The Big Lie About the Middle East - Arab nations don't care about the Palestinians Posted Sunday, Dec. 10, 2006

By LISA BEYER
No sensible person is against peacemaking in the Holy Land. Applause and hopefulness would seem the reasonable reaction to the Iraq Study Group's recommendation that the Bush Administration "act boldly" and "as soon as possible" to resolve the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians. But as a front-row observer of similar efforts over the past 15 years, I could muster neither response. In lumping the Iraq mess in with the Palestinian problem--and suggesting the first could not be fixed unless the second was too--the Baker-Hamilton commission lent credibility to a corrosive myth: that the fundamental problem in the Arab world is the plight of the Palestinians.

It is a falsehood perpetuated not just by the likes of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, who came late to the slogan after their actual beefs--Saddam with his neighbors; bin Laden with the Saudi royals--gained insufficient traction in the Arab world. The mantra is also repeated like an axiom in the U.S.--in parts of the State Department, in various think tanks, by editorial writers and Sunday talk-show hosts. Continued here....

Blunt Questions for the Palestinians

Have the Palestinians started to slip into civil war? That is the blunt question that any Palestinian must not shirk away from answering, without delay or reservations, with such prayers as 'God forbid', 'oh goodness no'. And that's bearing in mind that God listens and answers people's prayers.

Answers have become an urgent issue because we see the beginnings of a slide toward internal Palestinian fighting taking the form of killings and counter-killings, some of which are particularly worrisome given that the movements, Fatah and Hamas, are both busy throwing the blame on each other, regardless of whether it is true or not.

Last Monday, we witnessed a heinous crime no one could have fathomed that a Palestinian could commit against three innocent young Palestinian children who were killed along with their companion - the driver was seriously injured - in their car on their way to school in Gaza. The horror of this crime in itself calls on the need to stop and reconsider many things. The first is the shameful struggle over the authority and governance that is being fought with such intensity while the entire West Bank is occupied, subject to Israeli policies that dismember it through military barriers and crossings and settlements. Bypass roads for Jewish settlers in the Gaza Strip are still closed to its population; a population that is often encircled by sea, land and air. Continue to Dar Al Hayat