This essay was featured as the final segment of an on-line debate between George Bisharat and Judea Pearl that ran for five days as the 'Dust-Up' website feature of the Los Angeles Times and its sister publications Newsday, Chicago Tribune and Baltimore Sun.
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In September 2000, I decided to do my part to bring peace to the Middle East. As a Canadian attorney of Palestinian origin, I believed I could use my legal skills to help broker a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Naive? Perhaps.

I left my comfortable life in California and moved to the West Bank. Moving there was not easy: I did not know what life is like under military rule. My Western upbringing left me unprepared for life without freedom. Seven years later, I am still not used to it. More...

Rafah, the Gaza Strip, March 3 - Israeli officials said today that they finished their military operation in the Gaza Strip, but the Israeli attacks continue, and we fear that Israel is still planning a major invasion. On February 29th, Israel's Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai warned of "a bigger holocaust" for Palestinians.

From February 27th - March 2nd, the Israeli army killed around 110 Palestinians in Gaza, about half of them civilians, and nearly a quarter children, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza. Hundreds were injured. Palestinians killed two Israeli soldiers and one Israeli civilian. More...

The people of Gaza were able to enjoy a few days of freedom last week, after demolition charges brought down the iron wall separating the impoverished Palestinian territory from Egypt, allowing hundreds of thousands to burst out of the virtual prison into which Gaza has been transformed over the past few years--the terminal stage of four decades of Israeli occupation--and to shop for desperately needed supplies in Egyptian border towns.

Gaza's doors are slowly closing again, however. Under mounting pressure from the United States and Israel, Egypt has dispatched additional border guards armed with water cannons and electric cattle prods to try to regain control. It has already cut off the flow of supplies crossing the Suez Canal to its own border towns. For now, in effect, Suez is the new border: even if Palestinians could get out of Gaza in search of new supplies, they would have to cross the desolate expanses of the Sinai Desert and cross the canal, on the other side of which they would find the regular Egyptian army (barred from most of Sinai as a condition of the 1979 Camp David treaty with Israel) waiting for them. More...

After pandering to Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert's right-wing government last week, US president George W. Bush carried the Israeli/neoconservative campaign against Iran to Arab countries. Sounding as authentic as the "Filipino Monkey," Bush told the Arab countries that "Iran is the world's leading state sponsor of terror," and that "Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere." More...

Imagine, if you will, a world without Islam. admittedly an almost inconceivable state of affairs given its charged centrality in our daily news headlines. Islam seems to lie behind a broad range of international disorders: suicide attacks, car bombings, military occupations, resistance struggles, riots, fatwas, jihads, guerrilla warfare, threatening videos, and 9/11 itself. „Islam‰ seems to offer an instant and uncomplicated analytical touchstone, enabling us to make sense of today‚s convulsive world. Indeed, for some neoconservatives, „Islamofascism‰ is now our sworn foe in a looming „World War III‰. More...

President George Bush, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert have committed themselves to give the world a new year's gift in 2009: an independent state of Palestine. After decades of war and homelessness, oppression and occupation, settlements and walls, this is a welcome move. However, much needs to be accomplished in 2008 for this vision -- unlike previous ones -- to become a reality.

Despite skepticism, various pieces of the Palestinian statehood puzzle are falling into place. The Bush Administration has countered the pro-Israel lobby and spoken of the strategic importance of Palestinian statehood for the United States. Standing next to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah last October, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that the creation of a Palestinian state is in the national interest of the United States. US National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley was then sent to the region as proof that the issue has now taken on a national security priority. And now, President Bush has made his first trip as president to the occupied Palestinian territories. More...

Today, two movements for the promotion of human rights in Sudan and Palestine seek to emulate the successful role played by boycotts, divestment, and sanctions in achieving democracy and equality in South Africa. The two movements, however, have received radically different receptions on Capitol Hill. This double standard testifies to official Washington's selectivity when it comes to promoting human rights around the globe and its tendency to overlook the faults of its allies while using human rights as a pretext to punish its adversaries. More...

As one who for decades has supported a two-state solution and the nonviolent struggle for Palestinian rights, I view the recent conference in Annapolis with a great deal of skepticism - and a glimmer of hope.

Seven years with no negotiations - and increasing numbers of Israeli settlers, an economic blockade in Gaza and an intricate network of roadblocks and checkpoints stifling movement in the West Bank - have led us to despair and distrust. Any commitment must be made not only to conclude an agreement before the end of 2008 but also to end Israel's occupation. More...

The Annapolis peace talks regard me as an interloper in my own land. Israel's deputy prime minister, Avigdor Lieberman, argues that I should "take [my] bundles and get lost." Henry Kissinger thinks I ought to be summarily swapped from inside Israel to the would-be Palestinian state.

I am a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship--one of 1.4 million. I am also a social psychologist trained and working in the United States. In late November, on behalf of Mada al-Carmel, the Arab Center for Applied Social Research, I polled Palestinian citizens of Israel regarding their reactions to the Annapolis conference and their views about our future, and how they would be affected by Middle East peace negotiations. More...

Anyone familiar with Israeli politics was not surprised that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert did not acknowledge Israel's occupation in his speech at Annapolis. What was surprising was that short of mentioning the "R" word- refugees, Olmert acknowledged the Palestinian refugee problem.

Referring to the Palestinians, the Israeli Prime Minister stated in his Annapolis speech: "your people, too, have suffered for many years; and there are some who still suffer. Many Palestinians have been living for decades in camps, disconnected from the environment in which they grew up, wallowing in poverty, in neglect, alienation, bitterness, and a deep, unrelenting sense of humiliation." Olmert's characterization of the refugees is only partially correct. Poverty, neglect, alienation, bitterness and feelings of humiliation, are only one component of the refugee experience. There are also other components, such as community, pride, generosity, and perseverance. This one-dimensional characterization obviously suits Olmert's conception of a solution. It also casts refugees as objects that will be acted upon (once again), rather than subjects who can genuinely participate in finding a solution. A recent article in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz Daily titled "Refugees and Jerusalem : A question of money" sheds light on Olmert's statements. The article revealed the outlines of the deal being cooked to sell the rights of the Palestinian refugees. More...

Sixty years ago, my grandparents lived in the beautiful village of Beit Daras, a few kilometers north of Gaza. They were farmers and owned hundreds of acres of land.

But in 1948, in the first Arab-Israeli war, many people lost their lives defending our village from the Zionist militias. In the end, with their crops and homes burning, the villagers fled. My family eventually made its way to what became the refugee camp of Khan Yunis in Gaza. We were hit hard by poverty, humiliation and disease. We became refugees, queuing for tents, food and assistance, while the state of Israel was established on the ruins of my family's property and on the ruins of hundreds of other Palestinian villages. More...