Preparing for Peace - The Palestinian Way - by Khaled Abu Toameh - https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13646/palestinians-preparing-for-peace
While the Palestinian Authority (PA) continues to arrest and intimidate Palestinian journalists in the West Bank, its loyalists are also waging a campaign against Arab journalists who dare to visit Israel.
This month alone, the PA security forces have arrested nine Palestinian journalists, according to the Palestinian Committee for Supporting Journalists.
One of the journalists, Yousef al-Faqeeh, 33, a reporter for the London-based Quds Press News Agency, was taken into custody on January 16. On January 27, a PA court ordered al-Faqeeh remanded into custody for 14 days. His family said that they still do not know why he was arrested.
Al-Faqeeh's wife, Suhad, said that PA security officers raided their house; when Yousef asked whether they had a search warrant, they proceeded to arrest him. "They took him to an unknown destination and did not provide a reason for his arrest," she said. "They also confiscated his computer and mobile phone."
The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the arrest of al-Faqeeh and called on the PA to release him immediately.
The other journalists targeted by the PA in the past few weeks are: Mu'tasem Saqf al-Hait, Ayman Abu Aram, Mahmoud Abu Hraish, Mahmoud Abu al-Rish, Zeid Abu Arra, Hazem Nasser, Mohammed Dkeidek and Amir Abu Istaitiyeh.
In the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, only three Palestinian journalists were detained in the past few weeks: Luay al-Ghul, Executive Director of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, Salah Abu Salah, an independent reporter, and Huda Baroud, a female investigative reporter who was summoned for interrogation after she prepared a story about "rape within a single family."
The Committee for Supporting Journalists said that the crackdown on Palestinian journalists was aimed at restricting freedom of the media under the PA and Hamas.
These condemnations, however, do not seem to bother Palestinian leaders, who do not tolerate any form of criticism. The Palestinian leaders clearly seem emboldened by the fact that the international community and media are oblivious to the plight of Palestinian journalists. Or, more accurately, the international community does not care when a Palestinian journalist is arrested or harassed by the Palestinian Authority or Hamas. The only stories that attract the world's attention are those in which Israel is involved.
The silence of the international community has inspired Palestinian leaders to the point where they have now extended their campaign of intimidation to non-Palestinian Arab journalists.
When a group of Arab journalists, who hail from Egypt, Lebanon, Algeria and Morocco, recently visited Israel, the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Information issued a strongly-worded statement accusing the reporters of promoting normalization with Israel.
"Normalization [with Israel] is an unacceptable and unjustified disgrace," the ministry said. "The ministry affirms its rejection of media normalization with the occupation and considers it an unacceptable crime under all circumstances."
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, a body dominated by PA President Mahmoud Abbas loyalists, said it is now preparing a blacklist that will include the name of any Arab journalist suspected of engaging in normalization with Israel. The syndicate expressed "shock" over the visit and called for ending all forms of normalization with Israel, including in the media. "What happened was a huge political and national sin."
The journalists, who work in France and Belgium, are now being accused by many Arabs of treason.
The Paris-based magazine Kul Al-Arab said it has terminated all relations with Egyptian journalist Khaled Zaghloul, who was among the group of journalists who visited Israel in December 2018. The editor of the magazine said that his staff, which is "committed to the just and legitimate Arab causes, particularly the Palestinian cause, categorically condemns this unacceptable visit."
Abdel Muhsen Salameh, Chairman of the Egyptian Journalists Union and CEO of Al-Ahram, said that Zaghloul had been fired from the paper in 2011. Ala Thabet, editor in chief of Al-Ahram, distanced himself from the journalist and called on all Arab media outlets to follow suit.
Another prominent Egyptian journalist, Abou Bakr Khallaf, is also facing criticism for visiting Israel. Khallaf, who is based in Turkey, is facing severe criticism after he posted a photo of himself during a visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. His Egyptian colleagues have called for legal and administrative measures against him for engaging in normalization with the "Zionist entity."
Kuwaiti writer Fajer Al-Saeed is also facing condemnations after she took the brave step of calling on Arab countries to normalize relations with Israel.
The Palestinian crackdown on reporters in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is aimed at silencing critics and deterring journalists from reporting on sensitive issues such as financial corruption and human rights violations by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. For now, it seems that this crackdown has achieved its goal, as most Palestinian journalists living under the PA and Hamas are afraid publicly to voice any form of criticism of their leaders.
The Palestinian incitement against Arab journalists who visit Israel or maintain relations with Israeli colleagues is part of a wider campaign to prevent the Arab countries from normalizing ties with Israel. The Palestinians attach significant importance to their "anti-normalization" campaign, mainly because they believe that US President Donald Trump's yet-to-be-announced plan for peace in the Middle East envisages normalization between the Arab countries and Israel. By waging a smear campaign against Arabs for allegedly promoting normalization with Israel, the Palestinian leaders are hoping to thwart Trump's upcoming peace plan.
If, in the eyes of the PA leadership, normalization with Israel is an act of "treason," a "crime" and a "big political and national sin," the Trump administration may well be wasting its time and prestige on a peace plan that envisions peace between the Arab countries and Israel, at least at this time.
To achieve peace with Israel, Palestinian leaders need to prepare their people -- and all Arabs and Muslims -- for peace and compromise with Israel, and not, as they are now doing, the exact opposite. Shaming and denouncing Arabs who visit Israel is hardly a way to prepare anyone for peace, or the possibility of any compromise.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration and the international community would be doing a real service to the Palestinians if they start paying attention to assaults on public freedoms, including freedom of the media, in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Holding Palestinian leaders accountable for their systematic abuses of public freedoms, assaults on journalists and incitement is the only way to encourage badly needed moderate and pragmatic Palestinians and Arabs to speak out.
The Palestinian Jihad Against Peace - by Bassam Tawil -
Palestinian leaders have recently stepped up their efforts to stop Arab countries from normalizing their relations -- or even signing peace agreements -- with Israel.
The campaign comes against a backdrop of reports about the warming of relations between Israel and some Arab countries, including a recent visit to Oman by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The specter of peace between the Arab countries and Israel has become a nightmare for Palestinian leaders. Instead of worrying about building a better future -- which the Palestinians desperately need -- Palestinian leaders are feverishly working to thwart any attempt to bring the Arab countries closer to Israel.
As part of the "anti-normalization" campaign, the Palestinian leaders in the West Bank are now putting pressure on the Arab countries to boycott a US-sponsored global summit to discuss the Middle East and Iran, which is scheduled for next month in Poland.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a televised interview that the meeting would "focus on Middle East stability and peace and freedom and security here in this region, and that includes an important element of making sure that Iran is not a destabilizing influence."
The meeting, Pompeo said, will "bring together dozens of countries from all around the world, from Asia, from Africa, from Western Hemisphere countries, Europe too, the Middle East of course."
Palestinian leaders are apparently convinced that the upcoming conference is part of a US effort to normalize relations between the Arab countries and Israel. Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and his senior officials and spokesmen in Ramallah consider anything the US Administration does or says as a "conspiracy designed to liquidate the Palestinian cause and national rights."
Abbas and his Palestinian Authority have been boycotting the US Administration ever since President Donald Trump's December 2017 decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Since then, they have exploited every opportunity to voice their condemnation of Trump's yet-to-be-announced plan for peace in the Middle East, also known as the "deal of the century."
On January 23, Palestinian leaders who met in Ramallah, the de facto West Bank Palestinian capital, rejected the US plan to hold the conference in Poland and also called on the Arab countries not to participate in the conference. They asked instead that that they reaffirm their commitment to the Arab Peace Initiative, a 10-sentence proposal for ending the Arab-Israeli conflict that was endorsed by the Arab League in 2002.
Israel has expressed reservations about the Arab League peace plan, especially the demand to retreat to the indefensible pre-1967 lines with territorial adjustments, including a withdrawal from the Golan Heights, as well as the "right of return" for refugees and their descendants to their former homes in Israel. Flooding Israel with millions of Palestinians will turn the Jews into a minority -- as is presumably the plan.
In other words, the Arab Peace Initiative is actually demanding the creation of two Palestinian states: one in Israel, and another in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been quoted as saying that the only positive part of the plan is the willingness of the Arab nations to achieve peace and normalization with Israel.
The Palestinian leaders did not find time to discuss ways of improving the living conditions of their people. They did not discuss the ongoing "economic and humanitarian crisis" in the Gaza Strip. Those issues never made it onto their list of priorities.
What is dogging Abbas and his Palestinian Authority is the talk of rapprochement between some Arab countries and Israel.
PLO Secretary-General Saeb Erekat, who has devoted the past two decades of his life to condemning Israel and the US, was one of the first Palestinian leaders to sound the alarm about the US Administration's upcoming conference.
In keeping with the long-standing Palestinian tradition of denouncing everything related to Israel and the US as a "conspiracy," Erekat said that the Poland conference was "aimed at deepening divisions in the region."
Erekat seems particularly worried that some Arab countries will attend the conference and speak on behalf of the Palestinians, or even normalize their relations with Israel. The PLO, he said, is the only party authorized to speak on behalf of the Palestinians in any negotiations pertaining to the Palestinian issue.
Other senior Palestinian officials have gone further by warning Arab countries that any form of normalization with Israel would be considered an act of treason. Abbas Zaki, for instance, a veteran leader of Abbas's ruling Fatah faction, said about the apparent rapprochement between Israel and some Arab countries: "The normalization of some Arab countries with Israel is an act of treason and cowardice." In another statement, Zaki condemned recent visits by some Arabs to Israel as a "deep stabbing of the Palestinian national struggle." The apparent rapprochement between Israel and some Arab countries, he added, was part of a conspiracy to facilitate Israel's control and hegemony over Arab resources.
Mohammed Shtayyeh, another senior Fatah official and former member of the Palestinian negotiating team with Israel, said that the Palestinians were frustrated and saddened by the normalization of relations between the Arabs and Israel. In an interview with the Palestinian Authority's Voice of Palestine radio station, Shtayyeh attributed the apparent rapprochement between Israel and some Arabs to the "state of decline" in the Arab and Islamic countries.
Three Palestinian groups - the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), and Hamas - have also called on the Arabs to resist any attempt by their leaders to make peace with Israel, and said that the time has come to take "serious measures to confront the dangers of normalization with Israel."
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah also joined the chorus, by urging the Arabs to refrain from any form of normalization with Israel. In a speech before an Arab economic conference in Lebanon on January 20, Hamdallah said that Arab normalization with Israel should not happen before the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, with east Jerusalem as its capital, on the pre-1967 lines. He called on all Arab institutions and companies to abide by Arab League instructions to boycott Israel.
It is, at the very least, pure hypocrisy for the Palestinian Authority and its leaders to demand that Arabs boycott Israel when they themselves are speaking and working with Israel. The same Hamdallah who is calling on Arabs to boycott Israel, holds regular meetings with Israeli Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon in Jerusalem. Another Palestinian minister who holds regular meetings with Israeli officials is Hussein al-Sheikh, who is also a senior Fatah official.
The Palestinian strategy is now based on inciting Arabs against their leaders. This is the message that Abbas and his officials are sending to the Arabs: "You need to join us in our campaign to stop Arab leaders from making peace with Israel. You must condemn any leader who seeks normalization with Israel as a traitor."
The Palestinians' "anti-normalization" campaign is also part of their effort to thwart Trump's "deal of the century," which, according to some reports, will call for normalization between the Arabs and Israel. The Palestinians say that they are determined to foil Trump's unseen peace plan and its attempt to normalize relations between the Arab countries and Israel. This, then, is what Palestinian "diplomacy" boils down to these days: foiling peace plans and Israeli-Arab normalization. That is what happens when Mahmoud Abbas and his officials have nothing good to offer their people. It now remains to be seen whether the Arab countries will surrender to the latest campaign of Palestinian incitement and intimidation.
Israel's natural gas fields elevated the Jewish State political relevancy - www.israelandstuff.com
The discovery of Israel's multiple natural-gas fields appears to have facilitated the Jewish state's movement closer to the Arab states, as well as neighboring Mediterranean countries, as they all share Israel's concern over Iran's & Turkey's disruptive & dangerous influence in the region.
A decade after discovering natural gas fields off its Mediterranean coast, Israel is starting to feel the geopolitical boost.
Its newfound riches have fostered economic bonds with its neighbors, tightening relations with Arab allies, and built new bridges in a historically hostile region - even without significant progress being made toward peace with the Palestinians.
Last week's inclusion of Israel into the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum in Cairo - a consortium aiming to cut infrastructure costs and lower prices - marked the first time Arab countries accepted Israel into such a regional alliance, sparking excitement in the country that its long-held hope of finally also making "economic peace" with Egypt and Jordan was fast approaching.
"I think this is the most significant economic cooperation between Egypt and Israel since the signing of the peace treaty 40 years ago," says Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz during his visit. "The discovery of significant gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean has also political value because it brings all of us ... together to cooperate with each other."
The forum, which also includes Cyprus, Greece, Italy and the Palestinian Authority, aims to emerge as a mini-OPEC of sorts and highlights how Israel has been leveraging its newfound gas reserves into a powerful tool to expand its immersion into a region that has increasingly come to see Iran and Turkey, rather than Israel, as their greatest rivals.
With the expected gas boon, Israel plans to wean itself off coal and emerge as an unlikely energy exporter - providing both an economic and political lift.
In the coming months, Israel will begin exporting gas to Egypt as part of a $15 billion deal signed last year to provide 64 billion cubic meters of gas over a 10-year period that will help turn Egypt into a regional energy hub.
The first batches will come from the operational Tamar field and later from the far larger Leviathan field, set to go online later this year. Israel already delivers gas to the Palestinians and to Jordan, with whom Israel's Delek Drilling and its US partner, Noble Energy, signed their first export agreement in 2016 - a $10 billion, 15-year deal to provide 45 billion cubic meters of gas.
"This gives Israel an additional element to its relations with its neighboring countries. When you add an economic facet to the security cooperation it strengthens the bond and gives it stability," says Oded Eran, a former Israeli ambassador to Jordan and to the European Union, and a senior researcher at Tel Aviv's Institute of National Security Studies.
Still, he says economic interests alone aren't enough to fully integrate Israel into the Middle East. Arab nations without formal peace accords with Israel would need to see at least some progress on the Palestinian front before normalizing relations, he says.
Israel has peace agreements with only two Arab countries - Egypt and Jordan. But warming ties with Israel remain unpopular on much of the Arab street, and the gas exports have sparked sporadic protests in Jordan. The Palestinians, pleased at being invited into the consortium, hope to develop their own gas fields off the coast of Gaza but for now are required by international agreements to acquire their fuel from Israel.
Sameer Abdallah, a former Palestinian economy minister, says they import from Israel "because we have no alternative but once we can change that, of course we will."
The gas appears to have helped Israel grow closer to Arab governments and other Mediterranean countries that share its concern over what they perceive as the rising power of Iran and Turkey in the region.
Just as Noble Energy was discovering the massive gas fields in Israeli and Cypriot waters, Cyprus in 2010 suddenly banned Turkish flotillas seeking to break the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza from using its shores - a stunning about-face after months of turning a blind eye to ships that were creating a diplomatic nightmare for Israel.
Cypriot officials said at the time that Gaza-bound vessels were prohibited from leaving because of "vital national interests."
Relations have since soared. Israel now holds annual trilateral summits with Greece and Cyprus, which have become its geographical conduits to the West. The two also conduct joint military operations with Israel, and just a short flight away, have replaced Turkey as the Israelis' preferred holiday destinations.
The countries recently said they would sign an agreement for a $7 billion project to build a pipeline to carry natural gas from the eastern Mediterranean to Europe.
Cyprus Foreign Minister Nikos Christodoulides has said he believes "hydrocarbons in the Eastern Mediterranean can become what the coal and steel was for the European community" - a reference to how in the 1950s, coal and steel brought European countries together economically and politically.
Eran, the former Israeli diplomat, cautioned against investing so heavily in what he called "an economic adventure." Even with the recent discoveries, he said the joint reserves were still not enough to create a strong enough economic lever to challenge global energy providers.
Still, the upside of finally having natural resources of its own has been so appealing that the Israeli government has pushed forward even against stiff domestic opposition from environmental and social welfare activists.
Critics, including prominent opposition lawmakers, say a controversial 2016 agreement over royalties is skewed in favor of the energy tycoons. More recently, local activists have been urging Noble Energy to move its proposed shoreline gas rig farther out to sea for fear of what they call catastrophic consequences of spreading toxic water and air pollution toward their homes.
Noble and the Israeli government say it's an irresponsible scare campaign and have countered with an aggressive ad campaign extolling the virtues of Leviathan, which it has dubbed "the national project."
Palestinian Media Watch - Exposing The True Words Of The Palestinian Authority - By Stephen Flatow -
The Palestinian Authority last week removed a photo from the website of one of its ministries because it showed a meeting of P.A. officials in which bottles of a popular Israeli juice were visible on the table.
For friends of Israel, it was another in a long series of mildly amusing incidents in which P.A. officials have gone to absurd lengths to slight the Jewish state. It was all the more entertaining because it exposed the blatant hypocrisy of P.A. officials who call for boycotts of Israeli products while they are enjoying Israeli products.
It also fits into a narrative that friends of Israel have been repeating for decades, but which the Arabs never accept: If the Palestinian Arabs would just realize that peace is good for them, they could be enjoying delicious Israeli foods, having easier lives thanks to advanced Israeli technology, be exposed to the latest agricultural techniques and so on.
I have a different take on stories about P.A. boycott advocates who violate the boycott. I say: Wait, that doesn't make any sense. The Oslo accords obligate the P.A. to have friendly relations with Israel. It's not allowed to promote a boycott of the Jewish state. J Street and The New York Times keep telling us that we can trust the P.A., that it wants peace, that it honors the treaties it signs. So why is the P.A. so blatantly violating the accords it already signed?
Meanwhile, the official P.A. newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida last week featured remarks by leader Mahmoud Abbas resurrecting the blood-libel accusation that Israel "poisoned Yasser Arafat."
Wait, that doesn't make any sense. Separate teams of French, Swiss and Russian scientists have investigated the poisoning accusation and never found evidence to support it. Peace Now and the United Nations have been assuring us for years that Palestinian leaders are reasonable, rational people. So why are the P.A.'s leader and official newspaper knowingly propagating such baseless lies?
And don't forget the little matter of such falsehoods blatantly violating the Oslo accords. The accords obligate the P.A. to refrain from "hostile propaganda" against Israel. Accusing Israel of murdering the P.A.'s most beloved leader surely qualifies as "hostile." So why does the P.A. keep violating the accords? What happened to all those promises that it can be trusted to honor the agreements that it signs?
Also in the past few days, a rally was held in Tulkarm--under Abbas's official auspices--to honor convicted Palestinian murderer Maher Younes, while the Bethlehem branch of Fatah (the ruling party, chaired by Abbas) posted photos on its Facebook page glorifying teenage terrorist Ahmed Sanagrah.
Wait, that doesn't make any sense, either. The proponents of creating a Palestinian state keep telling us that it's safe to create such a state because the P.A. is against terrorism. They say Hamas is the bad one, while the P.A. is moderate. So if the P.A. is against terrorism, why do its leader and ruling party keep glorifying, sheltering and paying terrorists?
By the way, when Abbas spoke at the United Nations earlier this month, he proclaimed the P.A.'s "commitment to international law and legitimacy and to a peaceful solution."
And that makes perfect sense. Abbas is truly bilingual. When he speaks to Western audiences, he uses all the right words that they want to hear. He sounds peaceful, reasonable and moderate. But when he speaks to his own people, he literally speaks another language: the language of hatred and violence. It's the kind of language that gets innocent people killed.
There was a time, not so long ago, when it was almost impossible to find out what was being said by Palestinian Arab leaders in their own media. Every once in a while, something would leak out. But by and large, the world news media did an effective job of keeping Americans in the dark about what Arafat, Abbas and the others were saying.
That's all changed, thanks to Palestinian Media Watch, which exposed the above-cited outrages and so many others. By exposing the P.A. leaders' true words, PMW has affected U.S. and European policy towards the P.A. and in some cases has led directly to reductions of Western aid to the PA.
Palestinian Media Watch is a uniquely worthwhile organization, and it deserves to receive a level of support from Jewish federations comparable to what is given to various other Israel-based agencies that do good work. Now that would make a lot of sense.
The Palestinians: Who Really Cares? - by Bassam Tawil -
A Palestinian who tries to bring a bag of cement or other construction materials into a refugee camp to build a house is subjected to arrest, interrogation, trial by military court and a fine.
Is this happening in the Gaza Strip? No. Is it happening in the West Bank? No. This inhumane and unjust practice is taking place in an Arab country where more than 500,00 Palestinians live: Lebanon.
Moreover, this ban on the entry of construction material is punishing not only the living, but also the dead. Palestinians say that because of the prohibition, they cannot even find enough stones and cement to build graves.
The wretched condition of the Palestinians living in Lebanon is often ignored by both the international community and the Western main stream media. The only Palestinians the international community seems to care about are those residing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- those whose grievances can be blamed on Israel.
Most of the Palestinians in Lebanon live in 12 refugee camps, where they suffer from poverty, overcrowding and violence, as well as Lebanon's discriminatory and apartheid laws and measures that deny them basic rights.
The Lebanese authorities claim that the ban on the entry of building materials into the camps is designed to guarantee the Palestinians' "right of return" to their former villages and towns inside Israel. The Lebanese authorities tell the Palestinians, "We do not want you to build new homes in our country: that would compromise your [purported] right of return!"
The Lebanese authorities know full well that Israel will never allow hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to move to Israel as part of a "right of return." For Israel, that would mean that Jews would become a minority in their own country, and that there would then be three Palestinian states: Gaza, Israel and the West Bank.
This minor detail, however, has not stopped Lebanon and other Arab countries that play host to Palestinian refugees and their descendants from continuing to lie to them and feeding them false hopes that one day they will go back to the homes of their fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers in Israel.
The prohibition of construction material for Palestinians in Lebanon is only one example of the discrimination they have been facing in this Arab country for the past few decades.
Palestinians in Lebanon are also banned by law from working in selected professions, including medicine, engineering, nursing, accounting, pharmaceuticals and teaching. In Lebanon, Palestinians are considered foreigners and are consequently barred from owning, selling or bequeathing property.
Housing renovations inside Palestinian camps require prior permission from the Lebanese security authorities due to concerns that the material may be used for military purposes. If the permit is granted, the army usually imposes tight measures, such as counting the number of cement bags or checking the quantity of stones that the Palestinian wishes to bring into the camp.
A Palestinian who is caught smuggling construction material into a camp is arrested, interrogated and faces a fine of 100,000 Lebanese pounds ($66).
According to a recent report in the Palestinian Information Center, the ban on the entry of construction material has been in effect for the past 22 years. "This is an inhumane measure," the report said. In 2004, according to the report, the ban was temporarily lifted for a few months before it was reinstated and expanded to additional Palestinian communities in Lebanon.
In addition to cement, the Palestinians are also banned from bringing into their camps water pipes, electrical wires, aluminum, doors, tiles, windows and glass slabs and paint.
In the past two years, the Lebanese authorities began building a concrete wall with watch towers around two Palestinian camps: Ain al-Hilweh and Rashidiyeh. The Lebanese authorities have justified building the wall for security reasons and presumably to prevent the expansion of the Palestinian camps. Palestinians refer to these walls, which have turned their compass into closed ghettos, as the "walls of shame."
Jamal Khatib, secretary-general of the Islamic Factions in Ain al-Hilweh, called on the Lebanese authorities to lift the ban. "Some of the houses have collapsed, and injured women and children," he said.
Mohammed al-Shuli, a Palestinian human rights activist, said that the ban on the entry of construction material has become a "nightmare" for all refugees.
Recently, Palestinians in Ain al-Hilweh were forced to remove stones from their houses to build a grave for a deceased resident, Khaled Zaiter. The man's body was held in a morgue for several days before the camp residents managed to take enough stones from their own homes to build a grave for him.
"Burying a dead Palestinian in Ain al-Hilweh camp has become a painful and traumatic experience," said Abdel Raheem Maqdah, a Palestinian community leader in Lebanon.
Protests by the Palestinians in Lebanon are unlikely to draw any attention from the international community, including so-called pro-Palestinian groups that are active especially on university campuses in the US and Canada, among other places.
The real "pro-Palestinian" groups are those who are willing to raise their voices against the mistreatment of Palestinians at the hands of their Arab brothers. The real "pro-Palestinian" groups are those who are prepared to defend the rights of women and gays living under Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The real "pro-Palestinian" groups are those that are prepared to advocate for democracy and free speech for Palestinians living under the repressive regimes of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The real "pro-Palestinian" groups are those who are prepared to condemn Lebanon for its racist and discriminatory measures against Palestinians, living and dead.
Hiding at a university campus and spewing hatred against Israel does not make one "pro-Palestinian." Rather, it makes one an Israel-hater. Will the "pro-Palestinian" groups listen to the SOS messages coming from the people they claim to represent in Lebanon? Probably not. In all probability, they will just continue pushing their anti-Israel agenda as Palestinians in Lebanon continue to cut stones from their own homes to build graves for their dear ones.
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