If anything can be said about the inhabitants of the many refugee camps in Jordan it is that they have shown remarkable resilience in the face of unspeakable injustice. The people at Gaza camp are warm and welcoming, albeit curious. Numbers haunt the life of every refugee; on one hand, there are passport numbers, national identification numbers, and social security numbers that are denied to them. On the other hand, you have the statistics that their lives have been reduced to: 24,000 refugees, 2,000 makeshift shelters, 50% unemployment, 0.75 square kilometers.
Arab Spring
Societies cannot have democracy imposed from without, as though it were an item to be ordered from a lunch menu. The West’s democracies, imperfect as they are, were fought for by their peoples over centuries at great cost, including horrific wars. Each state developed its own checks and balances to cope with the unique political, social and economic conditions that prevailed there. Those hard-won freedoms are under constant threat, not least from the very same political and economic elites that so vociferously campaign for humanitarian interventions abroad.
Israel has been only too happy to perform a pointless tango with the Palestinians on the diplomatic front while it encouraged its settlers to entrench their hold on the West Bank and East Jerusalem, gutting any chance of the Palestinian state that was ostensibly being negotiated.
What solidarity work is about is defending a democratic principle of self-government for an oppressed people, within the limits of international laws and universal norms. The right of self- determination basically means that ALL Palestinians (wherever they happen to reside) have a right to actively participate in shaping their political future.
The rules of the game in the new Middle East changed… From now on, the people are speaking; they will not stand for violent or colonialist behavior toward Arabs, and their leaders will have to take this into consideration. The occupation, and Israel’s exaggerated shows of force in response to terror attacks, are now being put to the test of the peoples, not just their rulers.
I hope that the activists in the Arab countries, especially in Egypt, will realise their vital and deep influence on the Israelis’ motivation to protest.
The great majority of the Israelis demanding affordable housing, even if they may understand the connection, are reluctant to articulate that their economic distress is exacerbated by the cost of the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and Israel’s military budget for fear that this stance would discredit them politically. Consequently, it may take a long time before a significant number of Israelis are convinced or compelled to abandon their colonial settlement project and share the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea with Palestinians on the basis of equality.
The Campaign for Peace and Democracy is gathering signatures for the following statement about the continuing repression in Bahrain. To date, the statement has been signed by more than 1,500 people, including hundreds of courageous Bahrainis.
Both Bush and Obama are terrified of the Arab spring. And there is a very sensible reason for that. They don’t want democracies in the Arab world. If Arab public opinion had any influence on policy, the US and Britain had been tossed out of the Middle East. That’s why they are terrified of democracies in the region.
RELATED Repression in Bahrain
From dear friend of the Mubaraks to instant cheerleader of the revolution, [Hillary Clinton's] metamorphosis was truly extraordinary, duly noted in the Egyptian and wider Arab press. It took aback even hardened commentators on the left, impressed by Mrs. Clinton’s shamelessly crass opportunism, just as it instilled deep anxiety and anger among “America’s Arabs” on the right.
