Tuesday, February 2, 2010

False hopes for Palestine


Reports of optimistic developments in the Palestinian Territories are premature – they are still crushed by Israel's control regime

Ben White
guardian.co.uk, Monday 1 February 2010

"Over the last six months, there have been numerous reports on the apparent signs of hope in West Bank cities such as Ramallah, Nablus, and Jenin. The Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, has also enjoyed flattering coverage in the likes of Newsweek and the New York Times, with his unilateral state-building strategy praised by a variety of commentators. The Israeli government, for its part, has trumpeted improvements in Palestinians' daily lives – from the easing of restrictions on movement, to a boosted economy. Yet as I discovered during a visit at the beginning of this year, these sunny reports bear no relation to Israel's colonisation of East Jerusalem and West Bank, where the permanently-temporary occupation continues to defy state-building efforts.....

This brief analysis does not even take into account the siege of Gaza, the Israeli consensus that Jerusalem is the "undivided Jewish capital", and Israel's refusal to recognise the Palestinian refugees' rights. Yet even purely focusing on the West Bank is enough to show that the latest bout of "state-building" is merely a prelude for the next intifada."

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