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| Palestine Chronicle | | The Palestine Chronicle is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization whose mission is to educate the general public by providing a forum that strives to highlight issues of relevance to human rights, national struggles, freedom and democracy in the form of daily news, commentary, features, book reviews, photos, art, and more.
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| | | Important Request from Ramzy Baroud | For over 15 Years, We Kept on Going. But Without Your Help, The Palestine Chronicle Will Come to a Halt May 3 2016 / 3:35 pm Dear Friends and Readers, As most of you know, the Palestine Chronicle has tirelessly and, in many cases, desperately, attempted to maintain a focus on PALESTINE, especially as much of the media is shamelessly trying to marginalize Palestine and its people. However, this form of extremely important and necessary media coverage requires the help of you in order to continue running. Every six months we resort to you for help. This is an earnest appeal for you to assist us in remaining afloat and able to bring you braking news and information on Palestine and Palestinians. Friends, we are financially struggling, despite our continued popularity and our constant attempts at improvement and expansion. In some way we take pride in the fact that it is never easy for us. We have no rich backers, no major grants or funders with political agendas. We only have you, and we welcome such a wide readership. Donations towards the Palestine Chronicle range from one dollar to 500 dollars, and sometimes more. Our team is made up of five people. However, this year we are adding a new reporter in Palestine and a sub-editor as well. We mostly volunteer our time, and only pay our staff a most symbolic amount. However, money is needed in order to take care of our costs, some of our paid content, our administrative costs (which are minimal) and to pay those who keep the Chronicle moving forward day after day. The fact is, Palestine is only covered when there is a war, and then it is mostly forgotten. It is organizations like ours - which has no political or factional affiliation - that labors every day to keep the focus on Palestine, on the siege in Gaza, on the intifada in the West Bank and Jerusalem, on the BDS effort, on the prisoners, and more. Needless to say, without the limited funds that you kindly provide we cannot achieve our objectives. Therefore, we urgently appeal for your help. We ask you to be generous in your support and continue to invest in our work so that we continue to lead our mission, until freedom and justice in Palestine are achieved, and even beyond. At the moment, a running cost of $12,000 is required, enough to keep us going for six more months. We promise to spend it wisely, as we have for over 15 years. Thank you for your solidarity Ramzy Baroud - Chief Editor To make a contribution using your paypal account or credit card, please click Or kindly send your contribution to: PO Box 196
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USA The Palestine Chronicle is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization. All donations are tax deductible. The Palestine Chronicle is one of the most widely read and respected online news and commentary sources on Palestine and the Middle East.
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| EDITORIAL | Did the Arabs Betray Palestine? Hajah Zainab is also Algeria, all of Algeria. (YouTube) At the age of 21, I crossed Gaza into Egypt to pursue a degree in political science. The timing could have not been worse. The Iraq invasion of Kuwait in 1990 had resulted in a US-led international coalition and a major war, which eventually paved the road for the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. I became aware that Palestinians were suddenly 'hated' in Egypt because of Yasser Arafat's stance in support of Iraq at the time. I just did not know the extent of that alleged 'hate.' It was in a cheap hotel in Cairo, where I slowly ran out of the few Egyptian pounds at my disposal, that I met Hajah Zainab, a kindly, old custodian who treated me like a son. She looked unwell, wobbled as she walked, and leaned against walls to catch her breath before carrying on with her endless chores. The once carefully-designed tattoos on her face, became a jumble of wrinkled ink that defaced her skin. Still, the gentleness in her eyes prevailed, and whenever she saw me she hugged me and cried. Hajah Zainab wept for two reasons: taking pity on me as I was fighting a deportation order in Cairo - for no other reason than the fact that I was a Palestinian at a time that Arafat endorsed Saddam Hussein while Hosni Mubarak chose to ally with the US. I grew desperate and dreaded the possibility of facing the Israeli intelligence, Shin Bet, who were likely to summon me to their offices once I crossed the border back to Gaza. The other reason is that Hajah Zainab's only son, Ahmad, had died fighting the Israelis in Sinai. Zainab's generation perceived Egypt's wars with Israel, that of 1948, 1956 and 1967 as wars in which Palestine was a central cause. No amount of self-serving politics and media conditioning could have changed that. But the war of 1967 was that of unmitigated defeat. With direct, massive support from the US and other western powers, Arab armies were soundly beaten, routed at three different fronts. Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank were lost, along with the Golan Heights, the Jordan Valley and Sinai, as well. It was then that some Arab countries' relations with Palestine began changing. Israel's victory and the US-West's unremitting support convinced some Arab governments to downgrade their expectations, and expected the Palestinians to do so, as well. Egypt, once the torch-bearer of Arab nationalism, succumbed to a collective sense of humiliation and, later, redefined its priorities to free its own land from Israeli Occupation. Without the pivotal Egyptian leadership, Arab countries were divided into camps, each government with its own agenda. As Palestine, all of it, was then under Israeli control, Arabs slowly walked away from a cause they once perceived to be the central cause of the Arab nation. The 1967 war also brought an end to the dilemma of independent Palestinian action, which was almost entirely hijacked by various Arab countries. Moreover, the war shifted the focus to the West Bank and Gaza, and allowed the Palestinian faction, Fatah, to fortify its position in light of Arab defeat and subsequent division. That division was highlighted most starkly in the August 1967 Khartoum summit, where Arab leaders clashed over priorities and definitions. Should Israel's territorial gains redefine the status quo? Should Arabs focus on returning to a pre-1967 situation or that of pre-1948, when historic Palestine was first occupied and Palestinians ethnically cleansed? The United Nations Security Council adopted resolution 242, on November 22 1967, reflecting the US Johnson Administration's wish to capitalise on the new status quo: Israeli withdrawal "from occupied territories" in exchange for normalisation with Israel. The new language of the immediate post-1967 period alarmed Palestinians who realised that any future political settlement was likely to ignore the situation that existed prior to the war. Eventually, Egypt fought and celebrated its victory of the 1973 war, which allowed it to consolidate its control over most of its lost territories. A few years later, the Camp David accords in 1979 divided the ranks of the Arabs even more and ended Egypt's official solidarity with the Palestinians, while granting the most populous Arab state a conditioned control over its own land in Sinai. The negative repercussions of that agreement cannot be overstated. However, the Egyptian people, despite the passing of time, have never truly normalized with Israel. In Egypt, a chasm still exists between the government, whose behavior is based on political urgency and self-preservation, and a people who, despite a decided anti-Palestinian campaign in various media, are as ever determined to reject normalization with Israel until Palestine is free. Unlike the well-financed media circus that has demonized Gaza in recent years, the likes of Hajah Zainab have very few platforms where they can openly express their solidarity with the Palestinians. In my case, I was lucky enough to run into the aging custodian who cried for Palestine and her only son all those years ago. Nevertheless, that very character, Zainab, was reincarnated in my path of travel, time and again. I met her in Iraq in 1999. She was an old vegetable vendor living in Sadr City. I met her in Jordan in 2003. She was a cabby, with a Palestinian flag hanging from his cracked rearview mirror. She was also a retired Saudi journalist I met in Jeddah in 2010, and a Moroccan student I met at a speaking tour in Paris in 2013. She was in her early twenties. After my talk, she sobbed as she told me that Palestine for her people is like a festering wound. "I pray for a free Palestine every day," she told me, "as my late parents did with every prayer." Hajah Zainab is also Algeria, all of Algeria. When the Palestinian national football team met their Algerian counterparts last February, a strange, unprecedented phenomenon transpired that left many puzzled. The Algerian fans, some of the most ardent lovers of football anywhere, cheered for the Palestinians, non-stop. And when the Palestinian team scored a goal, it was if the bleachers were lit on fire. The crowded stadium exploded with a trancing chant for Palestine and Palestine alone. So, did the Arabs betray Palestine? The question is heard often, and it is often followed with the affirmative, 'yes, they did.' The Egyptian media scapegoating of Palestinians in Gaza, the targeting and starving of Palestinians in Yarmouk, Syria, the past civil war in Lebanon, the mistreatment of Palestinians in Kuwait in 1991 and, later, in Iraq in 2003 are often cited as examples. Now some insist that the so-called 'Arab Spring' was the last nail in the coffin of Arab solidarity with Palestine. I beg to differ. The outcome of the ill-fated 'Arab Spring' was a massive letdown, if not betrayal, not just of Palestinians but of most Arabs. The Arab world has turned into a massive ground for dirty politics between old and new rivals. While Palestinians were victimised, Syrians, Egyptians, Libyans, Yemenis and others are being victimised, as well. There has to be a clear political demarcation of the word 'Arabs.' Arabs can be unelected governments as much as they can be a kindly old woman earning two dollars a day in some dirty Cairo hotel. Arabs are emboldened elites who care only about their own privilege and wealth while neither Palestine nor their own nations matter, but also multitudes of peoples, diverse, unique, empowered, oppressed, who happen at this point in history to be consumed with their own survival and fight for freedom. The latter 'Arabs' never betrayed Palestine; they willingly fought and died for it when they had the chance. Most likely, Hajah Zainab is long dead now. But millions more like her still exist and they, too, long for a free Palestine, as they continue to seek their own freedom and salvation. - Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include 'Searching Jenin', 'The Second Palestinian Intifada' and his latest 'My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story'. His website is: www.ramzybaroud.net. |
| SELECTED |  Reviewed by Jim Miles (Age of Fools. William A. Cook. Dandelion Books, LLC. Mesa, Arizona. 2015. ) In a world of fools, Age of Fools by William Cook is passionate and accusatory book that reviews the Bush/Sharon era of Israeli/Palestinian affairs. Cook's style is different than the usual prosaic works of history, and while the 'facts' [...]  By now, Angela Merkel is used to it. Whenever she meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the confidential content of their discussion appears in an Israeli newspaper a few days later. But the story that appeared in Israel Hayom, a free, pro-Netanyahu newspaper on Feb. 16 surprised even the German chancellor. "Merkel: This Isn't [...]  By Yousef Aljamal - Gaza Across the world, the 1st of May is a day to celebrate workers as a gesture of appreciation of their contribution to the society. Workers across the globe take the day off, but this is not the case for Gaza's workers, many of them are jobless due to the suffocating [...]  As the world marks International Workers' Day (May Day), laborers in the Palestinian territory continue to suffer from soaring unemployment, poverty, and other dire working conditions. The average unemployment rate in the Palestinian territory was 26 percent in 2015: in the occupied West Bank, unemployment stood at 17 percent, compared to a staggering 41 percent [...]  By Ralph Nader Senator Bernie Sanders has come a long way without other people's advice. The progressive lone ranger is now leading in the polls nationally as the preferred candidate to defeat Donald Trump-ahead of Hillary in that matchup. Now, however, Bernie Sanders is facing the verdict of closed primaries in many states which bar [...]  By Abdul Sattar Qassem The elections held at the Palestinian universities, Birzeit and Al-Najah, are considered a good indicator of the popularity of Palestinian factions. The media outlets usually refer to the student union to sense the popular Palestinian feelings towards the Palestinian factions and organisations. In recent years, the media outlets focused on Birzeit [...]  Reviewed by Stuart Rees (Vacy Vlazna, ed., I remember my name - Poetry by Samah Sabawi, Ramzy Baroud, Jehan Bseiso. Novum Publishing, 2016) Poetry's Panacea Conditions on the West Bank, in Gaza, in East Jerusalem and in myriad Palestinian refugee camps are monstrous. What non-violent response can there be to the violence and hatred, the killings [...]  Dear Readers and Friends of The Palestine Chronicle, Thanks to you Palestine Chronicle is going strong, mid-way through our 16th year online as an independent Palestinian news platform! Since our last fundraiser just 6 months ago we have reached out to about a million original readers. We couldn't have done this without your support! Thank you. [...]  By Aida Qasim Eyes like an unfinished poem possess my spirit They rise the moon out of its slothiness Shaking away the stillness of my pillow I shudder and solicit a memory: Sweet mint tea in my aunt's patio on Salaheddein Street in Al Quds Long oblong sesame Ka'ek warm as the freshly boiled salt [...]  By Ramzy Baroud At the age of 21, I crossed Gaza into Egypt to pursue a degree in political science. The timing could have not been worse. The Iraq invasion of Kuwait in 1990 had resulted in a US-led international coalition and a major war, which eventually paved the road for the US invasion of [...] |
| LATEST | On May Day in Gaza: Everyone Takes the Day off Except for Workers May 2 2016 / 4:41 pm Representatives of civil society reading a statement intended for the Obama Administration from the Gaza headquarters of UNSCO on April 27. (Photo: Abdulkareem, Palestine Chronicle) Across the world, the 1st of May is a day to celebrate workers as a gesture of appreciation of their contribution to the society. Workers across the globe take the day off, but this is not the case for Gaza's workers, many of them are jobless due to the suffocating siege imposed on Gaza. According to the latest statistics, 250,000 workers are jobless in Gaza, making it one of the highest rates in the world. Dozens of workers took place in a sit-in organized by the Workers Union in Gaza in front of the Ministries Complex in which they called for "improving the conditions of Gaza's workers." Workers were seen in Gaza on May Day at various construction sites, as taking a day off is a luxury they cannot afford. Taking the day off would make it harder for them to bring food to their families' tables. After nearly ten years of siege, and with the lack of governmental support of these workers, many of them used to work in Israel; Gaza's workers are still in limbo. "I worked on May Day in Gaza, because my priority is to bring food to my family's table. I do not feel I should take the day off; Gaza's workers get the least rights. The situation is really bad," Abdallah Altawil, 35, and a father of five, who runs a cell-phone repair shop in Gaza told Palestine Chronicle. Gaza's workers feel that their situation will not get better anytime soon. For a drastic change to take place, the siege of Gaza has to be lifted. In a press conference organized on April 27, the Palestinian civil society called on the American Administration to work to lift the siege of Gaza. Mohammed Shehadeh of the Palestinian Civil Society delivered a statement to journalist that in part read: "The closure created a man-made catastrophe exacerbating civilians' suffering. According to the World Bank, unemployment increased to 43%, while 40% of Gaza population is below the poverty line. Gaza would be unlivable by 2020 according to UN." The siege of Gaza made the situation even worse for workers and their families. "For us to survive, the siege has to be lifted," Altawil said while placing a cigarette in his mouth. Even the process of tobacco has skyrocketed "due to taxes and the siege," he said. Meanwhile, Palestinians keep struggling in the costal enclave, waiting for salvation after three offensives, which claimed the lives of thousands of Palestinians and exhausted the people of Gaza. - Yousef Aljamal is Palestine Chronicle Correspondent in the Gaza Strip.
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| NEWS ROUNDUP .. | Electricity grids for all districts in the Gaza Strip will only be providing power for six hour intervals followed by 12 hours without power, due to a problem with the Egyptian power lines, Gaza's electricity company announced Monday morning. The company's Public Information Officer Tariq Labad told Ma'an that Egypt promised to fix the problem [...]  A Palestinian committee has documented 42 Israeli violations against Palestinian journalists and media groups during April, Felesteen newspaper reported on Sunday. A report from the Committee for the Protection of Journalists has called for human rights groups and international bodies to intervene in order to stop Israel's attacks on media freedom. The committee accused Israel [...] By Yousef Aljamal - Gaza Across the world, the 1st of May is a day to celebrate workers as a gesture of appreciation of their contribution to the society. Workers across the globe take the day off, but this is not the case for Gaza's workers, many of them are jobless due to the suffocating [...]  Israel's halt of the entry of cement into Gaza has stopped reconstruction work, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) revealed on Friday, according to Quds Press. In a report, OCHA said: "The rebuilding of the houses destroyed during the latest Israeli offensive on Gaza stopped due to the Israeli authorities' [...]  PLO Secretary General Saeb Erekat slammed the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) on Saturday for banning the Palestinian flag from the 2016 Eurovision song contest, calling the ruling "discriminatory and a serious offense against our nation." In a letter obtained by Ma'an addressed to EBU President Jean-Paul Philippot, Erekat expressed his "outrage and indignation" toward the [...]  Over 40 French rights groups have launched a campaign in solidarity with Palestinian children inside Israeli jails, Anadolu news agency reported on Friday. The campaign called for the international community to act for the sake of Palestinian prisoners inside Israeli jails. According to Anadolu, the campaign sent a team to Israeli prisons to meet with [...]  UN figures released Thursday revealed a four-fold increase from last year in the rate of Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes and structures, that have left a record-high 808 Palestinians displaced since the start of 2016. According to UN documentation, the Israeli authorities have destroyed some 588 Palestinian structures across the occupied Palestinian territory since January. [...] Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki revealed yesterday that a new version of the Palestinian passport will carry the words "State of Palestine" instead of the "Palestinian National Authority". Al-Maliki told Palestinian Al-Ayyam newspaper that the new passport is being designed, noting that Israel has been informed of the change. He did not specify a [...]  A report by Physicians for Human Rights - Israel (PHRI) released last month revealed that that Israeli doctors condone the mistreatment of Palestinian prisoners - particularly those in solitary confinement - as a matter of routine, in violation of medical ethics and international law that in some cases equates solitary confinement to torture. The report was [...]  The Palestinian leadership across the political spectrum on Thursday issued official condemnations of the "execution" of two Palestinian siblings shot dead by Israeli forces in Ramallah after an alleged stab attack the day prior. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' cabinet denounced the silence of the international community after Israeli officers shot Maram Salih Hassan Abu Ismail [...]  Five Hamas activists were arrested for "illegal activities" in and around the occupied West Bank's administrative capital Ramallah overnight yesterday, Israeli military officials announced. Local witnesses told the Anadolu Agency that at least four were ex-detainees. #Palestinian students gather at #Birzeit University for the debate before the tomorrow's vote pic.twitter.com/nvBbi4dBP7 - Andrea Bernardi (@andrwbern) April 26, [...] Witnesses to an alleged stab attempt on Israeli border police at a military checkpoint in the occupied West Bank Wednesday said two siblings shot dead during the incident posed no threat at the time the Israeli officer killed them. Witnesses told Ma'an that 23-year-old Maram Salih Hassan Abu Ismail, five months pregnant, and her 16-year-old [...] . |
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The Palestine Chronicle is an independent online newspaper that provides daily news, commentary, features, book reviews, photos, art, etc, on a variety of subjects. However, it's largely focused on Palestine, Israel, and the Middle East region. The Palestine Chronicle is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization. To contact the editor, submit an article or any other material, please write to: editor@palestinechronicle.com. For other inquiries write to: info@palestinechronicle.com. |
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