreed to abide by the Terms of Service and Community Guidelines. Specifically, you must not abuse, harass, threaten, impersonate or intimidate other Flickr members.” I was also threatened they may delete my account without any prior notice should the incident repeat itself. I sent an aggressive email back, informing them to the best of my knowledge, the two chaps in the pictures are not Flickr members, and that anyway I can defend my “fascist’ claim at length. I also asked for instructions on how I, as someone whose photos deal often with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the internal Israeli conflict, should behave under a threat of immediate deletion. I received a laconic mail back: “Yes, you can re-upload the photo.” Revolutionary tool, my foot.

"A gross imbalance of power that can't deliver peace, let alone justice."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/26/authentic-leaders-middle-east-peace

 Only authentic leaders can deliver a Middle East peace

This week's leaks have exposed the dangerous folly of US and British
attempts to control and divide the Palestinians
        
       Seumas Milne
       
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 26 January 2011 21.29 GMT
   

It's a tragedy for the Palestinian people that at a time when their cause is
the focus of greater global popular support than ever in their history,
their own political movements to win their rights are in such debilitating
disarray. That has been one of the clearest messages from the cache of
leaked documents al-Jazeera and the Guardian have published over the past
few days. It's not just the scale of one-sided concessions – from refugees
to illegal settlements – offered by Palestinian negotiators and banked for
free by their Israeli counterparts. The constant refrain of ingratiating
desperation is in some ways more shocking. While Israel's Tzipi Livni
rejects the offer to hand over vast chunks of Jerusalem as insufficient –
adding "but I really appreciate it" – and Condi Rice muses over resettling
Palestinian refugees in South America, the chief PLO negotiator, Saeb
Erekat, is reduced to begging for a "figleaf".

It's a study in the decay of what in Yasser Arafat's heyday was an authentic
national liberation movement. Try to imagine the Vietnamese negotiators
speaking in such a way at the Paris peace talks in the 70s – or the Algerian
FLN in the 60s – and it's obvious how far the West Bank Palestinian
leadership has drifted from its national moorings.

However well the basic contours were known, it's scarcely surprising many
Palestinians are still stunned to discover exactly what is being said and
done in their name. Erekat writes in the Guardian that "nothing is agreed
until everything is agreed", and any deal would be put to a referendum. But
as we know from the Palestine papers, he himself made clear in private that
such a vote would exclude most Palestinians, particularly refugees. And as
he told US officials last year, the same package offered three years ago is
"still there", waiting to be picked up.

But simply to point the finger at Palestinian leaders is to miss the point.
What has been highlighted by the documents is not a picture of genuine
negotiation and necessary compromise, but of a gross imbalance of power that
can't deliver peace, let alone justice. What's more, it's one where the
western powers repeatedly intervene to tilt the scales still further against
the victims of the conflict.

What has become clearer from the confidential records is that the talk of
"partners for peace" is a fantasy. A far more mainstream Israeli leadership
than is now in power was not even close to accepting an offer that would
anyway have been almost certainly rejected by Palestinians if they had been
consulted.

And why would Israeli negotiators do anything else when their rejection was
backed to the hilt by the US government? Reading the transcripts of the
talks, they often seem to be simply going through the motions.

It is the story of 20 years of failed peace negotiations that became a
charade, a way to maintain the status quo rather than deliver the promised
two-state solution, and that have now evidently run into the sand.
Inevitably, the vacuum they have left behind can only increase the threat of
renewed war.

This is the same peace process that produced the breakdown of authentic
leadership and the dysfunctional structures of the Palestinian Authority,
which underlie the sorry saga disclosed in the leaked documents.

The PA was designed in the 1993 Oslo agreement to be a temporary
administration for a five-year transition to statehood. Eighteen years later
it has become an open-ended authoritarian quasi state, operating as an
outsourced security arm of the Israeli occupation it was meant to replace,
funded and effectively controlled by the US, Britain and other western
governments.

Its leader's electoral mandate ran out two years ago, and the authority has
become increasingly repressive, imprisoning and torturing both civilian and
military activists from its rival, Hamas, which won the last Palestinian
elections.

With the large bulk of its income coming from the US and the European Union,
the PA's leaders are now far more accountable to their funders than to their
own people. And, as the records of private dealings between US and PA
officials show, it is the American government and its allies that now
effectively pick the Palestinians' leaders.

The new administration expected to see "the same Palestinian faces" in
charge if the cash was to keep flowing, PA officials were told after Obama's
election: Mahmoud Abbas and, more importantly, the Americans' point man,
Salam Fayyad.

And despite some less strident rhetoric, the US and British governments have
continued to promote the division between Fatah and Hamas, in effect
blocking reconciliation while pouring resources and training into the PA
security machine's campaign against the Palestinian Islamist movement.

As we also now know, British intelligence and government officials have been
at the heart of the western effort to turn the PA into an Iraqi-style
counter-insurgency operation against Hamas and other groups that continue to
maintain the option of armed resistance to occupation. Shielded from
political accountability at home, how exactly does British covert support
for detention without trial of Palestinians by other Palestinians promote
the cause of peace and security in the Middle East, or anywhere else? In
reality, it simply makes the chances of a representative Palestinian
leadership that could actually deliver peace with justice even less likely.

The message from the revolutionary events in Tunisia and the spread of
unrest elsewhere in the Arab world should be clear enough. Western support
for dictatorial pro-western regimes across the region for fear of who their
people might elect if given the chance isn't just wrong – it's no longer
working, and risks provoking the very backlash it's aimed to forestall.

That applies even more strongly to the Palestinian territories, under
military occupation for the past 44 years. Unless those governments that
bolster Israeli rejectionism and PA clientalism shift ground, the result
will be to fuel and spread the conflict.

For Palestinians, the priority has to be to start to change that lopsided
balance of power. That will require a more representative and united
national leadership, as the story told by the Palestine papers has rammed
home – which means at the very least a democratic overhaul of Palestinian
institutions, such as the PLO. In the wake of what has now emerged, pressure
for change is bound to grow. Anyone who cares for the Palestinian cause must
hope it succeeds.

        guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011