Last week, Israel barred a UNESCO fact-finding mission from entering the country, charging that the Palestinians had ‘politicized’ the mission before it had even arrived. The mission was tasked with looking into conditions of historical sites in the Old City of Jerusalem, something Israel apparently found to be very threatening.

Looking at the state of Jerusalem’s eastern sector today, it is understandable why Israel would not want UNESCO or anyone else walking around the Old City, especially the Palestinian-populated parts of it. Because anyone who does, will see the devastation that Israel and its settlers have wreaked on one of the oldest and most beautiful cities in the world.

Excavation works are being conducted in and around the Aqsa Mosque to make way for more Jewish construction at the place where Waqf authorities say Ottoman and Abbasid artifacts have long been tucked away. A Muslim graveyard is being dug up just outside the Old City’s Jaffa Gate, to build – ironically – a museum of tolerance. Today, two stores were forcefully taken over by Jewish settlers in Al Hakari, one of the neighborhoods in the Muslim quarter and every day, it seems that more and more homes are either being demolished by Israeli municipality authorities or being taken over by Jewish settlers.

The “Judiazation” of Jerusalem is a term many Palestinians and Arabs use for what Israel is doing in the city. In a nutshell, it is the long-term plan Israel is gradually carrying out to change the Arab Palestinian character of Jerusalem. This means demolishing old and historical structures, displacing Palestinians, handing over their homes to settlers and trying to erase the Palestinian or Arab history of the city.

The sad truth is that, on the surface, Israel has succeeded in this to a large extent. Pockets of Jewish settlers now live in the heart of Muslim quarters and aim to take over more and more. Sheikh Jarrah, one of the more affluent Palestinian neighborhoods of Jerusalem, is now pierced with Jewish flags waving from homes that have been wrestled from their Palestinian owners, and Israel’s light rail train cuts right down through Palestinian neighborhoods outside of the city center. The train, of course, is not meant to service the Palestinian population but rather to connect Jewish neighborhoods and settlements in the city, but the area confiscated from Shufat and Beit Hanina for its construction simply fell into the plan.

What the UNESCO mission would not have seen even if they made it into the Old City is the overall humiliation that the Palestinian population of Jerusalem must endure on a daily basis because of Israel’s military occupation. Trips to the Israeli ministry of interior must be made just to prove that one lives in the city for fear that their residency rights may be revoked; young Palestinian men are stopped randomly by Israeli soldiers to check their ID cards or just to harass them, and settlers are always given the luxury of maximum security whenever they walk the streets. If settlers want to march through the city, the Palestinians are told to close their shops, are barred for hours from reaching their homes if they run along the path of the march and are always the ones blamed if any kind of confrontation between the two sides breaks out.

Jerusalem is being squeezed by these measures more and more each day. But there is always that glimmer of hope, that strength that shines through proving that all is not lost. On Shavuot, Israeli settlers and extremists poured into the Old City, singing loudly, banging on the shop doors and waving huge Israeli flags. The sight was disconcerting to say the least. However, the afternoon of that same day, at Damascus Gate, passersby were met with a completely different scene. Palestinian flags waved in determined Palestinian hands under the threatening eye of heavily armed Israeli police and soldiers. The youths were fearless, demanding freedom, with strong, unrelenting voices.

The sight of the Palestinian flag waving at the entrance to Damascus Gate was a breath of fresh air. All is not lost and never will be because hope is eternal and determination and strength come from a never-ending spring.

That day at Damascus Gate is what all Palestinians must keep in their minds’ eye in spite of the daily oppression of the occupation. No matter how many missions Israel bars from entering or how many houses it takes over, there will always be those brave souls who, despite the risks, will always raise Palestine’s flag.

Joharah Baker is a Writer for the Media and Information Department at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH). She can be contacted at mid@miftah.org.

There is no point falling into the pit of countering the claims being made about the death of Mohammed Al Durra, the 12-year old boy from Gaza whose videotaped killing was seen around the world. The boy, crouching in fear behind is equally afraid father as bullets whizzed around them, was killed admittedly by the Israeli army. Later, the army recanted after investigating the tape, saying Durra was killed by Palestinian fire instead. Well now, Israel is changing its story altogether, saying he was not killed at all. In fact, he was probably not even wounded and the French channel that broadcast the footage and brought some pretty bad rap to Israel, had most likely filmed a charade.

The reason why I will not waste my time countering this claim is that even with the great lengths the Israeli government went to to prove that the boy was never killed, it could not provide any irrefutable proof that Mohammed Al Durra – who would be 25 now – is still alive. No pictures, no testimonies, no hospital or morgue officials giving statements to refute his death, have been provided. Only sketchy information about ‘poor quality footage’ and the fact that it seems as though the boy moved his arm after he had slumped over his father following the explosion.

My point is this: indeed, Mohammed Durra’s death was at least one of the catalysts that fueled the second Intifada, and thus, was an important event in the history of the Palestinians. However, more importantly – most importantly to me –is the fact that this is about a boy who died in sheer terror, with his distraught father futilely trying to shelter him from the barrage of bullets coming their way.

Mohammed Al Durra was a boy, with a life, a family and friends. He died a horrible death and now he is being made to die a second one. I did not know Mohammed or his family, but I can only imagine how awful it must be for them to read these claims now and feel the pain of losing their child all over again. If nothing else, this is disrespect for human life of the worst kind.

Some may postulate that the rehashing of the Durra case is a personal jab at the French cameraman who shot the footage, Charles Enderlin. Perhaps. But as a Palestinian who has seen the pain endured by numerous families who receive the horrible news that their sons or daughters have been killed by the Israeli army, my concern is for his family and for his memory. He should be left to rest in peace. If Israel has axes to grind with French journalists or with the international community for holding it accountable for its actions, then so be it. Israel is not lacking in the public relations department.

That being said, there is just one decent thing left to do. Leave Mohammed Al Durra and his memory alone.

Joharah Baker is a Writer for the Media and Information Department at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH). She can be contacted at mid@miftah.org.

This week Palestinians will commemorate Al Nakba, the catastrophe that befell the Palestinian people when Israel was founded. Every year, Palestinians hang placards pointing to the right of return, they carry keys symbolizing the homes they were forced to leave and could not return to and remember the Palestine that was lost to them 65 years ago.

This year will be no different. Every May 15, Palestinian recall their catastrophe and demand justice. They demand that they are granted the right of return for those who were made refugees virtually overnight and were then relegate to a life they did not choose. But more than anything, they demand recognition of the tragedy that befell them rather than a denial that it ever happened, or worse, that it was of their own making.

It has been 65 years since Israel was established in 1948, which means those who were cast into exile are either very old or have long passed. Those who experienced the Nakba are now few and far between, clinging to those few precious memories of a small garden in front of their house in Jaffa or of the salty smell of the sea in their neighborhood in Haifa. The rest of us are either descendants of these refugees or ordinary Palestinians who feel their cause is our cause because we are one people.

But the Palestinians have made one thing clear. The refugee issue will not die with the last refugee. It is felt nationwide, the loss, the injustice and the fact that those who were forced from their homes have mostly passed, longing for their beloved homes.

We cannot turn back time. What was lost has been altered, destroyed, changed or taken over by Israel’s newcomers. What we can do is hold on to the right to be recognized, for the injustice to be rectified in word and deed and for Palestine to never be lost in our minds or hearts.

Joharah Baker is a Writer for the Media and Information Department at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH). She can be contacted at mid@miftah.org.

So this is the story of the week, the fact that an elderly woman blew herself up in Gaza on November 23. That women need to blow themselves up in order to get the attention we deserve is widely symptomatic of a global culture that ignores the drudgery women have to endure day in and day out in order to keep food on the table, in order to educate their children, in order to keep their children safe and sound, despite the repeated Israeli onslaught on towns and villages across the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Only when there is a blast that the media remembers to put a human face to the suffering of the Palestinian people, but the reverse should be true. Instead of singing the praises of women going about their daily life under exceptionally hard conditions, Western media and journalists, even those living amongst us, surprisingly justify horrific acts of violence and qualify them by insinuating that the fact that a woman who was bereaved and living under extreme conditions has warranted such an act. Such a gut reaction should be expected from a people who have to endure daily Israeli violence. Nonetheless, it should never be justified because it becomes a trend; these women (and the men before them) become negative heroines, instead of becoming positive role models among their peers.

So is it fair that the millions of women many of whom are bereaved or endure hardships, and who chose not to use violence to express themselves, are denied their say in the story because they decide that the true act of self-sacrifice is finding ways of staying alive despite an oppressive regime? This society needs to find creative, constructive ways of resistance, but its various attempts are hijacked by those who choose violence as a means of resisting the occupation. The more the media stresses these desperate acts and the more it ignores the stories of ordinary Palestinian women doing extraordinary things, the more they become complicit in an occupation that denies our humanity.

Where are the stories of the inspirational teacher encouraging her students to find their talents; or the visually impaired elderly woman intent on building the confidence of young visually impaired women in a society that is harsh to those with any kind of impairment; or the lobbyist working on abolishing violence against women? Are these stories not worth air time or print space?

The frustration that I face when I try to submit such a piece to a Western media outlet is that because it is a story of the ordinary it is always turned away, cloaked in some obscure thank you. Is it because it does not bleed that this story is not printed? Or is there a more underlying cause in having my pieces cast off? I would not say I am a brilliantly adept writer, but I do have something to say and want people in the West to hear it. Yet, when my story is rejected, I get the feeling, and I could be wrong, that it is not “good enough,” not on the grounds of style or language, but because it does not suffer enough. What kind of warped policy is Western media pushing?

While I admire many journalists, who have supported our cause, and their media that print or broadcast stories of Palestinians, I also feel that there is a hint of an unconscious and unintentional racism in their attitude; that it is only they that can best articulate our suffering. There are many Palestinians, who can express themselves clearly and succinctly, addressing the reason of a Western audience, without being overly emotional or unfeeling either way, but they are not considered credible or impartial because they have a stake in the story. But that is precisely why they should be considered credible.

We are all trying to move away from factional hegemony, but instead of finding support among the liberal media in the West at the very least, they are quite willing to publish op-eds by the rising stars of an abhorrent political party. The falling stars of Palestinian political history also get print space because they are recognizable names, if no longer with the Western public, then at least within the tiers of governing elites. It is quite strange to read their articles knowing that at home, they have lost much of their standing, whereas the West is still intent on giving them trust.

When our voice is drowned out by such power-hungry politicians, by irrelevant has-beens, when the pain of losing a child, a fiancé or a sibling is too much to bear for some women, they blow themselves up. I do not lay blanket blame on the media, but I do feel that they have a role in perpetuating certain ideas and ideals that are counterproductive to our national struggle and political aspirations, simply by ignoring the voices of the majority and willingly handing the platform to the perverse. The media has far more influence than it realizes even in the face of government and public antagonism, but it has failed to be courageous enough to change perceptions and instead continues to push the tired old labels that we have been fighting to eliminate; that “Palestinians are corrupt terrorist monsters and the only language we know and understand is violence and killing,” when the opposite is true.

It is extremely sad that the only way a young woman’s (and indeed and elderly woman’s) life story can be told, is through her acting out in a most tragic manner, taking not only hers, but the lives of others and extinguishing any promise that her life might have held. If the story of each Palestinian woman living in a camp, a village, a town in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip can be told honestly and with human dignity, then perhaps something will snap in people of moral conscious to actually seek to address the core issues that cause so much anguish among women that it drives some to become suicide bombers. As long as the media goes after a story like a wolf after its prey, then the struggling voices of millions of people going about their daily business on Palestinian streets will continue to be muffled. And as long as those stories are not being told, the sound of violence will be the only one that resonates.

Margo Sabella is a member of the Media and Information Programme at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH). She can be contacted at mip@miftah.org

Have we ever thought that perhaps the real crisis in the world today is a lack of genuine leaders - people in whom we can trust to not only speak out against injustices, but actually attempt to right wrongs? We forget that presidents and prime ministers are fallible, often falling into the trap of idealizing their role in our lives, often placing them on too high a pedestal so that we are sure to be disappointed with the results when they inevitably fall from grace.

So why has the person that embodies leadership become more important than the act of leadership itself, than policy-making, than diplomacy, than nation-building (in Palestine’s case)? Not to trivialize it, but being a president, a prime minister or a minister is just a job, with huge responsibility; therefore, those in power must acknowledge the trust they were given in order to govern properly and should not use their positions for personal gain.

Sadly, politicians seem obliviously ignorant to this reality or willingly turn a blind eye. They insist on going about their daily business forgetting that it is the voters that put them in that job in the first place and that it is to them that they are most accountable. They have attempted problem solving in secrecy, excluding the population that instated them, and silencing the voices of intelligent ordinary citizens whose experience and expertise, as well as moral conscience, should be taken into account when making decisions that inevitably affect the lives of the very people that politicians claim to serve.

The problem that ails most people in power, in Palestine, at least, is that they are condescending towards their constituencies. They claim that we do not understand the intricacies of politics, of negotiations or of diplomacy. That is a terrible mistake that Palestinian politicians have made throughout our modern history; if you ask any Palestinian what she thinks of anything, you will get a sophisticated political analysis. Decades pass and the same outspoken, fiery people are in the game, but with the passing of each year, their passion seems to have become lukewarm and their bellies seem to have expanded, symptomatic of the “fat cat” syndrome that has come to symbolize people in power everywhere across the “Third World” and indeed in the “civilized” West; corruption is not exclusive to the Middle East or Africa, but that’s a topic for another time.

A mark of a good leader is one that is able to see that time has run out on him, that it is time to pass the torch, so to speak, and bow out of the political limelight with grace and dignity. Yet, in the Middle East, leaders remain leaders way past their expiration date, because they think they are indelible; that if they go, all else will fall apart and crumble into the sea. They have such high opinions of themselves that they do not see beyond the tips of their noses that they are actually a large part of the problem and in no way constitute even a minuscule part of the solution. Opposition is unacceptable and the budding of a new wave of promising leaders is quashed as soon as it dares to rear its head.

We see what’s going on; ordinary citizens are not gullible and understand that it is the privilege and power that come with leadership that people actually crave for. Leadership is not an Armani suit and tie, Italian leather shoes and suitcases. It is not bullet-proof Mercedes or an army of bodyguards. These are just the “pretty” trappings of leadership, but they do not make a leader and do not attest to his essence. And yet it is the lure of the spotlight that sometimes seems to be the motivating factor for people in influential positions and power itself become the ultimate goal rather than a means to an end. This is most clear from the body language of politicians in television interviews, which more often than not belies the sincerity of any grand declarations that they may make in public.

Watching Hamas’ politburo chief, Khaled Mash’al, in a recent press conference in Cairo left no doubt in my mind that it is the limelight and the hunger for power and control that matters to him most, not the fate of the Palestinian people as he would have everyone believe. Unfortunately, he is not alone; the previous Palestinian ruling party "Fateh" did not act any differently and those at the top of the hierarchy still walk around with the air that the Palestinian cause and the common good are less important than their personal interests, even worse, that the Palestinian cause should serve their interests instead of the other way around. Sure many of them have made personal sacrifices, but the fact that they demand some sort of recompense now for what should be offered voluntarily has diminished respect for them even more. Hamas and Fateh each believe they, and they alone, will deliver us from the evils of the occupation, when it is clear that it is their narrow self-interests that will lead us farther and farther away from a resolution and closer to the brink of collapse.

How then does an ordinary citizen reclaim a drowning nation-building process, watching what was once a promising society sinking deeper and deeper into despair? How do we challenge those in a dysfunctional government in seeing us as more than passive voters, easily manipulated in any way suitable to their purposes? Far more difficult, how do we shake them into realizing that they are part of the problem in order to start finding a solution?

The time is ripe for Palestinian society to reject all forms of factionalism and refocus our attention on the real issues at hand; a creation of an independent Palestinian state, free from Israeli occupation. All segments of Palestinian society need to be part of the solution and should not abdicate power to people who have failed us time and again, especially now when it is obvious that factional rivalries have clouded people's judgment to what is really important. Do we leave those holding the power to continue to disparage the integrity of the Palestinian cause or do we usurp power from under them? If we do not take steps to save ourselves from our own folly, who will? The bigger question that remains is how do we get out of this apathetic, tired mood we are in and make our leadership hear our demands?

We are either living in a reverie or in denial. When someone you know gets injured in this conflict, you expect to have feelings of outrage, deep sadness, or at least the manifestation of these feelings should be the normal outpourings of grief, sorrow and concern. And yet, news of casualties of a latest Israeli atrocity or an inter-factional battle does not faze people as it once did.

I want to be in hysterics. I know it is not something ordinary to say, but the truth is, this conflict has made people accept as normal, things that elsewhere would elicit deep reactions of wailing, or at least tears, or the momentary satisfaction of venting anger by breaking dishes across a room. Are the restrained reactions that many Palestinians have are merely a self-defense mechanism? Or are we really in denial about what is going on in down town Ramallah or on the beaches of the Gaza Strip? Has the daily dose of grim stories become such an ordinary thing in our life that we wake up each morning, wanting, needing a fix of the usual blood-drenched front page that we pour over while doing something as normal as having our morning coffee and scrambled eggs?

So, shouldn’t I be in hysterics? When I heard that a photojournalist that I know, Osama Silwadi, had been shot while doing something quite unexciting as to look out his office window during a procession on Ramallah’s main street, I cannot describe the feelings that went through my head. Funny, but I thought emotions are not supposed to be cerebral, and yet, I block feelings, like so many Palestinians (and even some foreigners living among us) have become used to doing, in order not to allow myself the luxury of sinking into a depression every time I hear a story of a child killed or a family annihilated, because there are far too many to count. Many of us have learned over the years that if you allow yourself the slightest chance to let the situation overcome you, you are done for and you will be unable to function.

Osama used to be a photojournalist for AFP and Reuters before he decided to become a freelancer and create a Palestinian image bank (www.apollo.ps). He is a father of three children, who now lies in a coma in a hospital bed in Tel Aviv, so far away from his family and friends in Ramallah that no one can visit him or offer his wife the support she needs at this time.

As Osama watched the procession below on Ramallah’s main street from his office window this past Sunday, boys were shooting into the air to commemorate a fallen comrade. I say boys because my (female) mind cannot accept the fact that mature men would be so irresponsible as to shoot in the air in a densely populated area, where the chance of a stray bullet hitting someone is not a remote possibility, but a certainty. And so, the bullet traveled from the barrel of one of those boys’ guns into Osama’s now non-existent spleen, up near his heart to lodge finally in his spinal cord.

The prognosis is not good and we all hope and pray for his recovery, knowing that when he finally wakes up from his coma, he will find that his reality has changed so dramatically around him and he will have to grapple with whether or not he will be able to resume his life as he had once lived it. All those times in the field when he knew that he was a taking chance on life by snapping shots of stone-throwing youths confronting soldiers, or non-violent protestors against the Wall, did he never stop to think that life is so fragile in any case that even a simple walk under rickety scaffolding or taking the wrong turn in a road can result in a fatal accident?

Not to sound like a cliché, but such is life, whether you have lived in a conflict zone all your life or not, you cannot cower in your house forever in the off-chance that you might be struck by lightening. Perhaps, however, people who have gone through trauma feel invincible and the sense of danger is blunted and lightly brushed aside, and so it could quite have possibly been those thoughts that went through Osama’s mind seconds before the impact of the bullet ripped through his body.

It is odd how yesterday morning, when I heard the news, all I could think about is how ordinary this news sounded, despite the fact that Osama had been on my mind quite often these past few days, because I was looking at some recent photos I had taken with his voice about light, lines and frame running through my head. I realized with some unease that I lost the ability to be shocked, indeed a friend told me once that he also lost the ability to be astonished by such things as the first flowering of spring or the birth of a child and that is how I feel sometimes, like I am a car in neutral mode most of the time. And while I am deeply saddened by what has happened to Osama, I am unable to reach down into that deep place where I will allow myself to feel more than the very superficial of feelings and I know that tears will not come.

It completely worries me, this sense that we are becoming a nation of zombies, who have turned off the tap of basic human responses to bad and good news alike that something like the recent inter-factional fighting is not so shocking or unexpected. Once you stop being shocked, then you stop being afraid, and once you stop being afraid, you can do anything out of the bounds of acceptable human behavior. The signs of intimidating armed men running unrestrained among the population should be dealt with immediately and decisively.

More importantly, the indications that we are heading toward a civil war that so many are trying to suppress and deny, will become a full-blown reality if this is allowed to continue and then there will be no turning back to a time when Palestinians put the national interests before the factional, if ever there were such a time. If that should happen, there will be more innocent bystanders like Osama, who will pay the heavy price of the craziness that we have sunken to in recent months, and ultimately Palestine will hemorrhage outwards and be drained of its wealth of people, who today still have the ability to save it from becoming yet another tragic tale for the history books.

The images of dead children flashed across Arab TV screens all day Sunday and showed nothing but dusty lifeless children, who just a day before may have been flying their kites and enjoying ice-cream in the Lebanese village of Qana. Normal children in abnormal circumstances. The luck of the draw and they were born into a life barely lived and conflict is all they knew of it.

Even if families were forewarned about a military strike, why is it so hard to fathom that a family would rather risk staying in their home, than become refugees somewhere unknown to rely on the mercy of relief organizations and the kindness of strangers? Not only did the house cave in in yesterday’s Israeli operation on Qana, killing children and women, but the blame is somehow laid flatly at their feet; they were told to vacate, yet they stayed, so they must be a legitimate target – and those who issued the ultimatum are thus vindicated! What compelled these people to knowingly stay in their village, despite the certainty of an air strike? Was it faith in God? Was it faith in humanity? Ordinary people sadly believing that the hollow compassion of decision makers and world leaders actually amounts to anything? The romantic notion of leaders standing for the rights of the downtrodden is sadly the substance of legends and fairy tales.

It is hard to breathe sometimes, hard to imagine a world where injustice is so prevalent and yet every press conference, whether by American, Israeli, European or even Arab officials could have been written by any one of us, almost verbatim. The rhetoric of “we are doing this for your own good,” does not go down well with the Arab masses. What of the European public? I hardly believe that masses in the UK or France, or elsewhere in Europe are as naïve as their governments imagine them to be – the American public is another matter, sometimes they seem to be irredeemable. How does one react to atrocities that say one thing loud and clear, while words put a spin on these events that is so falsely transparent we can only suppose that these officials must be living somewhere on another planet and only come down to earth, occasionally, to save us from our own folly, or so they would think?

War is nothing but a test field; that is what one of my old history teachers used to say in class. He always got his wrist slapped by the school administration for veering off the curriculum and actually teaching us something worthwhile; a lesson we could carry with us for a lifetime. Things are not as they seem. There is a reason for the war; or better put there is a reason not to have peace and not to use diplomacy. Today, the perversity of world leaders has lead us to believe that they do not wish for peace, that they never did and possibly never will.

The stores in Ramallah and Jerusalem have decided to shut in protest Monday, people in Palestine are outraged at what is happening in Lebanon and can only wonder that once Israel has satisfied its thirst for violence and killing there, when will our turn be again. The loss of life and destruction we see on TV is so graphic that you can almost smell the decaying bodies in the dusty Middle Eastern air traveling from the South of Lebanon to the heart of Palestinian territory. Palestinians, as everyone else watching Al Jazeera, are incredulous, but not entirely surprised, as to why no one has intervened to stop Israel from inflicting more destruction on the innocent.

Sorry, like peace, is just another word that has been recycled too many times to mean anything to anyone anymore. If you were truly sorry, then would you not demand an immediate unconditional ceasefire? So, spare us the contrived apologies and the artificial outcries and rage; we do not want to hear your supposed words of compassion, for they ring hollow in our ears. When you are ready to become a human again, please inform us, until then, no one wants to hear another peep out of you.