(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.

You are born in a country, say the United States. As such, you become a citizen of that country. You are issued a passport from your country of citizenship which allows you to travel to other countries, as a tourist, a foreigner. Of course, you can apply for residency or citizenship in a foreign country based on their immigration laws and, if accepted, you can be issued a second citizenship. Immigration laws are complicated, non-uniform, and, for democratic countries, go out of their way to be non-discriminatory, that is, unless you are Jewish.

If you are Jewish, a very discriminatory law in a foreign country applies to you, without taking your consent and without any formal ties between you and that country. It matters not that you are a citizen of America, Argentina, or Australia; as long as you are Jewish, you have a foreign country that claims to speak for you from the moment of your birth. You could be a sixth generation Alaskan Jew or a tenth generation Brooklyn Jew; it matters not. You, and your entire family for as far back as you can track could know no other place than your hometown in America, and you would still be “represented” by a foreign country, one whose language you don’t even speak. That foreign country is Israel.

Law in the service of discrimination

It goes without saying that for Palestinians, upon whose ruins Israel was established, this Orwellian-perfected, Israeli immigration law, called the Law of Return, is a disgrace and a stain on the quilt of humanity. After all, the Israeli Law of Return only applies to Jews. Those Palestinians who became refugees because of Israel’s creation, or those Palestinians who happened to be abroad when Israel militarily occupied their homes, like my father, or even for the Palestinians living as “residents” in the West Bank and Gaza Strip today, are totally excluded from this right to return home and gain automatic citizenship. Ironically, the word “return” directly applies to Palestinians given they were born here, lived here, tilled the land here, and were the subjects that Israel attempted to ethnically cleanse in order to build a new state—one which gives Jews exclusivity on both sides of the 1949 Armistice Line, referred to as the “Green Line.”

For the most part, world Jewry is silent about this reality of having an Israeli citizenship held in perpetuity for Jews only that awaits them their entire life. All they need to do to claim it is to visit Israel and request it. Partly because of this warped state of affairs, every Jew in the world is coaxed into thinking that they need to bear-hug Israel, regardless of whether Israel is engaged in war crimes or blatant racism.

Amira Hass, the Israeli-Jewish journalist who has been covering this conflict for decades while living amongst Palestinians under occupation, frequently gives public talks. When her audience is Jewish, she religiously starts by stating: “Any Jew in any part of the world is entitled to rights in Eretz-Yisrael/Palestine [from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River] that are being denied, in whole or in part, to every Palestinian."

Then, Amira goes on to give some concrete examples: only Jews have the right to visit the country (something not self-evident for most Palestinians who were born outside the country, or were born there but live in the Diaspora), only Jews have the right to reside and work anywhere in the country, only Jews have the right for immediate naturalization, only Jews have the right to reside or buy property in Jerusalem (Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza are deprived of this right), the list could go on.

The Palestinian-Israeli “conflict,” as it is so frequently referred to, has many aspects. To understand this seemingly intractable conflict, one cannot detach themselves from a historical understanding of the Middle East, in general, and of the tragedy that befell the Jews (and all of mankind) in Europe ever since WWI. However, no tragedy, no matter how severe, should be used as a pretext to discriminate—not against Muslims and Christians of the land, and not against Jews who are also inherently linked to the same land. Likewise, no democracy, in today’s world, should have the “right” to speak for persons who are not its citizens, live thousands of miles away, and have not given their direct consent to be spoken for or “represented.”

President Obama weighs in

“Put yourself in their [Palestinian] shoes.” This is what President Barack Obama told a group of Israeli students gathered in a conference hall in Jerusalem during his recent visit to Israel and the occupied West Bank. In an Israeli context, this is a bold statement, one they are not used to hearing. The president made several bold statements in that speech, making repeated reference to the need for Palestinians to be free from Israeli military occupation. The students applauded, several times, to these politically loaded overtures from the president.

The right-wing Israeli leadership led by Benjamin Netanyahu, who was not invited to the Jerusalem event, was surely fuming at how President Obama spoke directly to the Israeli public and evoked applause on issues related to the unjust Israeli suppression of Palestinian rights. Encouraging those applauses may have sounded nice to the untrained ear, but one fact remains clear: similar applause would be hard to come by from Jewish communities as represented by leading organizations such as AIPAC and the ADL.

If President Obama was sincere about wanting to see the conflict from a Palestinian perspective, then, instead of praising Israel for being a successful country of immigrants, he would have used his charm and oratory skills to portray to the Israeli public how wrong it is for a Jew born anywhere in the world to have more rights in Palestine/Israel than the Palestinians themselves.

The reality that the state of Israel lacks defined borders, which happens to be one of the key requirements for statehood as defined by international law, clearly articulates the preferential treatment that Israel has been provided by the international community ever since its establishment. When such preferential attitudes become embedded in a nation’s DNA, exclusivity is bound to reign supreme in every sphere of the state. Like in apartheid South Africa, such exclusivity is a recipe that jeopardizes any nation-state project, including Israel’s. Jewish communities around the globe can stop the damage Israel is self-inflicting upon itself.

However, if Diaspora Jews can accept having an Israeli citizenship being held ‘forever’ for them while Palestinians are denied not only citizenship, but basic human rights, then they too are directly partaking in the continued apartheid against Palestinians.

The status quo in Palestine and Israel is unsustainable. Anyone involved in the reality on the ground in this part of the world knows this for a fact. As such, one can view the current Palestinian bid to the United Nations General Assembly for non-member state status as a last-ditch effort by the secular Palestinian leadership to save whatever may be remaining of the two-state paradigm as the basis to ending Israel’s 45 years of military occupation.

A significant driver of the current political paralysis is the stereotype, designed and propagated by Israelis, that Palestinians living on the other side of the separation barrier are violent and not deserving of freedom or independence. As such, most Israeli Jews do not see Palestinians as equal human beings, and thus any violent action against them becomes justified, no matter how cruel, illegal or in contradiction of Jewish values.

Nearly all Palestinians on the receiving end of this stereotype miraculously wake up every morning and — beyond doing their utmost to sustain a livelihood under miserable conditions — somehow remain focused on working toward realizing a future free of military occupation.

This stereotype, spread by Israeli authorities to foreign audiences and, sadly, inculcated through Israel’s state education system, is that any substantial relief or complete removal of the 45 years of Israeli military occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and Gaza, would result in a security risk. A similar fear-mongering strategy is used to dismiss the inalienable right of Palestinian refugees to return to Israel. In the meantime, Israel makes matters worse on the ground by, for example, continuing to build illegal, Jewish-only settlements.

Foreign countries, donors and international organizations have come around, albeit belatedly, to noting in their reports that the status quo is unsustainable. The data is there, in dizzying detail, for all to read.

Additionally, Additionally, newspapers of record in Israel, France and America have started to editorialize with some hard questions, such as “Can Israel really be a Jewish (only) state?” and “Is a two-state solution still possible?” More recently, even The New York Times questioned the future of Israel’s democratic character when it noted in an editorial: “One of Israel’s greatest strengths is its origins as a democratic state committed to liberal values and human rights. Those basic truths are in danger of being lost.” Human rights aside, there is no doubt that Israel is at a foundational crossroads.

The dominant narrative, especially in the United States — that any change in the status quo would put Israel in existential danger — is one that Israel has sustained for decades, spending hefty amounts on professional public relation firms and masters of spin to disseminate this message. Listening to world leaders and consuming today’s corporate media, the average person would have a hard time reaching a different conclusion.

Enter reality.

Israel’s 10-meter high separation barrier and the country’s decades of indoctrination have blocked its view and allowed Israelis to simply stop seeing real live Palestinians — decidedly alive, even if not well, and determined to live normal lives.

They can’t see an army of telecommunication engineers and call center operators struggling to create a commercially viable network with a full suite of services even though the needed, imported equipment is routinely delayed — at times for years — at Israeli ports.

They can’t see an army of youth pocketing the latest 3G-enabled smartphones that are useless because the electromagnetic spectrum required to operate a 3G network is controlled by the Israel military, and therefore use of 3G frequencies — like pasta and crayons in Gaza, not long ago — is prohibited by Israel.

They can’t see the dozen or so business incubators that host innovative entrepreneurs, many of them women, who routinely pitch their ideas to investors and enter their business plans in competition, only to be vulnerable to failure because of the innumerable structural impediments imposed by the Israeli occupation.

They can’t see the 18 banks and half-dozen or so equity capital funds that, day in and day out, seek viable businesses to invest in, only to end up with more funds than this militarily occupied market can absorb. They can’t see the enthusiastic young men and women at the Hereditary Research Lab at Bethlehem University exploring the genetics of hearing loss and breast cancer.

They can’t see hundreds of parents — yes, mothers and fathers — holding their children’s hands as they lead them to watch the performances of the Palestinian Circus School or Al Kamandjâti music school.

They can’t see bank investment committee members toiling with the moral dilemma of financing projects in the besieged Gaza, when nothing in their formal education ever prepared them for the market risk of societal collapse that they must calculate into their decisions every day.

They were blind to the excitement and grassroots campaigning across cities and villages in the occupied Palestinian territory as West Bank residents recently went to the polls, again, for municipal elections.

Most important, they also can’t see something much more serious than any of this — that the Israeli status quo, built on a cruel collective indifference, and the false glow of a rigged prosperity in which the Israeli public is basking can lead to only one outcome: collapse.

Socially, economically and definitely politically, Palestinians will not, and cannot, take any route other than reducing their efforts to build their state and redoubling their efforts toward ridding themselves of the Israeli boot of occupation pressing on their necks. Even if successful in attaining non-member state status in the U.N., the upgraded status will be used as a tool of resistance to terminate this doomed occupation once and for all.

Israelis may be living in utter denial of the peculiar and unsustainable reality they have created by the sheer might of force — but this is no excuse for the rest of the world, especially the United States, not to wake up and realize that ending the occupation has the potential to release a tremendous amount of positive energy in the Palestinian community — a necessary energy for a party to negotiate in good faith as it rebuilds its society from the ruins of decades of destitution.

Ending this military occupation, at long last, will not totally resolve the conflict. Yet in light of current trends putting Israel on a collision course with history, arranging for Palestinians to reach the point where they have real authority over their affairs would be a huge step forward, one that could save many lives on both sides of the Wall.

The horrendous reality of the Palestinian communities inside Israel—in places like Akka, Haifa, Nazareth, Yaffa, and the Negev—is not about being regulated to sit in the back of the bus; they could only wish for such blatant racism. Here, the racism is multilayered, ideological, well-camouflaged, state-sponsored, and non-stop. Anyone who thinks that resolving the Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip would bring peace to the region would be well-advised to peel away the veneer of democratic façade, one that covers an Israeli plan with only one goal in mind: completing the campaign of ethnically cleansing Palestinians that started with the creation of the State of Israel.

Last week, on a beautiful fall day, I sat in a friend’s living room in a village at the northern tip of Israel, adjacent to the Lebanese border, in the part of Israel called the Galilee. This is where the Palestinian citizens of Israel are concentrated. Five generations of Palestinians were sitting in the room. As expected in Palestinian society, within no time, politics was the focus of the discussion. But this political discussion had a different twist from what most of those following this conflict are accustomed. The issues had to do with the Palestinian citizens of Israel and how the Israeli government systematically and structurally discriminates against them.

Bilateral negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis, better known as the infamous Oslo Peace Process, began with a slogan (and accompanying actions on the ground) of Gaza and Jericho First. The idea was that the Palestinian Authority, which the Oslo Accords created, would start by being set up in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank city of Jericho, a sort of pilot phase before subsequently deploying to all of the Palestinian areas defined in the Accords. The standing joke at the time was that what Israel, the military occupying power, really meant was Gaza and Jericho Only!

With 20 years of a never-ending “peace process,” Israeli misdirection diverted the world’s attention, including the Palestinian leadership’s, away from the discriminatory workings within Israel itself. As the parties quibbled over who violated the Oslo Agreement first and most, Israel never stopped strangling the Palestinian towns and villages inside it. More recently, even some of the mainstream, international research outfits, such as International Crisis Group (ICG), were forced to take note. Their March 2012 report titled, “Back to Basics: Israel’s Arab Minority and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” stated:

“World attention remains fixed on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but a distinct, albeit related, conflict smoulders within Israel itself. It might be no less perilous. Jewish-Arab domestic relations have deteriorated steadily for a decade. More and more, the Jewish majority views the Palestinian minority as subversive, disloyal and – due to its birth rates – a demographic threat. Palestinian citizens are politically marginalised, economically underprivileged, ever more unwilling to accept systemic inequality and ever more willing to confront the status quo.”

That’s researcher-talk for “A slow and calculated campaign of displacing an entire population in broad daylight—world, take note.”

As one travels northward in Israel, a stark reality cannot be ignored. Israel is empty. Most of the lands which comprise the State of Israel, as it is recognized worldwide, are empty of any population. The sad irony is that less than one hour’s drive north of where we were sitting, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, who, since 1948, have been prohibited by Israel from returning to their homes, dwell in squalid refugee camps, waiting for international law and UN resolutions calling for their return home to be respected. Dr. Salman Abu Sitta, a Palestinian researcher with the Palestine Land Society, and a refugee himself, has extensively documented this phenomenon of empty lands in Israel, lands that Palestinian refugees call home. The undeniable fact is that allowing Palestinian refugees to return home would disrupt very little on the ground in Israel. It would, however, threaten the very basis of its existence as an exclusively Jewish state and create a demographic majority of Palestinians—a normal expectation, given that they were the majority in 1948 prior to being expelled.

Another startling realization, when traveling around the Palestinian farming villages in the Galilee, is that the hilltops are dotted with gated, Jewish Israeli communities and Israeli government-declared nature reserves, all creating a physical barrier to the natural growth of the indigenous Palestinian communities. Added to these physical obstructions to Palestinian development, Israeli law provides for another platform, a legal one, whereby hundreds of Israeli communities can keep out Palestinians on cultural grounds. Coming from the occupied territory of the West Bank, these physical obstacles and legal tools looked to me much like the illegal, Jewish-only settlements that surround every Palestinian city. The physical location of both types of these residential colonies is not random, but rather a sharp demographic weapon to interrupt and stunt the growth of the Palestinian communities.

While hearing the tribulations of Palestinian communities in Israel, I was reminded of another jarring fact: Israel detains and arrests Palestinians for their thoughts. One of the persons I was with, a 64-year-old man, was released a few years back after spending two years without charges in an Israeli prison. On my way home, I stopped in Haifa and, while speaking to a new business acquaintance there, he reminded me of another case: Ameer Makhoul, a Palestinian Christian citizen of Israel and the director of Ittijah, the Union of Arab Community-Based Associations, who, like so many others, is imprisoned in Israeli jails after an unfair trial aimed at striking fear into an entire minority community in Israel. Also, just as in the areas under military occupation, Israel tends an army of collaborators within the Palestinian communities to do their bidding for them.

I wanted to engage more, but had to head back home to the West Bank.

Now that I’m a Palestinian ID holder, which means I have West Bank residency status issued by the Israeli occupation authorities, I can’t be in Israel as a tourist. My U.S. citizenship—my only one—is useless now that I am classified as a West Bank Palestinian in the Israeli government’s eyes. Israel is the only place on earth where I can’t be an American! Thus, my Israeli military-issued permit, which allows me to enter Israel, restricts my movement so that I have to be back by 10 in the evening to what I call my cage, also known as the metropolitan area of Ramallah.

What is now clear to me, and wasn’t when I first arrived here shortly after Oslo, is that the system of command and control, which oppresses over four million Palestinians under military occupation, is strikingly similar to the system which controls over one million Muslim and Christian Palestinians inside Israel.

The Israel goal is to erase Palestinian collective memory, limit Palestinian education, squeeze Palestinian living space, and strangle any serious notion of Palestinian economic enterprise. But Palestinians are not going anywhere. This was confirmed when I asked a law student from this Galilaean village where he plans to be in five years. Without hesitation, he said, “Here, in my village, and not for the next five years, but for the next 10 and 20 and 100 years.”

After hours of deep discussion in that quiet Palestinian village, tucked away in the velvet-like green hills of the Galilee, a Palestinian researcher, who was quiet for most of the time, spoke in a calm, definitive voice. He said that everything we were discussing, in terms of how much harm Israel is doing to Palestinians living in Israel and under military occupation, is true, but in the village, the numbers speak volumes. Over the past 64 years, since Israel’s creation, and despite all of its attempts to force the Palestinians off the land, the population has increased as per official Israeli statistics. As long as the Palestinians exist on this land, he asserted, their rights are bound to be realized.

All the way home, I could not get out of my mind a new political slogan that would reveal the extent of the Palestinian tragedy, The Galilee First. Instead of managing the conflict as if the only contentious issue is about those of us living under Israeli military occupation, the international community, and Palestinian leadership as well, should call for the world to witness the reality of Palestinians inside Israel. If Israel is bent on discriminating against one fifth of its own citizens, what should we expect of it in the occupied territories, areas that are not internationally recognized as Israel? Indeed, the next time I’m asked what I think the solution to this conflict is, my answer will be ready: Let’s start with full equal rights for Palestinians inside Israel. In other words, The Galilee First if Israel is serious about peace and truly desires historic reconciliation with the Palestinians.

Yasser Arafat may be dead, but for all intents and purposes he lives on and continues to be a thorn in Israel’s side. Earlier this month a Swiss doctor announced that high levels of toxic polonium-210 were found on some of Arafat's belongings. Polonium-210 is a highly radioactive substance, one that would require a nuclear reactor and expertise to produce and handle. Israel, being a nuclear power and having publicly expressed a motive for Arafat’s “elimination,” fits the description.

Swiss doctor Francois Bochud, director of the Institute of Radiation Physics in Lausanne, Switzerland, was quoted in the report on a nine-month investigation by Al Jazeera that "We have evidence there is too much polonium, but we also have hints from the medical records that this may not be the case. The only way to resolve this anomaly would be by testing the body."

If exhumation and examination of Arafat’s body (currently reposing in its tomb, located a half a kilometer from my home) seven years after his death reveals the presence of polonium-210, the question demanding an answer will be: who killed him and why?

It may seem a futile task to focus on a single person’s death when the region is engulfed in wholesale killing, until, that is, you realize that the killing of Arafat was meant to be an accelerator in the process of bringing about the wholesale demise of an entire indigenous people.

A Palestinian attorney in the Galilee has pointed the finger at those he believes are most likely responsible for the murder of former Palestinian president Yasser Arafat. The accused are named and their histories cited; their own words indict them, and their acts of sustained violence speak volumes.

The charge sheet incriminates five of Israel’s top brass:

1. Ariel Sharon, in his capacity as Prime Minister of the Government of Israel, 2001-2006 (currently reported as being clinically dead);
2. Avi Dichter, as head of the Shin Bet (Israeli internal security), 2000-2005 (Member of Knesset for Kadima Party);
3. Shaul Mofaz, in his capacity as Israeli Minister of Defense, 2003-2006 (now leader of the Kadima Party);
4. Moshe Ya'alon, in his capacity as Chief of Staff of the Israeli army, 2003-2005 (now a Deputy Prime Minister of Israel);
5. Meir Dagan, as Director of the Mossad from 2002 to 2011 (currently a leader of a movement called "Yesh Sikkui").

The person who has made these accusations is Palestinian-Arab Israeli writer and lawyer, Sabri Jiryis, a graduate of the Hebrew University law faculty and a prominent Palestinian activist with Arafat’s political party, Fatah. For a long time, Mr. Jiryis served as Arafat's adviser on Israeli affairs as well as serving as the director of the Palestine Research Centre in Lebanon and later in Cyprus. He was one of Arafat’s confidants for decades, until Arafat’s death.

Mr. Jiryis has just posted on his website a revealing analysis of the historic context leading up to Arafat’s assassination, entitled: Arafat’s Murder – The Crime and its Ramifications. The essay was posted in Arabic which may limit the non-Arabic-speaking world’s benefit from this insider’s exposé.

Bottom line: Mr. Jiryis meticulously assembles and presents hard evidence demonstrating why these five Israeli leaders, in particular, should be brought before a court of justice. His analysis offers no words of rage or revenge but rather a cold, clinical review of a systematic series of actions and statements by each of these Israeli leaders which would logically bring any objective observer to the conclusion that, if justice is to be served, these five persons should be charged with Arafat’s murder and put on trial.

Following the Al-Jazeera airing of their documentary concluding that Arafat may have been poisoned by radioactive polonium, Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat’s successor, ordered an investigation into Arafat’s death. In reply, in Cairo, on July 17, 2012, the Arab League set up an independent committee to probe the death of the iconic former Palestinian leader.

As the independent investigation committee embarks on its mandate, Mr. Jiryis’ analysis can make an important contribution by putting Arafat’s murder into historical context. Israeli leaders have employed murder, assassination and mass slaughter ever since Israel’s founding, and before. The reins of power in Israel remain in the hands of those who seek to murder the Palestinian struggle for freedom and independence. Meantime, when Arafat’s turn finally came, the trail of evidence left behind was so glaring that it would be an insult to humanity if those responsible are not brought to justice.

Whatever happens with this renewed effort to determine how Arafat died and who was behind his death, the Palestinian struggle for emancipation from 65 years of dispossession and 45 years of military occupation will not end. The idea that Palestinians are going to wake up one morning and decide to enjoy life under Israeli military occupation or as refugees is simply hallucinatory, as any thoughtful reading of world history would indicate.

Historic twists of fate are unpredictable, with many ironic overtones. Maybe, just maybe, the analysis by an Israeli-trained Palestinian attorney together with the clues to be found in Arafat’s dead body will usher in a long-overdue era of Israeli accountability for crimes against the Palestinian people.