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.

The kids piled on my lap once they saw that I had a camera. More than an everyday camera, it was digital and possessed the unique ability to display the immediate results of what I was attempting to capture around me. I showed them the last picture I had taken, and they squealed. It was of one of the nine children swarming around me – a handsome, almond-eyed boy facing the camera with a simple, and distinctively sorrowful, expression. He was holding his hand in a gesture that crosses all boundaries of language, politics, geography, and religion: “Peace.”

Mrs. Al-Iwiwi and her husband and nine children live in the center of the Old City in Hebron, and if there is anything they do not experience in abundance, it is peace. What they do have in abundance is violence and harassment – at the hands of the ultra-radical Jewish settlers who have infiltrated this neighborhood as well as the Israeli forces here to protect them.

Mrs. Al-Iwiwi tells us about life here. She has nine beautiful children around her, but that does not assuage the loss of a tenth child. The city was under curfew when Mrs. Al-Iwiwi was ready to give birth, so she could not leave the house to get to the hospital. The ambulance could not reach her either, and her baby was born dead. Just 17 days later, the settlers who live no more than an arms-length away tried to burn down her house. The family has no phone so they shouted out the windows to neighbors for help, and as they ran to the stairs, they passed out from the smoke. On an average day life is simpler, but still Mrs. Al-Iwiwi must insist that her children stay indoors, because the settlers next door have been known to entertain themselves by throwing stones or even shooting at Palestinian children.

Mrs. Al-Iwiwi’s story is unique, but not just for the degree of violence and harassment she and her family experience. It is also unique because hers is one of the few Palestinian families left in the old city. Most others have been pushed out – either by force, by home demolition, by poverty, or by pure exhaustion. Mrs. Al-Iwiwi will not leave. She says staying in their home, on their land, is their form of resistance.

The largest city in the West Bank after Jerusalem, Hebron is the home to 140,000 residents. Of those, just 450 are Jewish settlers, who are guarded by some 2,000 Israeli soldiers (though they themselves are often already armed to the teeth). In all of the West Bank, settlers number about 200,000 – with another 200,000 in East Jerusalem and 6,000 in Gaza – but there is something unique about the Hebron settlers: Unlike elsewhere, settlers here have positioned themselves in the heart of this Palestinian urban area.

The first Jewish settlers came to Hebron in 1968, shortly after Israeli occupation of the West Bank. As the location of the tomb of Abraham, Hebron was seen by Jewish settlers as a city allocated to them by some kind of divine real estate decree, and they were inspired to start settling when a radical Zionist posted an advertisement in a newspaper inviting “Families or singles to resettle [the] ancient city of Hebron.” At first they settled at the edge of Hebron, and in 1971 this became Kiryat Arba, which is today the home of about 6,000 settlers. Slowly, settlers started to inhabit the Old City, where today they are the source of the worst tensions in perhaps all of the West Bank. The result of Jewish settlement here has been not just tensions but also displacement of Palestinian residents, along with continual, major disruptions to daily life in the form of shop, school, and hospital closures due to strangulating curfews.

Once bustling in the manner of the lively souqs of Cairo, today the Old City is nearly deserted. Almost every shop is shuttered. Yet a few survive, and besides being notable for sporting signs pockmarked with bullet holes, they have few customers. One formerly wealthy restaurant owner points out his establishment to us, now completely stripped of its stove, tables, and chairs. All that remains of his business is a small portable griddle situated at the front door, which he fires up only occasionally for the rare hungry customer who has some spare change to spend.

A butcher recounted his story with a flair for the humorous, making light of his suffering. (We are reminded that laughter is sometimes the only way to face a life so difficult.) He told us he is the most popular man in town. His friends nearby nodded in agreement. Why? Because when a curfew was imposed, he could not reach his shop to sell meat. When it was lifted for a few hours, he would hustle to the shop, chop up the meat, and give it away to his neighbors before curfew was exacted again. This happened over and over, and the butcher’s popularity soared. But what was a boon for his friends spelled ruin for him, and he could not go on. Today, you will find the butcher sitting, like most of the out-of-work shop owners, at the entrance of his shop, passing time near his once-thriving business place. The store is vacant, except for the huge metal meat hooks that hang imposingly above the window. Unadorned, their sharp ends symbolize the starkness of what the Israeli curfew policy has left behind for these Palestinians. We laughed at the story to lighten the moment and to participate in the Palestinian bid to find sweetness in the sad. But the humor of the moment vanished when I later learned that the butcher has leukemia, no access to medical treatment, and a large family to support.

Tired from trudging around in the heat – not to mention that a small ache in my heart had formed during the conversations with these Hebron residents – I was ready to retire to the village of Sa’er, where we would be spending the night. Even that would prove to be not just difficult but also representative of the traumatic effects of the presence of illegal Jewish settlers on Palestinian territory. First we got in a taxi. It left the paved streets of busy, downtown Hebron and onto a bumpy, rocky dirt road. We held on to our seats as we jostled up and down. Then we got out and walked down the same uneven, dusty road for a quarter mile. Here we got another taxi. Then out again and another 10 minutes’ walk of more irregular road. Now we reached our hosts’ car, and from there drove to his home. For us, the trip was inconvenient and moderately irritating. But for the elderly men and women on the same path, it was near impossible. So why did we have to take this complicated route, when our host lived just two kilometers from Hebron? Because the fine, new paved roads of Hebron are not allowed to Palestinians. Only Jewish settlers can drive down these roads.

That is not the only problem that an apartheid road system causes. The next day when we found ourselves sitting in the Hebron Governate office, I could not stay focused on the instructive briefing we were receiving; my eyes kept wandering to a figure sitting near us. He was here for help, because an Israeli military order had recently been issued to demolish his home. It is located between two settlements, and plans have been laid to connect them with a road. Of course, the officially stated reason, common to all Israeli act of aggression, was “security.” I didn’t talk to the man, but I’ll never forget the look in his eyes. They were big and glassy and trenched in bags that belied sleepless nights. He was slouched and quiet. He looked beaten.

As we left the desolate streets of Hebron, I silently mourned so much loss – the loss of income for families dependent on shopkeeper’s revenues, the loss of a vibrant economy, the loss of stability and homes, and above all the loss of childhood. The children here are a generation growing up in despair. When we asked them about their lives, they told us about their schools that have been closed, their friends who have been killed by Israeli soldiers, or they did not say anything at all. When we asked children here what they want to be when they grow up, they could not answer. “What is your dream?” we asked them. “We don’t have dreams,” they responded.

Leila Saad is a graduate student at Harvard University at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

“We come from here,” said my cousin’s wife, emphatically gesturing toward the ground, when an Israeli woman picnicking in the park with her family asked us where we were from. I looked down at the ground, seeing it as something more than just a piece of land, and those words echoed within me. We were standing in a park in the northern part of Israel. It is a park that was once a village – not 200 years ago, or 100 years ago, but just over 50 years ago – and this is where my father is from. The Israeli woman responded politely, “Have a nice day,” and turned away.

My father comes from the village of Kufr Bir’am, located in the Galilee in what is now Israel. I came here from the United States to discover my roots. Like all children of Palestinian refugees, I also uncovered a lot of pain in this place. Arriving at the edge of the village my curiosity was overwhelmed by emotions. I had steeled myself for what I would see, but there was nothing to prepare myself for what I would feel.

We stepped into the park, and my cousin directed my eyes to a leafy tree sitting on a well-manicured lawn and told me it was the location of his mother’s house. Today nothing of it remains. The symbolism of a house vanished long enough that a fully grown tree has replaced it did not escape me. I looked at the tree and my cousin and his wife and his two brothers, all once residents of this village, and tears flooded my eyes. All the stories that I had heard became real. The story that my father, as a little three-year-old boy, was swept up in his mother’s arms when the Israeli forces evacuated them from their home. They were promised that they could return in two weeks, but fifty years have now passed and their return is still barred. The events of his life rushed through my mind: His family’s flight to Lebanon, their plight as unwanted refugees in a foreign country. How they arrived penniless in the new country, but by good fortune were helped by a nun to reach a mountain town. So many Palestinian refugees did not have this luck. They lived out their days in pain and poverty in the refugee camps of Beirut and southern Lebanon.

The journey to my father’s village was heart wrenching because it signified something much bigger: the 1948 displacement of some 700,000 Palestinian families, whose crime was nothing more than living on the land that their fathers and grandfathers had passed down to them. And all the sorrow that I felt the day that I visited my father’s village was accompanied by a sharp, bitter taste in my mouth – the taste of injustice. Because to this day, the injustice suffered by the people of my father’s village remains in place, official.

Injustice and the response it has engendered is evident in the village. The first thing you see when you enter Kufr Bir’am is a sign explaining its significance. It mentions the seventh century Jewish community that lived here. It discusses the remains of a synagogue found here and its excavation. It even mentions the Baram Kibbutz, which was established on village lands after the ousting of the Palestinian villagers in 1948.

But the sign makes no mention of the village of Kufr Bir’am and Palestinians who lived here for hundreds of years. There is no mention of the fact that on November 20, 1948, Israeli forces evacuated the entire village, promising return to its residents in two weeks. There is no mention of the fact that those villagers were never, not even to this day, allowed to return. And there is no mention of the bitter fact that in September 1953, Israeli Air Forces deliberately bombed the village, demolishing all of its houses, leaving only the church standing in one piece, to ensure that the villagers would never return. There is no mention of the fact that the crumbling stone remains of the houses which dot the park are the destroyed homes of Palestinian families – my father’s family, his aunts, uncles, cousins, and neighbors.

Time stands still in Kufr Bir’am – not because, like the entrance sign implies, it was an ancient Jewish village, and what remains are old, historic ruins discovered through archeological excavation. Time has frozen here because for centuries this was a vibrant Arab village until its life was halted, as if the blade of a guillotine tore through it and, when the blade fell, the village’s life ended. The Israeli forces sliced through the life of Kufr Bir’am and left it still and empty.

What used to be my grandfather’s house was once inhabited with children and the delicious smells of Palestinian cooking and sounds of relatives being welcomed into the home. The village was full of people working and praying and sleeping and eating. It was a living, breathing village until it was evacuated and destroyed. When tourists come to this village, perhaps they are struck by the lack of life here. The stone ruins of houses look ancient. They may feel they are stepping into something old and poetic. But when I looked at those crumbled houses, I saw families and laughter and warmth. I saw my father as a child surrounded by the people of the village.

The uprooted families’ struggle to return to Kufr Bir’am has been a long, drawn-out one, and as recently as 1995, an Israeli Ministerial Committee agreed on the right of return of its uprooted residents. However, it simultaneously stated that the Israeli government would keep the confiscation order of the village. In 1996, when the Labor party was defeated, the negotiations between the Kufr Bir’am families and the Israeli parliament came to an end. So the struggle continues, and even Pope John Paul II, in a meeting with Ehud Barak on March 24, 2000, requested justice for the families of Bir’am. Yet still they are not allowed to return.

Today, the uprooted families of Kufr Bir’am hold tenaciously to their village in other ways. They return to the village en masse every Easter, to celebrate family, community, and their village together. They continue to hold weddings and baptisms at the village church. And they visit often, sharing stories with their children and passing on the legacy of their home. Nearby they keep a cemetery, another means for the uprooted families of Kufr Bir’am to hold on to their heritage. Today, all loved ones from the village are buried here. And those who die in exile are memorialized in a beautiful monument at the edge of the cemetery. The monument reads: “I have spent my life a stranger to my home and people. And today the heavens of the lord have become my home.” The name of my grandmother, who raised seven children and worked every day of her life until her death, is here. The name of my uncle, killed as a young man by the Israeli-backed Phalange during the civil war in Lebanon, is here. And the name of my grandfather’s sister, a woman I never met, is here. My grandfather died two years ago, but the monument was already built, so his name is missing from the Saad family portion of the monument, but it lives on in the hearts of all the Saad family members, just as the village of Kufr Bir’am is a part of our collective memory.

Later, when we returned from the village, my cousins asked me about the visit. Before I could say a word, the tears flowed again. They replied, “Now we know there is no doubt that you are from Kufr Bir’am, because you feel it.”

I will always feel Kufr Bir’am inside of me.

Leila Saad is a graduate student at Harvard University at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

With the advent of meetings yesterday in Gaza between Hamas leaders and Egyptian diplomats that produced no results, it was announced that hopes for a possible ceasefire were once again dashed. (It was a ceasefire, mind you, that Israel announced it would reject, even if Hamas agreed to it.) This comes after several days of the Americans and British laying blame for the halt in the road map over the past week nearly entirely in the machine-gun toting hands of Hamas. When President George Bush laid it on Hamas, he laid it on thick, saying, among other things that "it is clear that the free world, those who love freedom and peace, must deal harshly with Hamas and the killers" of Israelis. But when Bush condemned Israel last week for its attempted assassination of Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi, he only just grazed the tip of the iceberg. Because Israel’s assassination policy is just one in a slew of extreme policies of the occupation that result in acute frustration for not just Palestinian militants but also for all Palestinian civilians.

In alphabetical order, these policies include: annexation, apartheid wall, checkpoints, closures, collective punishment, curfews, detentions, excessive force, expulsion, house demolitions, incursions, landmines, tree uprooting, racial profiling, refugees, settlements, shelling, torture, water.

Need I say more?

Yes. Because sadly, for much of the international community – most importantly, the United States – the devastating effect on the lives of ordinary Palestinians goes unacknowledged. Yet these brutish occupation policies have combined to create an atmosphere that merits utter frustration by Palestinians. A simple thing like traveling from one village to another can be a difficult, painful, and humiliating event in the daily life of a Palestinian, because it means planning far in advance, leaving plenty of extra travel time for checkpoints, and suffering the humiliation of a 18-year-old Israeli soldier ordering you around and making you wait for what could be hours.

And that’s on a good day. On a bad day, the average Palestinian may also suffer from serious intimidation and even straight-out violence, not to mention unannounced closures of checkpoints, leaving civilians stuck in (or out of) cities for hours, or even days, at a time. Men – and women – have died, and been killed, at these checkpoints. For example, the 95-year-old Palestinian woman named Fattier Mohammed Hassan who was shot dead by Israeli soldiers in the backseat of her taxi while waiting to cross a checkpoint at the outskirts of Ramallah last year. She was just one of the 2,303 victims of Israeli violence since the outbreak of the Second Intifada. Is this the policy of a country ready to make peace? Is this the policy of a country that deserves no censure?

It is time that President Bush and the rest of the world add this catalogue of occupation policies to its list for condemnation. Indeed, direct killing (whether by suicide bombers or Israeli shelling or shooting) deserve strong denunciation, but it must also be acknowledged that these drastic policies of the Israeli occupation are responsible for deaths, not to mention major damage to the financial stability, the health, and the psychology of ordinary Palestinian civilians in all aspects of their lives. These are real roadblocks to peace.

Leila Saad is a graduate student at Harvard University at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Written by the author exclusively for MIFTAH.

Supporters of the Palestinians were pleased to hear Mahmoud Abbas (also known as Abu Mazen) frankly and clearly condemn Israel’s helicopter attack that wounded Hamas leader Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi yesterday as both “criminal and terrorist.” More surprising, however, was President George W. Bush’s condemnation of Israel for the attack as a “troubling” development that would not help Israeli security.

It is surprising, because this is not the Bush we are accustomed to. This is a different kind of “W” – one who is criticizing Israel for weakening the peace process, not praising Israel for bearing the brunt of peace, for making “painful concessions,” and for exercising “restraint” with the Palestinians. Indeed, Bush would have been hard pressed to ignore the attempted assassination of the Hamas leader, given that Abu Mazen has devoted himself to reaching out to Hamas at this crucial juncture (not to mention the fact that although Rantisi was hardly injured, two other Palestinians were killed and others injured.)

Yet the Bush Administration has praised Israel so often in the past – even in the face of some of its most egregious actions against Palestinians. So why now? The Bush Administration simply cannot face another PR disaster in the Middle East. The war in Iraq – especially with its resulting lack of evidence of weapons of mass destruction – has been a blow to the perception of American policy not just for Arabs, but for Europeans and people the world over. Palestine – probably the single-most important political issue to most Arabs – is a ticking bomb (no pun intended) plopped on Bush’s lap.

Could this apparent policy change for the Bush Administration be genuine or, even more important, long-lasting? Might Bush and his largely neo-con administration deliver on its promises for a fair end to the conflict, resulting in a truly viable Palestinian state in the not-too-distant future?

Though we may hope it is true, the evidence suggests otherwise. Let Bush’s record over the past two years speak for itself.

On April 19, 2002, Bush lauded Ariel Sharon as being a “man of peace.” Yet he made this statement smack in the middle of vicious Israeli incursions into the West Bank, which resulted in numerous deaths and injuries, not to mention destruction of homes, NGO offices, and government property and records. Then, on April 30, 2002, Israel announced that it would refuse to let a team of UN inspectors investigate the massacres at Jenin refugee camp. How did the Bush Administration respond? With silence. Bush made no effort to denounce Israel’s action nor to impose sanctions via the UN.

Then in June, Bush waxed eloquent about his new Middle East policy, and in the course of his speech he mentioned terrorism (i.e., Palestinian) 18 times but did not once mention human rights abuses (i.e., against Palestinians). Bush has a policy of turning a blind eye to Israel’s actions, and instead, the ever-loyal American president argued, in February 2003, for a $2.64 billion aid package to Israel for fiscal year 2004 (which does not even include the billions of dollars of grants and loans provided for Israel’s economic recovery).

In other words, Bush has little experience sparring with Sharon. So will he continue to square of with the Israeli prime minister as they travel down the road map to peace? That remains to be seen.

Leila Saad is a graduate student at Harvard University at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Written exclusively by the author for MIFTAH.