Gaza Tel Aviv-Yafo 2011-2009 Lawrence Wright New Yorker

The Human Scale  
2011-04-04
The Cameri Theatre of Tel Aviv hosts The New York Public Theatre with the one-man play:

The Human Scale 
Written and performed by Lawrence Wright
Director: Oskar Eustis
Lighting: Deb Sullivan; Video design: Aaron Harrow; Sound: Matt Hubbs; Scenic consultant: David Korins

In the spring of 2009 Pulitzer prizewinning journalist Lawrence Wright of The New Yorker approached the magazine's editor, David Remnick, and asked if he could write an article about the likelihood of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Most editors would have jumped at the chance of publishing an article by such a well known and admired writer, and on this particular subject - but The New Yorker wasn't crazy about the idea. "I wanted to write about the prospects of a two-state solution," Wright said in an interview, "but David didn't seem too excited. He said, ‘Why don't you write about Gaza?'"
So began Wright's trip to the region in the summer of 2009. The result was a 12,000-word story published in The New Yorker in November, at the height of the controversy over the Goldstone report, which concluded that both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes in the course of Operation Cast Lead.

That article, entitled "Captives: What really happened during the Israeli attacks," has been transformed into a one-man play, written and performed by Wright, in a co-production with The Public Theater and 3-Legged Dog.
The Human Scale, directed by The Public Theatre's artistic director Oskar Eustis, gained critical acclaim in the United States. In it Wright presents his worldview on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in recent years, and explains how the parties reached the present impasse which he argues began with the abduction of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit.
Like the article, the play sheds new light on both parties. "There's a dehumanization of the other side that makes it impossible to see things from another perspective," Wright said. "My goal was to try to enlarge the vision of both sides."
"In this efficient and engrossing 90-minute seminar on history both current and ancient, Mr. Wright trains his understandably wary attention [...] on the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians With a scholarly but sympathetic manner and a soothing voice that has just a hint of a Texas twang in it, Mr. Wright sheds a sharp light on this sorrowful subject, drawing on his own visit to Gaza."
The New York Times
The play will be performed with English with Hebrew sur-titles
Duration: 90 minutes with no intermission.
18-21 May - Cameri 4

2009 Mona in Tel-Aviv. Obama, Mona's Notes. Gaza , Doctor

Here is my column which won Search for Common Ground's 2009 Eliav-Sartawi Journalism Award, international category.

It was published in English in Israel's Jerusalem Report magazine and in Arabic in Qatar's Al Arab newspaper. I've included a link to the Arabic.

From Search for Common Ground's website on who Eliav and Sartawi are:

The Awards are named after two courageous pioneers of the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue. Dr Issam Sartawi, 1936-1983, recognized internationally, culminating in him being awarded the Kreisky Prize in 1979. He was assassinated in April 1983 in a hotel lobby in Lisbon, Portugal while participating in the building of the peace process. The Centre for the Advancement of Peace and Democracy at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem is named after Dr Sartawi. Lova Eliav, has been active in Israeli politics and diplomacy ever since the founding of the state. A member of the Knesset from 1965 - 1979 and again from 1988 - 1992, Eliav served as Secretary-General of the Labor Party in the early 1970s, a position he lost after calling for negotiations with the Palestinians.

The Loneliest Man on Earth
By Mona Eltahawy
Jerusalem Report
March 2, 2009


Arabic - http://www.alarab.com.qa/details.php?docId=71987&issueNo=412&secId=15

Izzeldine Abuelaish could be the loneliest man on earth. A Palestinian father who lost three daughters when Israeli shells struck their home in Gaza two days before a cease-fire ended the war between Israel and Hamas, he seems to be the only person left in this small slice of the Middle East with its supersized servings of “us” and “them” who refuses to hate.

We met during my recent visit to Israel at the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer near Tel Aviv, where he works part-time as a physician but where that day he was not the healer but the father of a patient – his 17-year-old daughter Shadha whose eye was blown out of its socket and who lost several fingers in the shelling. Exactly four months earlier, his wife died of leukemia, leaving him with eight children.

“People asked me why didn’t you run away, but to where? Tell me one safe place in Gaza I could’ve gone to for shelter,” he asked me, as his eldest surviving daughter, Dalal, 19, handed out chocolates to celebrate Shadha’s recovery from surgery.

“Why should I leave my home? How many times in our lives as Palestinians must we leave our homes and why? My home was full of children armed with hope, love of the world and knowledge, who wanted to learn, live and build a future.”

He survived the shelling because seconds earlier he’d left the room with his youngest son in his arms. When he returned, Bisan, 22, Mayer, 15, and Aya, 14, were dead.

“My youngest son Hamad told me, ‘Dad, don’t be upset. Mum called them. She wanted them.’” Dr. Abuelaish told me, sobbing. My attempts at condolence were woefully inadequate, so I just cried with him.

His 14-year-old niece Nour was also killed. Abuelaish said that just a few days before the shelling, she’d left the refugee camp where she’d been staying with her mother and siblings to join him and the extended family.

“She told me, ‘I’d rather die here than stay in the camp. We haven’t showered in 10 days. We don’t have any food; there are 30 or 40 people to a room. What kind of life is that? I’d rather die here with you all,” Abuelaish said. “She came to meet her fate.”

A Hebrew speaker, whose wails announcing the deaths of his girls on live Israeli television moved the presenters to tears, Abuelaish’s anguish translated Palestinian civilian suffering into a language that Israeli viewers could understand.

His grief marked the moment Al Jazeera and its unblinking and often overbearing war coverage entered their living rooms. Up until then, most Israelis had been watching a very different war whose narrative, focused on Israeli soldiers as the nation’s sons sent to stem an eight-year tide of Hamas rocket attacks on southern Israel, was largely free of Palestinian civilian suffering in Gaza.

Did he hate Israelis?

“God forbid. I have never hated a person in my life. And I will never hate or bring up my children to hate anyone,” he told me. “I hate a person’s act, I hate the murder itself, the crime, but I never hate a person. Hatred is an illness.”

Abuelaish is a Palestinian who met Israelis on an equal footing – not as the laborers, gardener or cleaner but as the gynecologist who trained in two Israeli hospitals and at Harvard and who treated infertile Israeli women and delivered their babies. He is a known peace activist whose deceased daughters had attended a peace camp for Israeli and Palestinian children. And he is an academic who studied the effects of war on Gazan

and Israeli children and whose own heartbreak has now ironically enriched his research.

He told me he was distressed that it was soldiers at the Erez checkpoint, who were the first Israelis his children saw when they left Gaza en route to Tel Hashomer for Shadha’s surgery.

“I wanted them to come here to see the real Israelis, to see the real human beings,” he said. “That’s what I want – to show the real human beings on both sides.”

Gadi Kenny, an Israeli peace activist who took me to meet Abuelaish, told me he thought

the physician “can be the [Mahatma] Gandhi or [Nelson] Mandela or [Martin Luther] King we need so much.”

Indeed, Abuelaish has become a lightning rod for Israelis confused about a war both sides

have claimed as a victory but the death toll of which underlines its essential asymmetry – some 1,300 Palestinians, including at least 600 civilians, and 10 soldiers and three civilians on the Israeli side.

Some, such as Levana Stern, the Israeli mother of three soldiers, one of whom fought in Gaza, tried to blame him for his own tragedy when she interrupted a news conference at the hospital to scream at the doctor that he must have been hiding weapons in his home or that Hamas must have used his house to fire at Israelis.

She later apologized and said she was sorry for his loss but that she still believed that Israel had fought a war to defend itself.

For others, Abuelaish’s grief has inspired unsettling questions about Israelis’ lack of compassion for Palestinians.

“When and how and why did we become so uncompassionate?” asked the weekly Tel Aviv Ha’Ir supplement. “Levana Stern didn’t attack [Abuelaish]. She was protecting herself from him… He threatened her view of Palestinians as terrorists.”

On the day we met, Abuelaish and his surviving children were buffeted by a group of Palestinian and Israeli friends; he the stalwart bridge, even in grief.

“I hope this is the last tragedy,” he told me. “We need to immunize our people with love, respect, dignity and equality. That’s the most important immunization that we need for both sides.”

Ever the doctor.
Ode to the Women Who Got Away

By Mona Eltahawy May 25, 2009 Jerusalem Report

I am terrified of thunder. My mother thinks its rumbles trigger in me memories of the sound of bombs falling. She was pregnant with me during the 1967 war and remembers that whenever a bomb fell she would feel me kick inside her.

During most of her pregnancy my parents were in Port Said, on the Mediterranean coast. They had met and fallen in love in medical school in Cairo, married after their graduation and headed to the coast for their year as interns. My parents joke they just wanted to spend the year by the sea, but their departure from Cairo to Port Said was typical of the wanderlust that grips my family.

My mum – the eldest of 11 – became a doctor and left Egypt for the U.K. to get a PhD in medicine. She was of the generation that made the huge leap from “East” to “West.” She has three children. She was 43 when she gave birth to my sister, who is 19 years younger than I. I am of the generation that straddles that “East” and “West.” I have lived in Egypt, the U.K., Saudi Arabia, Israel and now the United States. I am a journalist and public speaker. I was briefly married and at almost 42 have no children and do not want any.

I can’t escape restlessness. So at the end of 1997 when it was a choice of applying for emigration to Canada or moving to Israel as a Reuters correspondent, I moved to Jerusalem and stepped into the arms of trouble that continues to this day with Egyptian State Security, which regards with great suspicion any Egyptian who lives in Israel.

Was I a silly romantic for thinking Cairo winked at me whenever I came home to her from Israel? Were those street lights celebrating my return or letting me know they were in on my illicit trips?

Illicit because I wasn’t supposed to be in Israel. Illicit because returning to Cairo meant coming home to see an increasingly impatient boyfriend. Every time I said yes I would marry him I quickly balked, terrified of standing still. Illicit because I would often also visit my parents and sister, who at the time lived in Saudi Arabia. I didn’t know anyone else whose itinerary was Tel Aviv – Cairo – Jeddah in the space of a week.

Just four years later, another leap, another country. I was taking photographs of adobe buildings in Santa Fe, New Mexico, when I heard the words of the Koran. I thought I was either losing my mind or that I missed the Middle East so much I was hallucinating.

But it was for real and it was coming from a silver shop behind me. I entered, in search of an explanation. The store clerk explained the owner was a Muslim and brought him out to talk to me. He told me he’d put on a tape of a Koran recitation to mark the first day of Ramadan, the fasting month.

It turned out that Palestinians in New Mexico and Arizona basically ran the silver market. They would go to the reservations and buy silver from the Native Americans, which they would then in turn sell in the cities. He insisted I return later to break the fast with him and his cousin. How could I turn down the opportunity to learn more about how the dispossessed of today were running the silver business along with the dispossessed of yesterday? And how could I turn down an iftar (the evening meal for breaking the fast) at Applebee’s with the Palestinian cousins Mohammed and Abdel-Karim, who in Santa Fe were now Al and Mike?

I was in the middle of an epic 18-day road trip across America. Just a few weeks earlier I had put pen to divorce papers to end the marriage that had brought me to the U.S. in 2000. So when my marriage ended, I knew there was only one city in the U.S. that could possibly contain my restlessness. And I knew I had to drive to get there – no getting on a plane and starting a new life five hours later. America and I needed time. I was both Thelma and Louise but I wasn’t going to drive off a cliff. I wasn’t done moving and besides, I had people to see, like American artist Georgia O’Keeffe, who was the reason I came to Santa Fe.

Before my iftar at Applebee’s with Al and Mike, I went to the museum dedicated to O’Keeffe. Rebelliousness. Freedom. Independence. I found them all on the walls of the museum but it was a poster I bought at the gift shop that gave my life so far sense. It was a photograph of O’Keeffe on the back of a motorbike, grinning as she contemplated the journey ahead. It was part of an exhibition called “Women Who Got Away.”

That night after iftar at Applebee’s, Mohammed a.k.a. Al put his hand on mine and said he felt like he’d known me his whole life. I pulled my hand away and told him that was nice.

The next morning I left Santa Fe, destination New York City. •

Copyright 2009 Mona Eltahawy

Caught between liberators and saviors

By Mona Eltahawy
The Jerusalem Report
April 27, 2009

I love public speaking. I used to want to be an actress when I was younger so it obviously satisfies the performer in me. I like to think that I’m pretty fast on my feet during the Q&A sessions, too, but occasionally someone asks me something that leaves me aghast.

“In London, I see these women covered from head to toe and it’s the summer and I want to ask them ‘Aren’t you hot?’” asked a woman at the end of a talk I gave in March at Sarah Lawrence College, in New York state, on gender and power in the Muslim world.

I used to wear a headscarf but the questioner wasn’t talking about the hijab. She meant the face veil, or the niqab. Full disclosure: the niqab terrifies me. It says very little about religion but a whole lot about the erasure of a woman's identity and her very existence as a human being in any society.

I fully confess my views on the niqab are thoroughly grounded as much in my own very personal struggles with the hijab, which I wore for nine years, as they are more generally with the obsessive focus of both Muslims and non-Muslims on how Muslim women dress.

And to this day I unequivocally refuse to defend the niqab, regardless of who is making the argument for or against it. But the woman in the audience who claimed to feel sorry for the women in the niqab during the height of summer displayed a disdain and condescension that annoys me as much as those arguments.

Another woman in the audience, who identified herself as Jewish, told her that when she sees ultra-Orthodox Jewish women on the New York subway in the height of summer she too wants to ask them “Aren’t you hot?” because of the way they dress.

But for some reason, it's mostly Muslim women who seem to be the focus of the “Clash of Civilizations”.

Iranian photographer and writer Haleh Anvari put it beautifully during a performance in New York a couple of years ago when she said she was fed up of being fought over by Iran’s mullahs on the one side who want to protect her soul with the chador and the western media on the other which wants to rescue her from it.

When an American woman in the audience asked if she should wear a chador out of solidarity with Iranian women, the farce and beauty of being a Muslim woman today was too much bear.

Like my interlocutor at Sarah Lawrence, this was a classic killer combo of condescension marinated in a deep-seated desire to liberate and rescue Muslim women and seasoned with good old ignorance.

Some might call me unkind for ripping into a well-intentioned inquiry about ways to help, but nine years of wearing a headscarf made me an expert in figuring out the saviors from the liberators. The liberators, to be fair, weren’t always from the “West.” Sometimes they were fellow Egyptian Muslims who just didn’t like the hijab.

Just as importantly, the headscarf honed my skills at figuring out the honest from the patronizing and there’s nothing like being spoken to IN A SLOW AND VERY LOUD VOICE AS IF ONE WERE DEAF to make you want to yell I MIGHT COVER MY HAIR BUT I’M NOT STUPID.

When I decided to stop wearing the hijab, my biggest fight was with myself. But the saviors and liberators were still going at it. One Muslim friend chided me for giving non-Muslims a shaky image of Islam. “I’m not the Quran in motion” I would reply. The liberators assured me I looked so much better with the headscarf off - which just added to my guilt.

The saviors and liberators don’t really care about me or my soul. The conversation for them begins and ends with how a Muslim woman looks. What she thinks, feels or wants is quite irrelevant.

So imagine my horror when I first came across the misguided desire to cover up in support of Muslim women shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks. Again, the path from well-intentioned to clueless was not that long or winding. As news spread that Muslims or anyone who seemed to be Muslim were being targeted, I began to read about “Wear Hijab Days,” as groups in various North American cities handed out headscarves for their members to wear in solidarity with Muslim women.

While the dangers to Muslim women wearing headscarves were real, my instinct was to tell those groups what I told the woman at Anvari’s performance and my interlocutor at Sarah Lawrence – stay out of it!

I was more captivated by the religious edicts allowing Muslim women in the West to remove their headscarves if they felt they were in danger. By that point, I no longer believed the headscarf was obligatory for Muslim women and to hear those pronouncements added a whole new layer to the cake.

But to those “Wear Hijab Days” groups, complexity, nuance and anything beyond the surface be damned! Other people’s causes are so much cuddlier, of course. What did it matter that they were offending some of us Muslims who didn’t believe hijab was a religious requirement?

Ironically, Muslim women in the United States have more freedom to wear the headscarf than they do in, say, Turkey, where the scarf is banned in government buildings and public schools. And for the polar opposite, there’s Saudi Arabia and Iran where women must cover up in public.

How absurd that some groups want to cover up to support us while others want to support us to uncover! How about leaving us alone to decide? Now that’s support.

Copyright 2009 Mona Eltahawy

Misogyny Marries Impunity in Afghanistan

No Faith in Afghan Clerics By Mona Eltahawy April 17, 2009 Metro Canada

When Taliban gunmen shot dead prominent women’s rights activist Sitara Achakzai in Kandahar on Sunday, they had nothing to hide. It was broad daylight after all.

To further underline that bloody message of hatred for women, a Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the murder.

Clearly, misogyny has married impunity and the Taliban — ousted from power in 2001 — are, once more, terrorizing the women of their country.

Achakzai’s assassination was but the latest in a series of murders targeted at women’s rights activists. Under almost identical circumstances, Taliban gunmen in September killed the highest-ranking female police officer in Kandahar, Lt.-Col. Malalai Kakar.

Such murders are just the most visible signs of the violence meted out to the girls and women of Afghanistan. Just last month, the United Nations warned in its annual human rights report that Afghan women’s rights were little better today than they were during the brutal reign of the ultra-conservative Taliban.

Girls as young as seven are targets of rape, while other females suffer “honour killings,” early and forced marriages, sexual abuse and slavery, the UN report said.

Obviously, in the absence of rule of law everyone is vulnerable in Afghanistan. But girls and women are on the bottom of everyone’s lists. President Hamid Karzai was forced to reconsider his signature on a law allowing marital rape after an international outcry earlier this month. Hardline clerics seem hell-bent on justifying the most heinous of acts in the name of Islam.

When the president is willing to sell women out and when those who claim to be the gatekeepers of God give sanction to such selling out, it is not difficult to understand why the Taliban’s hate for women gets a free ride.

We hear a lot about the need to talk to the Taliban to end fighting in Afghanistan. Such a conversation must not happen at the expense of Afghan girls and women.

I am a Muslim woman who is fed up of those leaders and clerics who claim to speak in the name of my religion and yet who ignore its message of justice and equality. They are just as much to blame as the gunmen who shot Achakzai and Kakar.

Both women were Muslim and knew the violence had nothing to do with religion, but was just plain old misogyny. Kakar used to protect abused wives by physically beating their husbands.

As I say a prayer for Sitara and Malalai, I hope they’ve found peace in feminist heaven.
Mona and Pakistan on Time.
The Happy Muslims Who Confuse You

Video:
When columnist Mona Eltahawy talks about the Islamic world, she often has to compete with the usual stereotypes
http://www.time.com/time/video/?bcpid=1485842900&bclid=0&bctid=19402457001

Moslem Women:

_{Last update - 10:30 05/04/2009}

'Teenage Bedouin gunwoman sought to avenge Gaza op'

_{By Yanir Yagana, Haaretz Correspondent}

The 16-year-old Bedouin girl killed during a foiled weekend shooting attack at a Border Police base in the Negev had apparently sought to avenge Israel's offensive on the Gaza Strip, the Israel Police said late Saturday.

Basma Awad al-Nabari opened fire on Border Police barracks at the Shoket Junction near her village on Saturday afternoon and was subsequently killed by officers.

Police revealed later Saturday that they had found among al-Nabari's notebooks letters claiming that she wanted to become a shahid - martyr - and that the aim of the shooting was to avenge the offenses committed by Israel's defense establishment against the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

The girl arrived at Shoket Junction shortly before 2 P.M. and walked toward the main gate of the base. When she tried to fire on the sentry from a distance of a few meters, he turned the barrel away and escaped the bullets. She then ran away and took cover, while the sentry and another officer who had arrived at the scene tried to persuade her to turn herself in.

When the brief negotiation failed, another gun battle ensued, at the end of which the officer shot the attacker dead.

According to investigators, police found letters among the attacker's books in which she had written

Investigators were looking to determine whether the girl acted alone, or whether some organization stood behind the incident, which would have provided training, support and equipment.

The police findings contradicted the claims of Al-Nabari's family, who argued that the girl had been shot for no reason. Ali al-Nabari, the attacker's cousin, said following the incident that "it couldn't be. The police is lying and exaggerating. Maybe she was there to make a complaint and got mixed-up."

"The person manning the base gate thinks that anyone wearing a kaffiyeh is a terrorist," the cousin continued. "His friends shot her for no reason. She is involved in a program for exceptional students and active in social projects. It isn't logical that someone could have influenced her. She is in school from the morning until the afternoon and she comes straight home from there. There is no internet, or anything else. Maybe the police made up the gun."

Other family members also had trouble believing the reports. "This is a false claim by the police," said a family member who asked to remain anonymous. "They are looking to cover up their actions. This could not have been a terror attack."

"This was a special and kind child," added another family member. "Why didn't they show the gun on television? They only filmed her bag. They killed her accidentally and we intend to fight this to the end. We will hire lawyers and petition the courts until everyone knows the truth."

Police Commissioner David Cohen held a makeshift press conference at the scene of the attack, in which he urged the public to remain alert.

"This is the third time in a month someone attempts policemen's lives," Cohen said. "In this case as well, police reacted swiftly and efficiently. I'm calling on the public to be alert and inform police about every suspicious occurrence."
Afghan Law About Power, Not Culture

By Mona Eltahawy
April 2, 2009

I thought I was used to seeing politicians bargain with each other. A few concessions here and there to influential voting blocs are part of the elections game.

But Afghan President Hamid Karzai — the “liberal” darling of the international community — surely wins that game by throwing women’s rights like bargaining chips at the feet of religious conservatives he’s courting for Afghanistan’s August presidential election.

In February, he signed a new law that, according to United Nations organizations, legalizes rape within marriage and bars women from leaving their homes without permission from their husbands.

Déjà vu, anyone?

Senator Humaira Namati, a member of the Afghan parliament, told a British paper the law was “worse than during the Taliban,” a government that denied women basic rights such as education when it ruled Afghanistan 1996–2001.

News of the new law broke at an international conference for Afghanistan being held at The Hague. The reports offer both a fortuitous chance to embarrass Karzai for so cheaply selling out women, and a test for the 72 countries and organizations gathered at The Hague on how willing they are to defend Afghan women.

Since the Taliban’s ouster, much has improved for Afghan women. Millions of girls now attend school and women have a 25 per cent quota in parliament. In March, a female lawmaker, Shalah Attah, said she would run for president in August polls.

So what was Karzai thinking?

Despite the reemergence of the Taliban, the law has less to do with its misogyny and more with Karzai’s election manoeuvring.

If it wasn’t enough that millions of Afghan women still face violence at the hands of the Taliban, they now have to watch a president who claimed to be an ally bargain away their rights.

The law covers members of Afghanistan’s Shia minority, who account for about 10 per cent of the population, and was backed by the influential Shia clerics and parties who are objects of the increasingly unpopular Karzai’s affection.

Although the Afghan constitution allows Shia to have a separate family law, that same constitution and international treaties signed by Afghanistan promise women equal rights.

Afghan women parliamentarians and activists have condemned the law and said they’re worried another law being drafted for the country’s majority Sunni women will be equally harsh.

The international community has a perfect opportunity to corner Karzai at The Hague, but it must remain silent out of misguided cultural relativism that shortchanges women.

Afghanistan’s new law has nothing to do with culture or religion and everything to do with power and politics.

Metro Canada

Happy Muslim Men and Women Who Confuse You

By Mona Eltahawy Tuesday, March 24 2009
Published in Arabic in Qatar's Al Arab and in English in Metro Canada
There’s something wrong with the pictures coming out of Pakistan these days.
Ever since Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari reinstated the country’s chief justice, I’ve been trying to figure out what it was.

And then it hit me.

Happiness. Joy. Celebration.

How often do we see pictures of happy Muslim men? What a relief too that they were Pakistani.

I’ve developed a theory about the Muslims we see on our television screens and front pages and who are usually from Pakistan.

Angry Bearded Muslim Man is the favorite. Whenever the Muslim world is supposed to be upset or offended, invariably that story is illustrated by images of Angry Bearded Muslim man: marching (usually in Pakistan), shouting (fists raised in the air in righteous anger), and burning something (an American flag, an Israeli flag, preferably both!)

His female counterpart is Covered in Black Muslim Woman. She’s seen, never heard. Visible only in her invisibility under that black chador, burqa, face veil, etc.

In those images you have conveyed all you want to say about Muslims: the men are angry, dangerous and want to hurt us; the women are just covered in black.

While there are indeed some Muslim men and women who fit both such descriptions they are by no means the majority and they are utterly insufficient in describing the diversity of views, appearances and attitudes among Muslims.

As a journalist I am loathe to blame the media for all and any perceived ills. But in the case of Angry Bearded Muslim and Covered in Black Muslim Woman, the media really do have a lot to answer for. Whether it’s the laziness of television producers or the tight and rolling deadlines of the 24-hour news cycle, you can be sure that when it comes to representing Muslims I will always lose out to Angry Bearded Muslim and Covered in Black Muslim Woman.

And it’s quite easy to see why - they make for sexy TV and enticing front page photos. And they are my biggest competitors and nemeses when I give lectures or appear on television here in the U.S.

My first U.S. TV appearance was on the Fox News Network on a show called “The O’Reilly Factor”. The host of the show, Bill O’Reilly is known for his conservative views and his confrontational style which often provokes guests with the result that O’Reilly and the guest shout at each other. It’s more entertainment than news or information.

After my appearance on “The O’Reilly Factor”, some viewers sent me email asking “Are you sure you’re a Muslim? Where’s the headgear?” Others wanted to know why I spoke English so well. Clearly, I did not fit the image of the Covered in Black Muslim Woman that many American viewers are used to. I was confusing them.

People don’t like to be confused. I discovered that during a panel discussion I took part in at a cultural centre in New York City in 2007 in which the questions “What does a Muslim look like? What does a Muslim home look like? And just who exactly makes up the Muslim mainstream?” seemed to be the ones foremost on the audience’s mind.

The panel discussion was meant to highlight the diversity of Muslim voices and experiences in the United States. My fellow speakers and I offered quite different views on a range of subjects that surely were proof of the vibrant debate among Muslims but despite our best efforts, not all were convinced apparently. Two women from the audience were later overheard saying “They’re trying to convince us they’re the mainstream? They’re not the mainstream.”

That, coupled with a question during the question and answer session on “what does a Muslim home look like” (implied was that it can’t possibly look like a home any normal person would recognise), got me wondering against whom my co-panelists and I were being compared.

I’m quite sure it’s Angry Bearded Muslim Man. And Covered in Black Muslim Woman.

Which brings me back to the happy Pakistanis – men and women – in our newspapers these days.

While I’m the last person to deny the danger of radicals in the Muslim world - much of my time and effort go into denouncing violence in the name of religion – I am also a proud liberal, secular Muslims.

I love to confuse people by subverting the stereotype of Muslims that they always see and hear from. I believe that breaking the false equation between conservatism and authenticity is the best way to end the monopoly over religious thought by radicals and their supporters.

When we stop equating conservative with authentic, we recognize the diversity of Muslim views and refuse to allow one voice to speak for us all. Only then can we be recognized as human beings, in all our differences.

It is by confusing people that we are allowed to be human beings, not Muslims, not Angry Bearded Muslim Man or Covered in Black Muslim Woman but human beings.

That will become possible when we see more Happy Muslim Men and Women Who Confuse You.

Copyright Mona Eltahawy 2009

Musawah - How Do You Say Equality? By Mona Eltahawy.
Article in March 17 edition of Qatar's Al Arab newspaper and Issue 25, March 30, 2009 of The Jerusalem Report

"I feel like someone opened a window into my mind and let in the fresh air. It feels so good!" The young Egyptian woman and I were among 250 activists and scholars from 47 countries brought together in mid-February in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for the launch of Musawah, a global movement for justice and equality in the Muslim family.

How lucky that young woman is, I thought. Just over 20 years ago, I felt as though I had to smash the window into my mind open myself, fists bleeding and bruised, to catch some of that fresh air. She's in her mid-20s, I'm in my early 40s. When I was a little younger than she is now my family lived in Saudi Arabia, where I became a feminist at the age of 19. It was both a survival mechanism and a rebellion. And it was the first step on a journey, equally exciting and painful, toward finding my own Islam.

There were times on that lonely journey when it felt that I needed nothing short of mental somersaults to remain in a religion that discriminated against me, or at the darkest of times, seemed to hate me. What else was I supposed to deduct from centuries of male-dominated and too often misogynistic interpretations of Islam that for every page of a man's obligations and duties wrote two for women. These misinterpretations took the faith far off the path that was set more than 14 centuries ago, when, we are taught, Islam gave women rights that made them the envy of women in Europe's Dark Ages.

Where is the solace in a faith you feel hates you? Why would God create me as a woman and then punish me for it? Nineteen-year-old me was full of those questions which I didn't dare put into words. I was terrified for even thinking them. I was pulling at a string I knew would leave too many taboos naked.

And so I scrambled for spiritual sustenance and found it in three of my earliest heroes - the Moroccan sociologist Fatima Mernissi, the Egyptian-American Islamic scholar Leila Ahmed and the Sudanese-American scholar Abdullahi An-Na'im.

Notice I include a man in there too. For a long time, I flatly refused to read anything written by Muslim men. They'd dominated the conversation for too long. But through the work of scholars like An-Na'im and the Egyptian Nasr Hamed Abu Zeid, I learned that some men could be as feminist as the best of us!

Another signpost - attending the United Nations conference on women in Beijing in 1995 where the Iranian-American women's rights activist Mahnaz Afkhami signed my copy of the book she had just edited called "Faith and Freedom: Women's Human Rights in the Muslim World." It brought together in book form many of my heroes in the way that Musawah would later bring them together in Kuala Lumpur.

Those early heroes prepared me well for an event four years ago exactly that I realize now was the last tug at the string of taboos. On March 18, 2005, Amina Wadud, an American scholar of Islam, became the first woman on record to lead a public, mixed-gender Friday prayer. For many of us 50 women and 50 men whom she led, it was one of the most moving moments of our lives.

What a thrill it was to stand before God as the spiritual equal of the male congregants - praying together, not behind the men and not in another room - with a woman leading us. Talking of fists and fresh air - for years I had been engaged in a seemingly endless bout over women's rights with a male-dominated Islam, neither one of us able to deal that knockout blow. Amina Wadud dealt it for me.

So no wonder when I met her again in Kuala Lumpur I was like a star-struck teenager.

And there I was marveling too at the sight of Zainah Anwar, Musawah project manager and former head of Sisters in Islam, the Malaysian organization that hosted the Kuala Lumpur conference that launched Musawah, which means "equality" in Arabic. She joined my constellation of stars when I saw a television profile of her in which she educated Malaysian women about their God-given rights in Islam as a way to empower them to stand up to judges, husbands and any other men who tried to use Islam against them.

When European women were mere chattel, Muslim women gained the right to inherit and own property. But now the descendants of those women who envied Muslim women in the 7th century have moved far ahead. Where is that spirit of the early days of Islam?

Ziba Mir-Husseini - another hero whose name at the top of an essay always signals fresh air - put it simply: There will be no justice for women as long as patriarchy is not separated from Islamic legal texts.

Wadud and Mir-Husseini are just two of many Muslim women scholars who are reinterpreting our religion. Their work throws down the gauntlet to 21st century Islamic legal tradition, which now has to meet the feminist challenge from within. It's not anti-Muslim outsiders who are demanding change, but us women who at Musawah celebrated the years we had worked at baring our taboos.

We are not alone of course. Orthodox Jewish women and Catholic women are also demanding to clear the deck of misogyny and patriarchy. In her new book "Taking Back God: American women rising up for religious equality," Leora Tanenbaum takes you on a tour of that struggle.

One of her interviewees, and another hero of mine, beautifully summed up the efforts of us women who won't stop wrestling with and for our faith. "A pearl is a precious thing. It's created as a result of irritation by sand," Francis Kissling, a longtime activist for reform in the Catholic Church's position on women, sexuality and reproduction, told us at Musawah. "We are all millions of grains of sand that will create pearls of the future."
my comment to Mona:
a) Mona - just over a year ago when i saw you for the first time you looked more like 25...
b) In this Jungle of the Meltdown it is obvious that Women get hurt more than men.
c) I am sorry that you have experienced personally, Male Violence but I do not want to discuss it here.
d) I saw Jerusalem Report this week and it passed thru my mind..
Should I check it for a "Mona" Article!?
e) last weekend there was a long article, the Doctor, who has not lost hope, decided to stay in Israel.
f) More next time...
Uncle Sam
=====================
By Mona Eltahawy Tel Aviv-Yaffo

Metro Canada, Jan. 20, 2009

I live in Harlem, New York City, which on election night was the centre of the universe. I have never seen people so happy.

Four days later, I went to the Axis of Evil, or at least that’s how former (doesn’t it feel good to say that!) U.S. President George W. Bush described Syria. And there in the Damascus market I bought a T-shirt that said simply “Obama.” One line in Arabic. Another in English.

Two very different cities. One simple joy at the mere idea of Obama.

Three months later, I am back in the Middle East and there is little joy. But Obama isn’t the reason the region is heartsick and wary. Rather, it is the absence of an Obama in the region that has sucked all joy out of it.

This morning in Doha, Qatar, the main photo on the front page of one of the national dailies was of Palestinians in Gaza lifting the decomposing body of a man onto the back of a pickup truck.

I am writing this from Tel Aviv, Israel, where at the airport an Israeli friend told me she is finally smiling again because with the ceasefire in place, she no longer has to worry her son will be sent to Gaza to fight.

So, how do we become audaciously hopeful in the Mideast?

Forget our audaciously awful leaders — and when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict they are evenly spread on both sides. Focus instead on young people, who form the majority in the region.

That’s where U.S. President Barack Obama (doesn’t it feel good to say that?) comes in.

The realist in me reminds the foolish optimist that Obama will be preoccupied with the U.S.economy and won’t be as focused on the Middle East as those of us from the region would wish. The poor man, trim and fit physique notwithstanding, must be weighed down by a burden of expectations from everyone.

But he can be the leader the region lacks. He can be the leader that tells our young people — Arab, Israeli, Iranian and Kurdish, take your pick — “Yes you can!”

A young Egyptian blogger I met in Doha told me that while listening to Obama’s acceptance speech he felt he was listening to the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, known for his mesmerizing presence. The latter died long before the blogger was born, but that’s how far he must go back to point to an Arab leader with a charismatic ability to galvanize the public.

“The old leaders in the Middle East have stopped dreaming,” Prof. Mira Tzoreff told me as she and her husband drove me to my hotel. “That’s a tragedy. Young people still dream.”

President Obama you still dream. Talk to the young people here and tell them their dreams matter.

Copyright 2009 Mona Eltahawy

Finding Gaza in Tel Aviv

Finding Gaza in Tel Aviv
By Mona Eltahawy
Feb. 4, 2009

TEL AVIV – “Are you proud of yourself for visiting Israel? Especially now?”

I am an Egyptian whose country has been at peace with Israel for almost 30 years but my decision to come to Tel Aviv a day after the ceasefire ended the war between Israel and Hamas did not go down well on Facebook, where I have almost 4,000 “friends”, most of whom I’ve never met but who form an invaluable and instant polling pool to current events.

For one Egyptian, I was in cahoots with the “Zionists, the Jews, the Unbelievers and Islam haters”.

“Don’t forget to take a few lovely flowers along with your sweet smile to Uncle (Ariel) Sharon, your godfather,” he wrote to me.

A Jordanian was a bit more measured in his criticism.

“I'm one of the few people remaining in the Arab world who still believes that a fair and just peace with Israel can be achieved,” he told me. “But…it's not right to visit the Jewish state at this time when you can smell the charred Palestinian flesh from the terrace of your hotel in Tel Aviv!”

Heavy-handed imagery aside, by coming to Tel Aviv I found Gaza itself, its heartbreak, its misery and all its complexity when I met Dr. Izzeldine Abouelaish and his family, or what is left of it.

A Palestinian doctor who lost three daughters when Israeli shells struck their home in Gaza two days before the ceasefire, he seems to be the only person left in this small slice of the Middle East with its supersized servings of “us” and “them” who refuses to hate.

“I hope this is the last tragedy,” he told me when we met at the hospital near Tel Aviv where he works part time but where that day he was not the healer but the father of a patient – his 17-year old daughter Shadha whose eye was blown out of its socket and who lost several fingers in the shelling. Four months earlier, his wife died of leukemia, leaving him with eight children.

.“We need to immunize both sides with love, respect, dignity and equality.”

Ever the doctor, he is the talisman for those of us who refuse to be silenced by tribal allegiance. I lost track of the number of times Israeli friends whispered to me they had to keep their views to themselves during the war in Gaza; Arab friends emailed me the same sentiments.

I was here to speak at a Tel Aviv University conference on Middle East youth and had no idea that I would meet Dr. Abouelaish but hearing him, crying with him as he recalled the horror of finding the shattered bodies of his daughters – one was beheaded in the shelling – the physician and his confusing life story became the raison d’etre of my visit.

I am a huge fan of confusion as the antidote to stereotypes. I was born shortly after one war with Israel, two of my uncles fought in another one and I was the first Egyptian to work in Israel for a western news agency. I am a proud Muslim who rejects everything Hamas represents and who believes Palestinians deserve better than their Islamist agenda, especially its obsession with Israel.

Dr. Abouelaish is the antithesis of the lazy lines drawn by too many in this too bloody conflict.

A Palestinian who met Israelis on an equal footing - not as the laborer, gardener or cleaner – he is a gynecologist who trained in two Israeli hospitals and who treated infertile Israeli women and delivered their babies. He is a known peace activist whose deceased daughters had attended a peace camp for Israeli and Palestinian children. And he is an academic who studied the effects of war on Gazan and Israeli children and whose own heartbreak has now ironically enriched his research.

A Hebrew speaker whose wails announcing the deaths of his girls on live television moved the presenters to tears, his grief marked the moment Al Jazeera and its unblinking and often overbearing war coverage entered Israeli living rooms. Up until then, most Israelis had been watching a very different war whose narrative - focused on soldiers as the nation’s sons sent to stem an eight-year tide of Hamas rocket attacks on southern towns - was largely free of Palestinian civilian suffering in Gaza.

But surrounded by Israeli friends, one of whom he calls the “surrogate mother” of Shadha he upends the Al Jazeera narrative with its fondness for using Palestinian misery as both advertisement and fuel for the angry masses.

It is a privilege and a curse to be able to move among all sides. Dr. Abouelaish could be the loneliest man on earth but he is the role model for those of us who believe Israelis and Palestinians need more than crocodile tears and fiery rhetoric.

As both sides declare victory in the Gaza war, its most obvious losers are Palestinian civilians and those on all sides who feel they must whisper their objection to violence by Hamas and the onslaught of the Israeli Defense Forces.

I came to Israel because I didn’t want to whisper, I wanted to talk, loudly and in the open, to Israelis and Palestinians who are fed up with war. In Dr. Abouelaish’s heartbreak and grace, I found the clearest message.

Copyright 2009 Mona Eltahawy

2009 Jaffa Ceasefire

Waltz with Bashir - Ari Folman gets Prizes
About Lebanon 1 war Animated.
I finally Saw the Movie 19th Feb 2009.

I was not at Demontration here in Yaffo.
http://yuditilany.blogspot.com/2009/01/thsouands-marched-through-jaffa-against.html
as Reported by yudit here.
I can not keep up with the rate of events here.
Unilateral ceasefire tonight at 2am. But this is only a step in complicated situation.

_{Last update - 23:45 17/01/2009 haaretz}

Israel to begin unilateral Gaza cease-fire at 2 A.M.

_{By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent, Haaretz Service and The Associated Press}

Prime Minster Ehud Olmert on Saturday night announced that Israel's security cabinet has voted in favor of a unilateral cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, which will come into effect at 2 A.M.

The announcement comes after three weeks of fighting in the coastal strip, as Israel launched a massive military offensive aimed at halting years of daily rocket fire on its southern communities. Palestinian sources say that more than 1,100 Gazans have been killed since the offensive began on December 27. Three Israeli civilians and 10 Israel Defense Forces have been killed during that period.

The decision to launch the cease-fire was approved during a lengthy security cabinet meeting which began after sundown in Tel Aviv. Two ministers were against the move, and another abstained.

"Our fight is not with the people of Gaza," Olmert said at the Tel Aviv press conference following the cabinet meeting. "We left Gaza in 2005 with the intention of never returning," he said, referring to Israel's unilateral withdrawal of troops and settlers from the territory under former prime minister Ariel Sharon.

Olmert warned that Iran, through its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas, was trying to establish its own hegemony in the region. He said that Hamas had underestimated Israel's decisiveness, had been "surprised" by the launch of the offensive, and was still not fully aware of how badly it had been damaged.

Olmert said that "if Hamas entirely ends its rocket fire on Israel, Israel will consider an IDF withdrawal from the Gaza Strip." If that did not occur, he said, "The IDF will continue to operate in order to protect our citizens."

Most rocket launching areas are now controlled by IDF, he said.

A strong hint at the impending cease-fire announcement came earlier Saturday, when Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that Israel was very close to meeting the objectives of its 22-day-old offensive in Gaza.

"After three weeks of Operation Cast Lead, we are very close to reaching the goals and securing them through diplomatic agreements," Barak said during a visit to the south of the country, according to a statement from his office.

The decision means Israel has put an end to Operation Cast Lead without an agreement with Hamas, relying instead on the support of the United States and Egypt in battling arms smuggling into Gaza.
Israel's Channel 10 earlier Saturday quoted IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi as saying he is in favor of bringing the IDF Gaza operation to a close.

A government source emphasized that there has been great progress with Egypt in reaching an agreement on fighting arms smuggling. The deal would require the combined use of technological measures on the border between Gaza and Egypt, operations against smugglers in the southern Gaza town of Rafah and the use of international experts to identify smuggling tunnels on the border.

The deal would also call for cooperation between Israel and Egypt on matters relating to the Gaza Strip in which they have shared interests, without the interference of Hamas.

Egypt is at the moment considering whether to organize a summit in the near future in Cairo between Olmert, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Egypt's state-run news agency MENA reported on Saturday that Mubarak has invited French President Nicholas Sarzoky and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for talks on how to end the Gaza offensive.

The Middle East News Agency (MENA) reported that Abbas and Sarkozy are set to hold talks with Egyptian President Hosni Muabark on Sunday.

The United States and Israel signed an agreement on Friday aimed at stopping the smuggling of weapons into the Gaza Strip, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said.

The deal includes measures meant to fight arms smuggling from Iran to Gaza, with the policing to take place throughout the route by which the arms reach Gaza, including patrols of the Persian Gulf, Sudan and neighboring states.

The two-and-a-half page document outlines a framework under which the United States will provide military and intelligence assets, including detection and surveillance equipment, as well as logistical help and training to Israel, Egypt and other nations in the region. The equipment and training would be used for monitoring Gaza's land and sea borders.

The document also calls for the U.S. to expand work with its NATO partners in the effort, particularly in the Red Sea, Mediterranean Sea, Gulf of Aden, Indian Ocean and eastern Africa, according to a text.

It also commits Washington to use relevant components of the U.S. military to assist Mideast governments in preventing weapons and explosives flows to Gaza that originate in or transit their territories.

Although signed by the Bush administration, the agreement is binding on the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama and Rice and State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said both Obama and Secretary of State-designate Hillary Rodham Clinton had been briefed on the details.

_{Last update - 11:26 01/01/2009 haaretz}

JEWISH WORLD / Pro-Israel camp would be wise to heed Muslim cries for peace

_{By Roi Ben-Yehuda}

As technology advances and televisions get flatter, bigger, and clearer, one subject will always be broadcast to the world in black and white: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The recent events in Gaza have engendered a predictable world reaction: polarization, anger, hatred, and fear. The left screams "massacre," while the right wants to get tougher.

Watching the mass protest and reading about strident calls for Israel's dissolution, we Jews can't help but get that lonely feeling in the pits of our stomachs: The world is against us. Call it a Pavlovian response conditioned by persecution on a mass scale.


But the pro-Israel camp would be wise to pay attention not only to the bellicose cries coming from the mosques and streets, but also to the Muslim voices courageously speaking out against Hamas.

The Muslim Canadian Congress, for example, has issued a statement holding Hamas responsible for precipitating the recent conflict in Gaza.
The statement begins by condemning the recent Israeli attacks in Gaza as "disproportionate," but quickly turns its attention to censuring Hamas. According to the congress, Hamas is responsible for using the Palestinian people as "human bait," in an effort to kindle an all-out war in Gaza.

In words that would have made Alan Dershowitz blush, the statement asserts that: "No other national liberation movement in modern history has offered martyrdom as a substitute to freedom and statehood. Hamas has set back the clock for the Palestinians and it is time for all Palestinians to recognize that Hamas offers only death, destruction and a place in Paradise, not a Palestinian State."

The columnist Mona Eltahawy, to give another example, who writes for Egypt's Al Masry Al Youm and Qatar's Al Arab, published a piece in which she lambasts Hamas and the Arab world for their self-destructive addiction to Israel.

"It is difficult to criticize Palestinians when so many have died this weekend," she writes, "but the Hamas rulers of Gaza are just the latest of their leaders to fail them. For those of us who long to separate religion from politics, Hamas has given the truth to the fear that Islamists care more about facing down Israel than taking care of their people. The Palestinians of Gaza are victims equally of Hamas and Israel."

Eltahawy originally published her article on Facebook, where bashing Israel is a full-time occupation. But even on the popular social networking site, a quick glance at some threads reveals that Muslim are far from intellectually monolithic on the operations in Gaza.

"Israel is no angel among nations," writes a man who identifies himself as a secular Muslim, "but Hamas is a disgrace to the freedom struggles of countless peoples - offering its own people to die so that it can serve some sick allegiance to Iran."

And putting the matter succinctly and evenly, one young Palestinian writes, "I've never felt so angry the way I do now? F%#K HAMAS, F%#K ISRAEL."

So what can we make of all this? Why are more Muslims publicly voicing their opposition to Hamas? Is this an example of buyer's remorse? Has Hamas' gross blundering of an occupation-free Gaza finally cost them the privilege of representing the Palestinian cause?

"The simple reason we see Muslims speaking out against Hamas," says the Muslim activist and writer, Raquel Evita Saraswati, "is that the organization has proved itself to be terrorist by nature and function; and while the larger Muslim community has always stated its rejection of terrorism, we see the pressing need to make our voices louder in these especially contentious times."

Many pro-Israel readers will see this statement, along with the ones above, and feel vindicated. But that would be a mistake. These letters should not be seen as an endorsement of Israel?s Spartan policies - which most of the writers correctly see as futile and morally abhorrent - but rather as a type of self-reckoning; a kind of honest awareness that is necessary for peace to flourish.

That said, the recognition that Israel is not always the problem and that occupation is not the only reason Palestinians fight is of no small significance. It is imperative, therefore, that we do what is in our power to ensure these voices are front and center competing in the great suk (market) of ideas, because once an idea is out there, it can never be un-thought.

2009 USA My American Friend Lornet on Gaza and Obama. Shlomo Avineri:

_{Last update - 01:40 16/04/2009}

From the bottom up. Up and Down with my Professor Shlomo Avineri.

_{By Shlomo Avineri Haaretz}

Former senator George Mitchell does not need much advice; he's an experienced statesman whose greatest achievement is the agreement between the Protestant majority and Catholic minority in Northern Ireland. Nevertheless, the U.S. president's special envoy to the Middle East would be well-advised to pay closer attention to certain distinguishing features of the local conflict.

The Irish conflict was basically a religious one, fought between two communities speaking the same language and sharing a common history. Here we have a struggle between two national movements with some religious aspects. While no one in Northern Ireland casts doubt over Britain's right to exist, many on the Palestinian side question the legitimacy of the Jewish state, and some Israelis doubt the right of the Palestinian nationality to exist.

Despite this, some lessons can be learned from Northern Ireland. There, the decommissioning of militias' weapons was a precondition to elections. The Palestinian Authority's elections failed in part because the movements running in themwere essentially armed militias. To end the Palestinian civil war, and to ensure democracy, there must be no compromise: Decommissioning all militias should be a precondition for elections.

Mitchell, meanwhile, faces the challenge of achieving an effective truce between Israel and Hamas, rebuilding the Gaza Strip and opening the crossings. His mission is liable to disintegrate; instead of dealing with the peace process, he might be sucked into resolving local crises. It will be important to think creatively.

Even those who supported the Oslo Accords cannot deny that the process failed for reasons beyond the obstacles put up by both parties. Oslo was an attempt to build the institutions of a Palestinian nation state from the top down; this fell through because Palestinian society did not produce the instruments for building a structure for the state.

In the last two years, the Quartet's Middle East envoy Tony Blair and U.S. Security Coordinator Keith Dayton have made some successful attempts to build Palestinian institutions from the bottom up. This has included building up municipal and regional institutions, strengthening infrastructure and creating functioning security apparatuses. Their efforts have achieved impressive results in Jenin, Bethlehem and even Hebron.

These actions are not at all similar to Benjamin Netanyahu's "economic peace," intended to serve as an alternative to a Palestinian state. On the contrary, they are the only successful attempts so far to create infrastructure for a state. True, this process is gradual and bound to take time, but the other process - the top-down one - failed, and it was time to admit it.

One last comment, on the Syrian front. An obstacle here is the gap between the Israeli position, focusing on the borders between Syria and Mandatory Palestine, and the Syrian position, focusing on the borders of June 4, 1967. Mitchell should look into a sensitive issue at his next meeting with the Syrians: Does their position stem from merely trying to maintain their occupation of land in 1948, or is it something deeper - a nonrecognition of the Middle East's borders, claiming they were set by Western imperialism after World War I? This is not merely a theoretical question, because it can help explain Syria's approach to Lebanon and other regional issues.
From Lornet:
But Obama has made statements about other world events during this time _ the Mumbai attacks, for example _ and he's fully interfering in the economic issues here, although that's a mess he needs to start dealing with now.
Most Americans who understand the politics of that region know that he's not said anything because it would not be politically wise. You don't want to begin your presidency having pissed off either Israel or the Arab world. So you take the safe path and say that its not your place to speak about it and hope people buy it.
That's why many people believe that Israel decided to act now when Bush was still in office, but a lameduck president, and when no one was really watching. Because there's still that question: why now?
I always thought the Israeli Arabs were somewhat frustrated with their cousins in the West Bank and Gaza, frustrated that they weren't doing more in a non-violent way to help themselves.
I've had an ongoing argument with a Pakistani source who believes that the Palestinian/Israeli issue has a one-state solution. That regardless of what you want to call the country, it should be run as one, with equal representation by Jews, Arabs and Christians.
I told him that wouldn't work on so many levels, not the least of which is that the Palestinian birth rate far outpaces that of the Israelis and the representation issue would be out of whack such that the Israelis would never buy it. Not that they would buy it anyway. He said the birth rate of Orthodox and poor Israelis were also equally as high. (I said that didn't matter, that the overall rates of arabs would far outpace the overall rate of Jews.)
Do you know what the current birth rate is for both and is the number of people making aliya pretty high these days?

Lornet

2008 Jaffa Last day of 2008- Operation or War!?

Two Weeks later and not clear when end is Near.
I am short of Money for Food and few care.
Haaretz Headlines Today:

14:52	Israel drops leaflets on Gaza warning residents it plans to escalate offensive (AP)
14:48	Hamas leadership in Damascus says it rejects foreign troops in Gaza (AP)
13:51	Qassam rocket lands in Eshkol regional council; no injuries reported (Haaretz)
13:40	Jordan police fire tear gas to disperse demonstrators protesting Gaza op (Al Jazeera)
12:34	Palestinian medical officials: 8 people killed by IDF tank strike in northern Gaza (AP)
12:31	Abbas: Israel would be responsible for `waterfall of blood` if it nixes truce (AP)
12:25	Sirens sound in Ashkelon (Israel Radio)
12:14	Palestinian rocket directly strikes home in Ashkelon (Israel Radio)
12:02	Two Grad rockets strike Ashkelon; one injured, many treated for shock (Israel Radio)
11:41	Abbas: Israel must accept Egypt-brokered truce to end Gaza fighting (AP)
11:26	Incoming secretary of state Clinton likely to name Dennis Ross as Mideast adviser (AP)
11:16	Syrian state newspapers slam UN`s Gaza truce resolution (AP)
11:16	IDF to hold its fire for three-hour window to allow aid to reach Gazans (AP)
10:05	China to dispatch envoy to Mideast `to promote the alleviation of tensions` (AP)
10:01	Israeli envoy departs Venezuela after Chavez orders his expulsion (Israel Radio)
09:07	Report: EU draws up plan to restore control of Gaza crossings to Fatah-led PA (Haaretz)
09:00	Three Gaza rockets explode in open field in Eshkol regional council (Channel 10)
08:47	Five IDF troops lightly wounded in Gaza fighting (Israel Radio)
08:00	U.S. says arms shipment to Israel not linked with Gaza conflict (Reuters)
06:38	IDF ground troops reported advancing in outskirts of Gaza City (AP)
06:17	Record anti-Israel protest claimed in New Zealand (DPA)
05:37	Illinois Gov. Blagojevich impeached for trying to sell Obama`s senate seat (AP)
04:53	Jordan PM apologizes for police beating of reporters outside Israeli embassy (Reuters)
04:21	Expelled Israeli ambassador leaves Venezuela in wake of Gaza escalation (AP)
03:54	Palestinians: IAF strikes Hamas compound in Khan Younis, Gaza market (AP)
03:30	U.S. seeks ship to move arms to Israel from Greece (Reuters)
02:49	U.S. judge to rule on Madoff bail in fraud case on Monday (AP)
02:24	Amnesty International asks UN for human rights monitors in Gaza (DPA)
01:57	U.S. VP Cheney: Osama bin Laden no longer an effective leader (AP)
01:37	Palestinian FM: Israel, Hamas showing `disrespect` by ignoring UN call for truce (AP)
01:04	AIPAC: Truce resolution refuses to acknowledge Israel`s right to self-defense (Haaretz)
00:44	Syria protests Israel Golan wine gift to UN staff (Reuters)
00:24	Olmert: Friday`s rocket barrage proves UN resolution is not practical (Haaretz)
23:59	Hamas claims it hit Israel Air Force base 27km from Tel Aviv (Haaretz)
23:38	Obama aide denies report he will negotiate with Hamas once in office (Haaretz)

From BBC, Since then Beer Sheba too:
1. Ashdod: First attack so far north, Sunday. Woman killed in second rocket attack, Tuesday
2. Ashkelon: One man killed, several injured in rocket attack, Monday
3. Sderot: rocket attacks
4. Nevitot: One man killed, several injured in rocket attack, Saturday
5. Civilian family reported killed in attack on Yabna refugee camp, Sunday
6. Israeli warplanes strike tunnels under Gaza/Egypt border, Sunday
7. Three brothers reported killed in attack on Rafah, Sunday
8. Khan Younis: Four members of Islamic Jihad and a child reported killed, Sunday. Security officer killed in air strike on Hamas police station, Tuesday
9. Deir al-Balah: Palestinians injured, houses and buildings destroyed, Sunday
10. Tel al-Hawa - Interior ministry and Islamic University badly damaged, Monday. At least three buildings in ministry compound hit, Tuesday
11. Gaza City port: naval vessels targeted, Sunday
12. Shati refugee camp: Home of Hamas leader Ismail Haniya targeted, Monday
13. Intelligence building attacked, Sunday
14. Jebaliya refugee camp: several people killed in attack on mosque, Sunday 15. Beit Hanoun - two girls killed in air strike, Tuesday
16. Israeli soldier killed at unspecified military base near Nahal Oz border crossing - five other soldiers wounded in same rocket attack, Monday night.