(Hanan Ashrawi’s daughter telling her story)

I am Palestinian - born and raised - and my Palestinian roots go back centuries. No one can change that even if they tell me that Jerusalem , my birth place, is not Palestine , even if they tell me that Palestine doesn't exist, even if they take away all my papers and deny me entry to my own home, even if they humiliate me and take away my rights. I AM PALESTINIAN.

Name: Zeina Emile Sam'an Ashrawi; Date of Birth: July 30, 1981; Ethnicity: Arab. This is what was written on my Jerusalem ID card. An ID card to a Palestinian is much more than just a piece of paper; it is my only legal documented relationship to Palestine . Born in Jerusalem , I was given a Jerusalem ID card (the blue ID), an Israeli Travel Document and a Jordanian Passport stamped Palestinian (I have no legal rights in Jordan ). I do not have an Israeli Passport, a Palestinian Passport or an American Passport.

Here is my story:

I came to the United States as a 17 year old to finish high school in Pennsylvania and went on to college and graduate school and subsequently got married and we are currently living in Northern Virginia. I have gone home every year at least once to see my parents, my family and my friends and to renew my Travel Document as I was only able to extend its validity once a year from Washington DC . My father and I would stand in line at the Israeli Ministry of Interior in Jerusalem , along with many other Palestinians, from 4:30 in the morning to try our luck at making it through the revolving metal doors of the Ministry before noon – when the Ministry closed its doors - to try and renew the Travel Document. We did that year after year. As a people living under an occupation, being faced with constant humiliation by an occupier was the norm but we did what we had to do to insure our identity was not stolen from us.

In August of 2007 I went to the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC to try and extend my travel document and get the usual "Returning Resident" VISA that the Israelis issue to Palestinians holding an Israeli Travel Document. After watching a few Americans and others being told that their visas would be ready in a couple of weeks my turn came. I walked up to the bulletproof glass window shielding the lady working behind it and under a massive picture of the Dome of the Rock and the Walls of Jerusalem that hangs on the wall in the Israeli consulate, I handed her my papers through a little slot at the bottom of the window.

"Shalom" she said with a smile. "Hi" I responded, apprehensive and scared. As soon as she saw my Travel Document her demeanor immediately changed. The smile was no longer there and there was very little small talk between us, as usual. After sifting through the paperwork I gave her she said: "where is your American Passport?" I explained to her that I did not have one and that my only Travel Document is the one she has in her hands. She was quiet for a few seconds and then said: "you don't have an American Passport?" suspicious that I was hiding information from her. "No!" I said. She was quiet for a little longer and then said: "Well, I am not sure we'll be able to extend your Travel Document." I felt the blood rushing to my head as this is my only means to get home! I asked her what she meant by that and she went on to tell me that since I had been living in the US and because I had a Green Card they would not extend my Travel Document.

After taking a deep breath to try and control my temper I explained to her that a Green Card is not a Passport and I cannot use it to travel outside the US. My voice was shaky and I was getting more and more upset (and a mini shouting match ensued) so I asked her to explain to me what I needed to do. She told me to leave my paperwork and we would see what happens.

A couple of weeks later I received a phone call from the lady telling me that she was able to extended my Travel Document but I would no longer be getting the "Returning Resident" VISA. Instead, I was given a 3 month tourist VISA. Initially I was happy to hear that the Travel Document was extended but then I realized that she said "tourist VISA". Why am I getting a tourist VISA to go home? Not wanting to argue with her about the 3 month VISA at the time so as not to jeopardize the extension of my Travel Document, I simply put that bit of information on the back burner and went on to explain to her that I wasn't going home in the next 3 months. She instructed me to come back and apply for another VISA when I did intend on going. She didn't add much and just told me that it was ready for pick-up. So I went to the Embassy and got my Travel Document and the tourist VISA that was stamped in it.

My husband, my son and I were planning on going home to Palestine this summer. So a month before we were set to leave (July 8, 2008) I went to the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC, papers in hand, to ask 2 for a VISA to go home. I, again, stood in line and watched others get VISAs to go to my home. When my turn came I walked up to the window; "Shalom" she said with a smile on her face, "Hi" I replied. I slipped the paperwork in the little slot under the bulletproof glass and waited for the usual reaction. I told her that I needed a returning resident VISA to go home. She took the paperwork and I gave her a check for the amount she requested and left the Embassy without incident.

A few days ago I got a phone call from Dina at the Israeli Embassy telling me that she needed the expiration date of my Jordanian Passport and my Green Card. I had given them all the paperwork they needed time and time again and I thought it was a good way on their part to waste time so that I didn't get my VISA in time. Regardless, I called over and over again only to get their voice mail. I left a message with the information they needed but kept called every 10 minutes hoping to speak to someone to make sure that they received the information in an effort to expedite the tedious process. I finally got a hold of someone. I told her that I wanted to make sure they received the information I left on their voice mail and that I wanted to make sure that my paperwork was in order. She said, after consulting with someone in the background (I assume it was Dina), that I needed to fax copies of both my Jordanian Passport and my Green Card and that giving them the information over the phone wasn't acceptable. So I immediately made copies and faxed them to Dina. A few hours later my cell phone rang. "Zeina?" she said. "Yes" I replied, knowing exactly who it was and immediately asked her if she received the fax I sent. She said: "ehhh, I was not looking at your file when you called earlier but your Visa was denied and your ID and Travel Document are no longer valid." "Excuse me?" I said in disbelief. "Sorry, I cannot give you a visa and your ID and Travel Document are no longer valid. This decision came from Israel not from me."

I cannot describe the feeling I got in the pit of my stomach. "Why?" I asked and Dina went on to tell me that it was because I had a Green Card. I tried to reason with Dina and to explain to her that they could not do that as this is my only means of travel home and that I wanted to see my parents, but to no avail. Dina held her ground and told me that I wouldn't be given the VISA and then said: "Let the Americans give you a Travel Document".

I have always been a strong person and not one to show weakness but at that moment I lost all control and started crying while Dina was on the other end of the line holding my only legal documents linking me to my home. I began to plead with her to try and get the VISA and not revoke my documents; "put yourself in my shoes, what would you do? You want to go see your family and someone is telling you that you can't! What would you do? Forget that you're Israeli and that I'm Palestinian and think about this for a minute!" "Sorry" she said," I know but I can't do anything, the decision came from Israel ". I tried to explain to her over and over again that I could not travel without my Travel Document and that they could not do that - knowing that they could, and they had!

This has been happening to many Palestinians who have a Jerusalem ID card. The Israeli government has been practicing and perfecting the art of ethnic cleansing since 1948 right under the nose of the world and no one has the power or the guts to do anything about it. Where else in the world does one have to beg to go to one's own home? Where else in the world does one have to give up their identity for the sole reason of living somewhere else for a period of time? Imagine if an American living in Spain for a few years wanted to go home only to be told by the American government that their American Passport was revoked and that they wouldn't be able to come back!

If I were a Jew living anywhere around the world and had no ties to the area and had never set foot there, I would have the right to go any time I wanted and get an Israeli Passport. In fact, the Israelis encourage that. I however, am not Jewish but I was born and raised there, my parents, family and friends still live there and I cannot go back! I am neither a criminal nor a threat to one of the most powerful countries in the world, yet I am alienated and expelled from my own home.

As it stands right now, I will be unable to go home - I am one of many.

So today is the third day of Eid Al Fitr that all Muslims worldwide celebrate right after the culmination of the month of Ramadan. Not sure if it’s only me, but Ramadan seems to have lost its glory. Years ago when I was a child, people’s attitudes towards both Ramadan and Eid (festival) were way different than now. Maybe I have grown up to the extent that I see in them nothing but the mere fact that few arrogant relatives come for a visit for a couple of minutes, and everyone just sucks them up.

It has been a gloomy day in deed. Being self-centered often times, I thought that my own family never enjoyed the Ramadan that other people celebrate. But the night prior to the Eid, I went for a drive to Ramallah with my uncle and three sisters, we toured around Al Manara and the mall a bit, and felt the legendary atmosphere. People were happy. That hit me; I am not accustomed to seeing them vividly preoccupied with the preparation for the big “day.”

So I came back home and wrote to all my contacts wishing them a Happy Eid and expressed my astonishment and satisfaction to see promising smiles in the crowded streets of Ramallah. But the sad part was that I knew it was merely fleeting moments and that those smiles would be wiped off soon. Not only have my fears become true, but I was blind. Yes, blind. Or may be I just chose not to see it. May be I wanted to believe that we are actually happy.

Would I miss Ramadan? NO. Not really. It has been made hell this year.

While Ramadan is believed to be the holy month during which people get closer to Allah by fasting from food and drink all day long and focus on their faith instead, I am not pretty sure this was the case with us Palestinians. It was only a drug. Ramadan numbed our pain. We could handle both the Israeli and Palestinian political, economic, and security pressure knowing that the day of salvation was approaching; the Eid. But after the three days elapsed, then what?

Now thousands of Palestinians are waiting for the next phase. It has been seven months now. Seven months, and thousands of the PA employees have not received their salaries. And two months elapsed with millions of students deprived form their right of education. I have three sisters and two brothers who do nothing but stay at home. They have not attended school from the very beginning of this term. It is both sad and frustrating that they have to “do the time” and pay a high price.

Reading the news headlines on the first days of Eid is not healthy at all. It lessens the effect of the drug, and one starts to get sober. Sounds funny in deed, but that was the case.

Few minutes ago, I surfed some of the blogs and came across few Iraqi bloggers writing on both Ramadan and Eid. If the titles did not mention “in Iraq,” I swear I could never tell the difference between Iraq and Palestine. The hunger, misery, constant killing, and lack of security are all Palestinian symptoms.

I am speechless now; I can hardly verbalize the so many conflicting thoughts. Heaven knows how things would be like next Ramadan, but I would not speculate it already. It is not time to worry about it now, other issues are on stake; food, money, and education. Until then, there are a lot of things to sort out.

Yesterday, I realized that I believe in love at first sight. Not the romantic kind, rather the sense of connecting with another human being without ever having to say a word. Indeed, the person I was so enthralled with last night was a five-month-old girl, who smiled at me and then hid her face in shyness. Those few moments of interacting with this baby lifted my spirits, but it also made me reflect in sadness about the fact that many children in this current conflict are robbed of their joy and their childhood.

I often contemplate how mature Palestinian children seem. Sure, they play the childhood games that we all played in our day, but there is wisdom in their words that is eerily sobering. Their age defines them as children, but if you have a conversation with a Palestinian child, you will realize how much awareness she has of the world around her, of suffering in the next village, in Gaza, in Lebanon. She is a child that has empathy and understands that life, by nature, is wrought with all sorts of difficulties.

A Palestinian child knows better; life is not as it is depicted in cartoons, where those who die are miraculously resurrected not once, but several times, where injuries are healed instantaneously, where death is a joke and life is a series of slapstick moments. A Palestinian child escapes into imagination, but she is never far removed from the reality of children and adults alike being indiscriminately shot outside her window, in her classroom, at the local bakery.

Who would have thought that normal things, simply walking down the street to grab a falafel sandwich, could result in your untimely death? Perhaps the Israeli army mistook the falafel stand for a bomb-making factory, or an ammunition shop? Make no mistake about it; the Israeli military have made too many “mistakes” that there is obviously a pattern there, wouldn’t you think?

A child that is robbed of the sense of security, therefore, is a child that is mature beyond her years. She knows that the bullets and the tank shells do not discriminate. Her father can shield her from the neighbor’s vicious dog, from the crazy drivers, he will hold her hand to cross the street, but he will not be able to capture a bullet in his hand like the mythological superheroes in blockbuster movies out this summer in theatres near you. He might be able to take the bullet for her though. But once gone, who will be her protective shield against the harsh reality of life that goes on in what seems the periphery of the conflict? And who will be there to share some of her joyous milestones; graduation, marriage, the birth of a child? Hers is a joy that is always overshadowed by a greater sorrow.

Is it fair that 31 Palestinian children have died in a 31-day period? A child-a-day; is that the new Israeli army mantra? Khaled was just a one-year-old, Aya was seven, Sabreen was only three. What lost potential, what lost promise – who knows what Khaled would have grown up to be? An astronaut? A veterinarian? A philosopher? What about Aya; she could have become a fashion designer, a teacher, a mother. By what right has this promise been so violently plucked and trampled upon cruelly and without a moment’s hesitation on the part of the Israeli soldier, who heartlessly unleashed a fiery rain of bullets and shells on a neighborhood as if he is in a simulated video game and those who die are fictitious and unreal? Perhaps that is what he is made to believe, otherwise, who in clear consciousness is so willing to pull the trigger and with one spray of bullets destroy life, potential and rob joy?

If you can see the smiling face of your own child, then how do you go out and unquestioningly take the life of others? If you value life, then how do you live with the burden of knowing that you have taken it so unjustifiably? Perhaps that is your perpetual punishment; the judgment of a child scorned is the harshest of them all.

Few with any sense of intellectual or historical integrity would still question the bloody massacre that took place in the village of Deir Yassin 65 years ago, claiming the lives of over 100 innocent Palestinians.

Attempts at covering up the massacre have been dwarfed by grim details by well-respected historians, including some of Israel’s own.

Narratives offered by historians such as Benny Morris — an honest researcher who remained committed to Zionism despite the ghastly history he himself uncovered — presented a harrowing version of the events that unfolded on that day: “Whole families were riddled with bullets… men, women, and children were mowed down as they emerged from houses; individuals were taken aside and shot. Haganah intelligence reported ‘there were piles of dead’. Some of the prisoners moved to places of incarceration, including women and children, were murdered viciously by their captors…”

It was the Irgun Zionist militias of Menachem Begin and the Stern Gang (Lehi) lead by Yitzhak Shamir that took credit for the infamy of that day; and both were rewarded generously for their “heroism”. The once wanted criminals rose to prominence to become prime ministers of Israel in later years.

The magnitude of the Deir Yassin massacre often obscures important facts for historians. One amongst them is that Deir Yassin was one of many massacres perpetrated by Zionist troops, including Haganah units. Another is that these militias had jointly formed the Israeli Defence Forces, following the official Israeli Declaration of Independence on May 14, 1948, despite their supposed differences during the conquest of Palestine.

David Ben-Gurion had made his decision on May 26 and hesitated little to include both the Irgun and Lehi, alongside the Haganah. Not only did the leaders of the terrorist militias command respect and enjoy prestige within Israeli society, armed forces and the political elite, but the very murderers who butchered innocent men, women and children were empowered with bigger guns and continued to “serve” and terrorise for many more years.

Another often overlooked fact is that what started at Deir Yassin never truly finished. Sabra and Shatilla, Jenin, Gaza and many more are only recreations of the same event.

But another sad reality also emerged and was crystalised in the last 65 years. Since then, the right to credible narration has still largely been reserved for Israeli historians.

Most of these historians, whether sympathetic or otherwise, either played no part in that history, were privileged by its outcome or were themselves active participants. Still, it would take an Israeli historian to “discover” a Palestinian massacre in some village at some point in time.

For example, only when Israeli journalist Amir Gilat chose to run a story in Maariv newspaper a few years ago, citing the research of Israeli master’s degree student Theodore Katz, did Western media acknowledge the Tantura massacre.

It mattered little that the descendants and relatives of 240 victims of that grief-stricken village who were killed in cold blood by Alexandroni troops never ceased remembering their loved ones. A massacre is only a massacre when halfheartedly acknowledged by an Israeli historian.

Even Palestinian historians, at least those who are held accountable to the rules of Western media and academia, find themselves borrowing mostly from Israeli sources, aggrandising Israeli writers and celebrating Israeli historians who are supposedly more trustworthy than Palestinians.

The logic has it that a sympathetic Israeli narrative would win greater acceptance by American or British audiences than one told by a Palestinian, even if the Palestinian historian had lived the event and experienced its every gory detail.

It is a travesty that the Palestinian narrative has to live on borrowed analogies, borrowed histories and borrowed historians in order to enjoy an iota of credibility. And the problem runs much deeper.

In my last book, “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story”, I charted a detailed account of the massacre of Beit Daras, during which scores of inhabitants of that brave village, located in southern Palestine, were gunned down by Haganah troops only weeks after Deir Yassin inhabitants were massacred in a similar fashion. Beit Daras is the village from which my family was dispossessed to subsist in an impoverished refugee camp in Gaza.

Although Beit Daras was located in the north eastern part of the Gaza District in southern Palestine, it was high on the Zionist leadership agenda as early as the first months of conquest. The small village was one of a few villages and towns marked for destruction in Operation Nachshon and Harel, aimed to completely cut off the Jaffa-Jerusalem landmass.

The war for Beit Daras began early, as heavy shelling started between March 27 and 28, 1948, killing nine villagers and destroying large areas of the village’s crops.

Several attempts failed to drive the resilient villagers out. What turned out to be the last battle took place in mid-May. Um Adel and Um Mohammad were two young girls in Beit Daras at the time. Now old women in Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza, they helped me connect some of the pieces regarding what happened that day. I provided their historically consistent accounts in my book on Gaza. Here are few excerpts.

Um Adel recalls: “The women and children were told to leave because the news of the Deir Yassin massacre was spreading and with it lots of fear. We were told that the Jews not only massacre people, but rape women. The women had to be sent away, but the men wouldn’t leave. But so many of them were killed. The men fought like lions, and many were killed as well, including Abu Mansi Nassar and his two brothers, Ali Mohammed Hussain Al Osaji, and four youths from Al Maqadima.”

Um Mohammad elaborated: “The town was under bombardment, and it was surrounded from all directions. There was no way out. They surrounded it all, from the direction of Isdud, Al Sawafir and everywhere. We wanted to pursue a way out. The armed men (the Beit Daras fighters) said they were going to check on the road to Isdud, to see if it was open. They moved forward and shot few shots to see if someone would return fire. No one did. But they (the Zionist forces) were hiding and waiting to ambush the people. The armed men returned and told the people to evacuate the women and children. The people went out (including) those who were gathered at my huge house, the family house. There were mostly children and kids in the house.

“The armed men came and said, ‘the road to Isdud is open, evacuate the people’. The Jews let the people get out, and then they whipped them with bombs and machineguns. More people fell than those who were able to run. My sister and I… started running through the fields; we’d fall and get up. My sister and I escaped together holding each other’s hand. The people who took the main road were either killed or injured…. The firing was falling on the people like sand; the bombs from one side and the machineguns from the other. The Jews were on the hill; there was a school and a water reservoir for people and the vegetables. They showered the people with machineguns. A lot of the people died and got injured.”

But many fighters remained in Beit Daras. Not even a massacre would weaken their resolve. The wounded were gathered in many houses, but with little medical care to count on. Some of the dead were hurriedly buried. Many others were unreachable, lying in the sun amidst the blooming fields of spring.

Writing in the right-wing FrontPage magazine on April 1, Joseph Puder reiterated the supposed worry in Israel that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s half-hearted apology to Turkey for the murder of nine Turkish activists in May 2010 could open a “Pandora’s box”.

“In fact,” Puder asserts with peculiar confidence, “an Arab diplomat stated last Sunday that some Arab states are considering the possibility of demanding that Israel apologise for killings in the Occupied Territories and in Lebanon — just as Israel has apologised to Turkey over the Mavi Marmara”.

Arabs rarely demand apologies from Israel. Instead, along with many other countries, they demand an end to military belligerence and occupation of Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian territories, in accordance with international and humanitarian law. An “apology” for the killing of many thousands and the subjugation of whole nations will not suffice.

Speaking on behalf of “Israelis”, Puder expects an apology from Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for “his provocative actions against Israel and his anti-Semitism”.

The “anti-Semitism” reference is particularly interesting. At a UN conference in Vienna on February 27, Erdogan had referred to Zionism as a crime against humanity. The statement sent shock-waves among Israeli supporters, especially those who wished to see Israeli-Turkish relations return to their old status before Israeli commandos descended on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, killing and wounding many.

Writing in Al Monitor, Tulin Daloglu linked Erdogan’s remarks to the March 1 visit to Turkey by the newly-appointed US Secretary of State, John Kerry. “Erdogan had expected him to extend an invitation to meet [Barack] Obama at the White House,” Daloglu wrote. “He did not receive one.” The reason, according to an unnamed US official: “His remarks on Zionism had hurt the bilateral relationship.”

In some ways, international acquiescence to Zionism is an American success story linked to its triumph over the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War. In November 1975, UN General Assembly Resolution (UNGAR) 3379 declared that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination,” for it provided the needed historical and political discourses through which Palestine’s original inhabitants were massacred and violently uprooted, as their villages and towns were destroyed or claimed by a different, mostly European race. However, in December 1991, international balances of powers had dramatically shifted in favour of Israel and its US-western benefactors. Without having to alter any of the notions deemed abhorrent by UNGA, Zionism had magically ceased to be racist.

To remain an American ally, Erdogan is expected to toe the American line. In a visit to Denmark on March 30, the Turkish prime minister attempted to negotiate a balanced approach to the controversy ignited by his earlier statement. In an interview with the Danish newspaper, Politiken, he insisted that his criticism of Israel is focused on “some critical issues,” and is “directed especially towards Israeli policies on Gaza”. “On the other hand, we have recognised Israel’s existence within 1967 borders based on a two-state solution,” he said.

Probing the issue further on April 4, in the Hurriyet Daily News, Mustafa Akyol wrote that Erdogan was unlikely to be a “committed Anti-Zionist”, “because it is the official policy of the Erdogan government to support a ‘two-state solution’ in the Holy Land ... Anyone who supports the two-state solution can really not be an ‘anti-Zionist’ at the same time”.

Despite assurances by Turkey that its policies regarding Israel and the Palestinians remain as principled as ever, there is little doubt that a hasty shift is underway. This is causing much confusion and inconsistency between Turkey’s official discourse and conduct. The source of that confusion — apart from the appalling violence in Syria and earlier in Libya and other Arab Spring upheavals — is Turkey’s own mistakes.

The Turkish government’s inconsistencies regarding Israel highlight earlier discrepancies in other political contexts. There was a time when Turkey’s top foreign policy priority included reaching out diplomatically to Arab and Muslim countries. Then, we spoke of a paradigm shift, whereby Ankara was repositioning its political centre, reflecting perhaps economic necessity, but also cultural shifts within its own society. It seemed that the East vs West debate was skilfully being resolved by politicians of the Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Erdogan, along with Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, appeared to have obtained a magical non-confrontational approach to Turkey’s historic political alignment. ‘The Zero Problems’ policy allows Turkey to brand itself as a bridge between two worlds. The country’s economic growth and strategic import to various geopolitical spheres allowed it to escape whatever price was meted out by Washington and its European allies as a reprimand for its bold political moves — including Erdogan’s unprecedented challenge of Israel.

Indeed, there was a link between the growing influence of Turkey among Arab and Islamic countries and Turkey’s challenge to Israel’s violent behaviour in Palestine and Lebanon and its rattling against Syria and Iran. Turkey’s return to its political roots was unmistakable. Yet, Washington could not simply isolate Ankara and the latter shrewdly advanced its own power and influence with that knowledge in mind. Even the bizarre anti-Turkish statements by Israeli officials sounded more like incoherent rants than actual foreign policy.

For a short while, Turkey’s political fortunes were boosted by the early phases of the Arab Spring. Then, much hope was placed on the rise of popular movements in countries that have been disfigured by Arab dictators and their western benefactors.

However, the euphoria of change created many blind spots — one of which is that conflicts of sectarian and ethnic nature, as in Syria, do not get resolved overnight. That foreign military intervention, direct or by proxy, can only support protracted conflict. Indeed, it was in Syria that Turkey’s vision truly fumbled. It was obvious that many were salivating over the outcome of a Syrian war between a brutal regime and a self-serving and divided opposition — each faction adopting one foreign agenda or another. Suddenly, Turkey’s regional and global ambitions grew ever more provisional because of fear of chaos spilling over to its border areas and the fear of a strong Kurdish presence in northern Syria.

Turkish calculations grew more muddled. And under American auspices, an insincere Israeli apology was issued to nudge both parties to an urgent alliance. “In the light of Israel’s investigation into the incident which pointed to a number of operational mistakes, the prime minister expressed Israel’s apology to the Turkish people for any mistakes that might have led to the loss of life or injury ... ”, Netanyahu’s apology read in part. No commitment regarding the Gaza siege was made.

It was good news for Israeli and pro-Israel media, which are likely to raise the price of that apology as needed. Turkey and Israel: A ‘what next?’ mindset was the title of an article in the right-wing Israeli daily Jerusalem Post. The answer came in the Jewish Press: “Next on the Israeli-Turkish Agenda: Sending Al Assad to Jordan.” Meanwhile, also in the Jewish Press: Israeli Knesset member “Moshe Feiglin wants Turkey apology for the deaths of 766 Holocaust refugees.”

US President Barack Obama’s visit to Israel, on March 20, dissipated any persisting illusions. As he walked on the red carpet and warmly embraced top Israeli government and military officials, a new/old reality began to sink in: Obama is no different from his predecessors.

On the day of Obama’s arrival, Israeli rights group B’Tselem, released a disturbing video of Israeli soldiers carrying out a “mass arrest” of nearly 30 Palestinian children on their way to school in the Palestinian city of Hebron.

The children pled and cried to no avail. Their terrified shrieks echoed through the Palestinian neighbourhood as they tried to summon the help of passersby.

“Ammo” [uncle], one begged, “for God sake don’t let them take me”.

Nonetheless, several military vehicles were filled with crying children and their schoolbags.

The video was released on the day Obama was meeting Israeli children at a welcoming ceremony at the home of Israeli President Shimon Peres.

“Their dreams are much the same as [dreams of] children everywhere,” he said.

“In another sense though their lives reflect the difficult reality that Israelis face every single day. They want to be safe, they want to be free from rockets that hit their homes or their schools.”

Many Palestinians immediately pointed out the moral discrepancies in most of Obama’s statements during his stay in Israel. Still, his visit was “historic”, declared numerous headlines in the US and Israeli media.

Aside from the fact that it was his first trip to Israel as a president, it was barely momentous. His unconditional support for Israel was tedious and redundant, predictable even.

Those who have followed his unswerving pro-Israel declarations — including his visit to Israel as a presidential candidate in 2008, his speeches before the Israeli lobby group AIPAC and many other examples — could hardly discern a shift except, perhaps, in the total lack of interest in political sensibility and balance.

He truly delivered in Israel, to the total satisfaction of the Israeli prime minister and his pro-settler government, which was assembled just before Obama’s arrival.

Obama spoke as if entirely unaware of the political shift to the extreme right under way in Israel. Indeed, the new Israeli government is more right wing than any before.

The extremist Jewish Home Party has three important ministries, including Jerusalem and housing, and the ultra-nationalists of Yisrael Beiteinu were awarded the tourism ministry. It means that the next few years will be a settlement-construction bonanza, more ethnic cleansing and greater apartheid.

“It’s good to be back in The Land [Israel],” Obama said in Hebrew, at the Tel Aviv airport.

“The United States is proud to stand with you as your strongest ally and your greatest friend.”

It is believed that for four years, Obama has failed to live up to the nearly impossible expectations of Israel.

Israel requires a president with good oratory skills to, for example, emphasise the “eternal” bond between the US and Israel, and Obama did, signing big cheques and asking few questions. He, of course, did that and more. Aside from the $3.1 billion in financial support, he rerouted hundreds of millions of US money to bankroll Israel’s air defence system, the Iron Dome, whose efficiency is questionable at best.

Obama’s past transgressions, as far as Israel is concerned, is that he dared ask the rightwing Netanyahu government to temporarily freeze settlement construction as a precondition to restarting the stalled, if not dead, peace process.

Of course, there is the widely reported matter of Obama’s lack of fondness for Netanyahu, his antics and renowned arrogance. But that matters little, since Israel’s illegal settlements continued to thrive during Obama’s first term in office.

Expectedly, Netanyahu was gloating. He managed to assemble a government that will cater mostly to extremist Jewish settlers in the West Bank and also masterfully managed to humble the US president, or at least quash his ambition to make his country operate independently in the Middle East, without Israeli consent or interests in mind.

Now that Jewish colonies are flourishing — with occupied East Jerusalem area EI being another major exploit — Netanyahu is once more hoping to start a war on Iran, one that would not be possible without US funding, support and likely direct involvement.

“Thank you for standing by Israel at this time of historic change in the Middle East,” Netanyahu said while standing near the mostly US-funded Iron Dome.

“Thank you for unequivocally affirming Israel’s sovereign right to defend itself, by itself, against any threat.”

Obama did in fact spare a few, although spurious, thoughts for Palestinians.

“Put yourself in their shoes — look at the world through their eyes,” he said to an Israeli audience.

“It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of her own, and lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements of her parents every single day.”

One would applaud the seeming moral fortitude if it were not for the pesky matter that the US voted against a Palestinian state at the United Nations last November and tried to intimidate those who did.

And, of course, much of the horror that Palestinian eyes have seen throughout the years was funded and defended by US money and action.

If Obama is trying to resurrect the myth that the US is a well-intentioned bystander or an “honest broker” in some distant conflict, then he has utterly failed. His country is fully embroiled in the conflict, and directly so. Many Palestinian children would still be alive today if the US government had conditioned its massive support for Israel to Tel Aviv’s ending the occupation and ceasing the brutality against the Palestinians.

In a joint press conference in Ramallah, alongside Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Obama even demanded that Palestinians drop their condition (proposed by Obama himself) of a settlement freeze in order to return to the so-called peace talks.

“That’s not to say settlements aren’t important, that’s to say if we resolve the [main] problems, then settlements will be resolved,” he said.

“If to begin the conversation we have to get everything right from the outset ... then we’re never going to get to the broader issue,” Obama added.

The broader issue, according to the US president is “how do you structure a state of Palestine,” which again, Obama voted against last year, and passionately so.

Aside from resounding rhetoric about peace, Obama is toeing the Israeli line exactly as Netanyahu and the lobby expect him, or any other US president, to do. He has little to offer Palestinians, or Arab nations, but much to expect from them.

Arab states must seek normalised relations with Israel, and Palestinians must “recognise that Israel will be a Jewish state, and that Israelis have the right to insist upon their security”, he lectured in Jerusalem on the second day of his trip, reported by CNN online.

The obvious danger here lies in the fact that Israel oftentimes conflates security and its right to defend itself by arresting children on their way to school in Hebron, or by inflicting or supporting wars against other nations: Lebanon, Iraq and now Iran.

Obama will eventually get back to his Oval Office, ready to resume work as usual. This will include the signing of many papers concerning additional funds, loans, military technology transfers and much more for Israel.

Palestinians, meanwhile, will carry on with their long fight for freedom without his noted oratory skills.

Meanwhile, the families of the 30 children kidnapped by the Israeli army in Hebron will have many days ahead of them in Israeli military court. But that, of course, is a different matter, of no concern to Obama and his many quotable peace slogans.

“Hi Papa .... Don’t worry about me too much, right now I am most concerned that we are not being effective. I still don’t feel particularly at risk. Rafah has seemed calmer lately,” Rachel Corrie wrote to her father, Craig, from Rafah, a town located at the southern end of the Gaza Strip.

“Rachel’s last e-mail” was not dated on the Rachel Corrie Foundation website. It must have been written soon after her last e-mail to her mother, Cindy, on February 28. She was killed by an Israeli driving a bulldozer on March 16, 2003.

Immediately after her painful death, Rafah embraced her legacy, making her another “martyr” for Palestine. It was a befitting tribute to Rachel who was born to a progressive family in the town of Olympia, itself a hub for anti-war and social justice activism. But Olympia is also the capital of Washington state. Politicians here can be as callous, morally flexible and pro-Israel as any other seats of government in the US, where sharply dressed men and women jockey for power and influence.

Ten years after Rachel’s death, the US government is yet to hold Israel to account. Justice is not expected anytime soon.

Bordering Egyptian and Israeli fences, and ringed by some of the poorest refugee camps anywhere, Rafah has never ceased to be a news topic. The town’s gallantry during the first Palestinian uprising (Intifada) in 1987 was the stuff of legends for other resisting towns, villages and refugee camps in Gaza and the rest of Palestine.

The Israeli army used Rafah as a testing ground, wishing to give a lesson to the rest of the Palestinians. As a result, its list of “martyrs” is one of the longest, and is unlikely to stop growing any time soon.

Many of Rafah’s finest perished digging tunnels to Egypt to break the Israeli economic blockade that followed Palestine’s democratic elections in 2006.

Buried under heaps of mud, drowning in Egyptian sewage water, or pulverised by Israeli missiles, some of Rafah’s men are yet to be located for proper burial.

Rafah agonised for many years, not least because it was partially encircled by a cluster of illegal Jewish settlement: Slav, Atzmona, Pe’at Sadeh, Gan Or and others. The residents of Rafah were deprived of security, freedom and even, for extended periods of time, access to the adjacent sea, so that the illegal colonies could enjoy security, freedom and private beaches.

Even when the settlements were dismantled in 2005, Rafah became largely trapped by the Israeli military border, incursions, Egyptian restrictions and an unforgiving siege. True to form, Rafah continued to resist.

Rachel and her International Solidarity Movement (ISM) friends must have appreciated the challenge at hand and the brutality with which the Israeli army conducted its business.

Reporting for the British Independent newspaper from Rafah, Justin Huggler wrote on December 23, 2003: “Stories of civilians being killed pour out of Rafah, turning up on the news wires in Jerusalem almost every week. The latest, an 11-year-old girl shot as she walked home from school on Saturday.”

His article was titled: “In Rafah, the children have grown so used to the sound of gunfire they can’t sleep without it.” He too “fell asleep to the sound of the guns”.

Rafah was affiliated with other ominous realities, one being house demolitions. In its report, “Razing Rafah”, published October 18, 2004, Human Rights Watch mentioned some very disturbing numbers. Of the 2,500 houses demolished by Israel in Gaza between 2000-04, “nearly two-thirds … were in Rafah.... Sixteen thousand people, more than 10 per cent of Rafah’s population, have lost their homes, most of them refugees, many of whom were dispossessed for a second or third time”.

Much of the destructions occurred so that alleyways could be widened to secure Israeli army operations. Israel’s weapon of choice was the Caterpillar D9 bulldozer, which often arrived late at night.

Rachel was crushed by the same type of US-manufactured and supplied bulldozer that terrorised Rafah for years. It is no wonder that Rachel’s photos and various graffiti paintings adorn many walls of Rafah streets.

Commemorating Rachel’s death anniversary for the tenth time, activists in Rafah gathered on March 16. They spoke passionately of the American girl who challenged an Israeli bulldozer so that a Rafah home could remain standing. A 12-year-old girl thanked Rachel for her courage and asked the US government to stop supplying Israel with weapons that are often used against civilians.

While Rafah carried much of the occupation brunt and the vengeance of the Israeli army, its story and that of Rachel’s are merely symbolic of the greater tragedy which has been unfolding in Palestine for many years.

Here is a quick summary of the house demolition practice of recent years, according to the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions, also published in Al Jazeera August 2012: The Israeli government destroyed 22 houses in East Jerusalem and 222 in West Bank in 2011, leaving nearly 1,200 people homeless. During the war on Gaza (December 2008-January 2009), it destroyed 4,455 houses, leaving 20,000 Palestinians displaced and unable to rebuild due to the restrictions imposed by the siege. (Other reports give much higher estimates.) Since 1967, the Israeli government destroyed 25,000 houses in the occupied territories, rendered 160,000 Palestinians homeless.

Numbers can be even grimmer if one is to take into account those who were killed and wounded during clashes linked to the destructions of these homes.

So, when Rachel stood with a megaphone and an orange high-visibility jacket trying to dissuade an Israeli bulldozer driver from demolishing yet another Palestinian house, the stakes were already high. And despite the inhumane caricaturing of her act by pro-Israeli US and other Western media, and the expected Israeli court ruling last August, Rachel’s brave act and her subsequent murder stand at the heart of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

It highlights the ruthlessness of the Israeli army, puts to shame Tel Aviv’s judicial system, confronts the international community with its utter failure to provide protection for Palestinian civilians and raises the bar even higher for the international solidarity movement.

The Israel court verdict last August was particularly sobering and should bring to an end any thought that Israel’s self-tailored judicial system is capable of achieving justice to a Palestinian or even an American.

“I reached the conclusion that there was no negligence on the part of the bulldozer driver,” Judge Oded Gershon said as he read out his verdict in a Haifa district court in northern Israel. Rachel’s parents had filed a lawsuit, requesting a symbolic $1 in damages and legal expenses. Gershon rejected the suit, delineated that Rachel was not a “reasonable person”, and once more blamed the victim, as it did with thousands of Palestinians for many years.

“Her death is the result of an accident she brought upon herself,” he said.

It all sounded that demolishing houses as a form of collective punishment was just another “reasonable” act deserving legal protection. Actually as per Israeli occupation rules, it is.

Rachel’s legacy will survive Gershon’s charade court proceeding and much more. Her sacrifice is now etched into a much larger landscape of Palestinian heroism and pain.

“I think freedom for Palestine could be an incredible source of hope to people struggling all over the world,” she wrote to her mother nearly two weeks before her death.

“I think it could also be an incredible inspiration to Arab people in the Middle East, who are struggling under undemocratic regimes which the US supports.”