Last week, Israel barred a UNESCO fact-finding mission from entering the country, charging that the Palestinians had ‘politicized’ the mission before it had even arrived. The mission was tasked with looking into conditions of historical sites in the Old City of Jerusalem, something Israel apparently found to be very threatening.

Looking at the state of Jerusalem’s eastern sector today, it is understandable why Israel would not want UNESCO or anyone else walking around the Old City, especially the Palestinian-populated parts of it. Because anyone who does, will see the devastation that Israel and its settlers have wreaked on one of the oldest and most beautiful cities in the world.

Excavation works are being conducted in and around the Aqsa Mosque to make way for more Jewish construction at the place where Waqf authorities say Ottoman and Abbasid artifacts have long been tucked away. A Muslim graveyard is being dug up just outside the Old City’s Jaffa Gate, to build – ironically – a museum of tolerance. Today, two stores were forcefully taken over by Jewish settlers in Al Hakari, one of the neighborhoods in the Muslim quarter and every day, it seems that more and more homes are either being demolished by Israeli municipality authorities or being taken over by Jewish settlers.

The “Judiazation” of Jerusalem is a term many Palestinians and Arabs use for what Israel is doing in the city. In a nutshell, it is the long-term plan Israel is gradually carrying out to change the Arab Palestinian character of Jerusalem. This means demolishing old and historical structures, displacing Palestinians, handing over their homes to settlers and trying to erase the Palestinian or Arab history of the city.

The sad truth is that, on the surface, Israel has succeeded in this to a large extent. Pockets of Jewish settlers now live in the heart of Muslim quarters and aim to take over more and more. Sheikh Jarrah, one of the more affluent Palestinian neighborhoods of Jerusalem, is now pierced with Jewish flags waving from homes that have been wrestled from their Palestinian owners, and Israel’s light rail train cuts right down through Palestinian neighborhoods outside of the city center. The train, of course, is not meant to service the Palestinian population but rather to connect Jewish neighborhoods and settlements in the city, but the area confiscated from Shufat and Beit Hanina for its construction simply fell into the plan.

What the UNESCO mission would not have seen even if they made it into the Old City is the overall humiliation that the Palestinian population of Jerusalem must endure on a daily basis because of Israel’s military occupation. Trips to the Israeli ministry of interior must be made just to prove that one lives in the city for fear that their residency rights may be revoked; young Palestinian men are stopped randomly by Israeli soldiers to check their ID cards or just to harass them, and settlers are always given the luxury of maximum security whenever they walk the streets. If settlers want to march through the city, the Palestinians are told to close their shops, are barred for hours from reaching their homes if they run along the path of the march and are always the ones blamed if any kind of confrontation between the two sides breaks out.

Jerusalem is being squeezed by these measures more and more each day. But there is always that glimmer of hope, that strength that shines through proving that all is not lost. On Shavuot, Israeli settlers and extremists poured into the Old City, singing loudly, banging on the shop doors and waving huge Israeli flags. The sight was disconcerting to say the least. However, the afternoon of that same day, at Damascus Gate, passersby were met with a completely different scene. Palestinian flags waved in determined Palestinian hands under the threatening eye of heavily armed Israeli police and soldiers. The youths were fearless, demanding freedom, with strong, unrelenting voices.

The sight of the Palestinian flag waving at the entrance to Damascus Gate was a breath of fresh air. All is not lost and never will be because hope is eternal and determination and strength come from a never-ending spring.

That day at Damascus Gate is what all Palestinians must keep in their minds’ eye in spite of the daily oppression of the occupation. No matter how many missions Israel bars from entering or how many houses it takes over, there will always be those brave souls who, despite the risks, will always raise Palestine’s flag.

Joharah Baker is a Writer for the Media and Information Department at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH). She can be contacted at mid@miftah.org.

There is no point falling into the pit of countering the claims being made about the death of Mohammed Al Durra, the 12-year old boy from Gaza whose videotaped killing was seen around the world. The boy, crouching in fear behind is equally afraid father as bullets whizzed around them, was killed admittedly by the Israeli army. Later, the army recanted after investigating the tape, saying Durra was killed by Palestinian fire instead. Well now, Israel is changing its story altogether, saying he was not killed at all. In fact, he was probably not even wounded and the French channel that broadcast the footage and brought some pretty bad rap to Israel, had most likely filmed a charade.

The reason why I will not waste my time countering this claim is that even with the great lengths the Israeli government went to to prove that the boy was never killed, it could not provide any irrefutable proof that Mohammed Al Durra – who would be 25 now – is still alive. No pictures, no testimonies, no hospital or morgue officials giving statements to refute his death, have been provided. Only sketchy information about ‘poor quality footage’ and the fact that it seems as though the boy moved his arm after he had slumped over his father following the explosion.

My point is this: indeed, Mohammed Durra’s death was at least one of the catalysts that fueled the second Intifada, and thus, was an important event in the history of the Palestinians. However, more importantly – most importantly to me –is the fact that this is about a boy who died in sheer terror, with his distraught father futilely trying to shelter him from the barrage of bullets coming their way.

Mohammed Al Durra was a boy, with a life, a family and friends. He died a horrible death and now he is being made to die a second one. I did not know Mohammed or his family, but I can only imagine how awful it must be for them to read these claims now and feel the pain of losing their child all over again. If nothing else, this is disrespect for human life of the worst kind.

Some may postulate that the rehashing of the Durra case is a personal jab at the French cameraman who shot the footage, Charles Enderlin. Perhaps. But as a Palestinian who has seen the pain endured by numerous families who receive the horrible news that their sons or daughters have been killed by the Israeli army, my concern is for his family and for his memory. He should be left to rest in peace. If Israel has axes to grind with French journalists or with the international community for holding it accountable for its actions, then so be it. Israel is not lacking in the public relations department.

That being said, there is just one decent thing left to do. Leave Mohammed Al Durra and his memory alone.

Joharah Baker is a Writer for the Media and Information Department at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH). She can be contacted at mid@miftah.org.

This week Palestinians will commemorate Al Nakba, the catastrophe that befell the Palestinian people when Israel was founded. Every year, Palestinians hang placards pointing to the right of return, they carry keys symbolizing the homes they were forced to leave and could not return to and remember the Palestine that was lost to them 65 years ago.

This year will be no different. Every May 15, Palestinian recall their catastrophe and demand justice. They demand that they are granted the right of return for those who were made refugees virtually overnight and were then relegate to a life they did not choose. But more than anything, they demand recognition of the tragedy that befell them rather than a denial that it ever happened, or worse, that it was of their own making.

It has been 65 years since Israel was established in 1948, which means those who were cast into exile are either very old or have long passed. Those who experienced the Nakba are now few and far between, clinging to those few precious memories of a small garden in front of their house in Jaffa or of the salty smell of the sea in their neighborhood in Haifa. The rest of us are either descendants of these refugees or ordinary Palestinians who feel their cause is our cause because we are one people.

But the Palestinians have made one thing clear. The refugee issue will not die with the last refugee. It is felt nationwide, the loss, the injustice and the fact that those who were forced from their homes have mostly passed, longing for their beloved homes.

We cannot turn back time. What was lost has been altered, destroyed, changed or taken over by Israel’s newcomers. What we can do is hold on to the right to be recognized, for the injustice to be rectified in word and deed and for Palestine to never be lost in our minds or hearts.

Joharah Baker is a Writer for the Media and Information Department at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH). She can be contacted at mid@miftah.org.

While the Bush administration (or shall we say ‘Bush regime’?) is pressing ahead with its short-sighted isolationist policy of urging the international community to boycott a Hamas-led Palestinian Authority (PA), and effectively punish the Palestinian ‘people’ for freely practicing what the US itself has clearly failed to achieve through wars (i.e. spreading democracy in the Middle East), the European Union has unblocked some funds (US$ 145 million) to the Palestinians in order to meet their most pressing needs, but made it clear that it has yet to reconsider further financial assistance to the PA after Hamas is formally sworn in. Meanwhile, the UN has issued a report cautioning that the occupied Palestinian territories will face a real threat of financial and institutional collapse (basically, all-out chaos) in the immediate future, should funds be cut off.

The Palestinians, in effect, are desperately trapped in the middle of what appears to be a prolonged interim period in which the foundations of their very existence (food, water, medicine, energy, etc) are determined by decision-makers in Washington DC, whose distorted version of reality has finally clouded their ability to meet the minimal ethical standards of humanity.

Have you forgotten why the Palestinians are impoverished in the first place, why we are unable to independently sustain our own social and economic development? In case we do need to state the obvious here, we have been living (or dying) under Israel’s brutal military occupation since 1967 (not to mention since 1948), arguably as a result of your inability/unwillingness to hold Israel accountable for its repeated violation of every single principle of international law (or must the universal applicability of international law also be regulated?).

Israel’s occupation of our land has deprived us of the right to utilise our natural resources; Israel’s strangulating restrictions on our freedom of movement (within our land) has diminished our potential to trade and create jobs; Israel’s repeated destruction of our institutions has limited our ability to accelerate and uphold our nation-building process; Israel’s continued rejection of our inalienable rights and basic national aspirations (i.e. freedom, liberty, and independence, in which you take pride in your own society) has shattered our hopes for justice; and most dangerously, Israel’s premeditated targeting (killing and maiming) of our civilians has provoked the radicalisation of our traditionally secular and progressive society.

The price we must now pay for these atrocities is starvation by verdict. Or is it “…like an appointment with a dietician…the Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but won't die” as the Israeli Prime Minister’s advisor Dov Weissglas so revoltingly and shamelessly put it, in reference to Israel’s contemplated measures towards the Palestinians under Hamas’ leadership?

Before rushing to issue ultimatums, before racing to condition international funding to the Palestinian people with Hamas’ acceptance of the state of Israel’s “right to exist,” while you continue to prolong the Palestinian people’s existence in limbo, ask Israel where it intends to draw the borders of its state: is it the June 1967 boundaries, in accordance with the universally-adopted UN Resolution 242, or is it the unilateral borders imposed by its Apartheid Wall, which annexes 46% of the West Bank, ultimately leaving the Palestinians with fragmented Bantustans to realize George W. Bush’s “enlightened” vision for “…two states, living side by side in peace?”

Meanwhile, while you continue to urge Hamas to abide by the agreements signed between the PLO and Israel since 1993, under your auspices, take a moment to consider Israel’s climactic illegal settlement expansion during the “moderate” Labour leadership of Ehud Barak, in which a total of at least 5,000 settlement housing units were built, in violation of these very agreements you want Hamas to honour.

And as you spend sleepless nights over Israel’s security paranoia in light of Hamas’ election victory, perhaps you can make good use of your time by reading about Israel’s appalling human rights record in the Palestinian territories (it is a nightmare!) Equally enlightening is the consistent pattern of Israel’s policy of rewarding any truce declared by the Palestinian side with extra-judicial killings and political assassinations.

To end on a slightly lighter note; if you are tempted to dismiss my views as “apologetic for Hamas” I am sorry to disappoint you: I am a Palestinian-Christian, and as secular as they come.

Rami Bathish is director of the Media and Information Programme at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH).

Note: the views expressed in this article only represent those of its author, and not of MIFTAH.

When a friend of mine generously offered to get me a special permit to join the convoy accompanying the Latin Patriarch from Jerusalem to Bethlehem for the Christmas celebrations, I was thrilled, I accepted without hesitation. Not only was I going to drive through red traffic lights all the way to Bethlehem, but the Israeli Police and army were there to make sure it went smoothly!

I did take part in the convoy, and I did go through red lights (ostensibly); unfortunately, I had not realised that these were the red lights of my very principles as a Palestinian, principles in which I take pride. What was I doing? Why was I driving to Bethlehem under the "protection" of my occupier? The very occupier who cold-bloodedly killed more than 300 of my people over the past three months, the occupier who made half of my people refugees, the occupier who denies my people's right to freedom.

The misery did not end there and then. I had stashed a Palestinian flag under my seat to reveal once we entered the Palestinian-controlled part of Bethlehem, as a gesture of national expression. When we finally parked the cars to join the procession by foot to Manger Square, I decided to take the flag with me. A friend of mine was eager to carry the flag all the way into the Church of the Nativity, and he did. George proudly raised the only Palestinian flag in that procession, attracting foreign journalists and photographers; it was almost as glamorous as that VIP convoy.

When we entered the church, I was absolutely shocked with the reaction of a Greek Orthodox priest. The priest approached us with anger and a clear gesture of protest. According to him, "...this is no place to carry the Palestinian flag." He said that "...this church is neither Palestinian nor Greek!" Greek? I could not resist answering back, so I said calmly, yet with a clearly sharp tone, "This is Palestinian." His "intelligent" response was that we cannot go into Al-Aqsa mosque raising the Greek flag! Anyway, we had no intention of starting a quarrel (especially with a Greek Orthodox priest) so we folded the flag and wished him a Merry Christmas.

I want to unfold my flag in the face of the whole world, in every church, in every mosque, in every corner of my country. I do not need to go to my Bethlehem accompanied by Israeli soldiers or police. I am a Palestinian. My religion is rooted in Palestinian culture and heritage. It is time for Palestinian-Christians to assert themselves more clearly as an integral part of Palestinian society.

Today would have been the perfect opportunity to make that expression. If there were a thousand Palestinian flags raised alongside George's in Manger Square, CNN's camera lenses would have conveyed to the whole world a crucial and valuable message from the Palestinian-Christian community: We are here not only to celebrate Christmas, but more importantly to assert our Palestinian identity, and to take a stance against Israeli occupation and oppression.

I will not praise here the important Palestinian-Christian role throughout the history of the Palestinian struggle. By doing so, I would indirectly doubt its legitimacy. Rather, I want to question its current standing, let alone its continuity. Yet I do not think that such an inquiry is possible without, first, re-assessing today's "Palestinianness" of the Palestinian-Christian community.

This is not an article; it is not even an essay. It is simply a question. How do we (Palestinian-Christians) perceive our Palestinian identity? We are as oppressed as all Palestinians, and yet the majority of us occasionally suffer from an illusion that we "have feathers on our heads." Why?

Meanwhile, on my way back home to Ramallah, I joined a far greater convoy. It was the daily one-hour traffic jam at Qalandia refugee camp, which is caused by Israeli closures.

Nabil is a Palestinian friend of mine whose family was forced out of northern Palestine in 1948. He was born in Lebanon in 1973, lived in Tal Al-Za’tar refugee camp until the age of five, and finally moved with his family to Vienna (Austria) in 1978 due to the civil war. I met Nabil in Vienna in 1984, we attended secondary school together, and we have been best friends ever since.

On many occasions, Nabil and I would talk about Palestine, its past, its present, and its future. We would even talk admiringly about Palestinian food; the conversation often ended with a sense of homesickness. Strange, Nabil has never seen Palestine; he used to spend most of his summer vacations in Beirut, just like I used to spend mine in Jerusalem.

Yet, I have never met anybody speak so proudly of Palestine as Nabil. Whenever somebody would ask him about his original hometown in Palestine, he would reply with a passionate tone, saying “Alma, Qada’ Safad (Alma, in the suburb of Safad).”

It always struck me how Nabil spoke of “Alma, Qada’ Safad” with such pride, passion, and familiarity; sometimes I felt that he perceived ‘Palestine’ as a dream land, a perfect place untouched by the merciless hand of time. His perception of Palestine differed from mine; it was a more idealistic perception.

Today, I took a day trip to the north of Palestine; I visited Nazareth and Lake Tiberias. The freshness of spring only made the beautiful scenery between Nazareth and the Tiberias area more hypnotic. The seemingly endless green fields, the giant mountains, the colourful flowers; it really seemed like a perfect place, untouched by time.

As we descended towards Lake Tiberias, my admiration of the scenery was interrupted by the tour guide’s explanation that “…the town on top of the high mountain to the left is called Safad.” I was thrilled. I immediately thought of Nabil, and his good old "Alma, Qada’ Safad!" The tour guide explained that Safad is the highest town in Palestine; it is 900 meters above sea level, which gives it a magnificent view of Lake Tiberias and the surrounding mountains. He also explained that Safad is an old city, very much like Jerusalem, with narrow roads and plenty of ancient mosques and churches. At that moment I was happy, I had promised Nabil that when he eventually comes to visit me in Palestine, I would take him to his original hometown. Now, I thought, not only will he be able to see Safad, but he will also be proud of its beauty.

Later in the afternoon, I went to speak to the guide. He was an old man, yet his knowledge about Palestine and its history was amazing. I briefly explained to him that I have a personal interest in Safad and its surrounding villages, and I asked him whether or not there are any Palestinians living in Safad. He said that Safad was invaded by Israeli forces overnight in 1948, its Palestinian inhabitants were terrorized and driven out, and most of its surrounding villages have been demolished. “What about Alma?” I said. “Alma no longer exists,” he replied pointing to a map he had on the table, “Alma was completely destroyed in 1948.” He then pointed on his map the exact location of Alma, and explained that, instead, there is an Israeli ‘colony’ of about 2000 inhabitants living there.

Alma is now called Ammiat, in Hebrew. But for Nabil, I am sure, it will always be Alma, Qada' Safad.

Like all Palestinian refugee camps, Qalandia camp is an overcrowded ghetto where the hardship of being a refugee becomes just another reality of life; where the promise for a better future lies deep beneath the ruins of past and present conflict.

Anybody travelling into Ramallah from the south will pass through Qalandia refugee camp. I take that route daily, in the morning and in the afternoon. The seemingly endless bumpy road through the camp does not exceed one kilometre, yet it never fails to leave miles of thought in my mind; sometimes anger, sometimes sadness, and sometimes even a sense of selfish thankfulness for what I have.

Today, it left a feeling of painful guilt in my mind.

As I waited in a long line of traffic through Qalandia, I noticed a crowd of children on my right, some of them had slingshots, and others just had stones. The boys appeared to be excited about something, the kind of excitement little children have when something is about to happen. This is probably the same feeling I often had when I was a child myself, playing football or hide-and-seek, or even watching my favourite cartoon on television. What were these children doing?

On my left, at the top of a small hill overlooking the main road, I saw about a dozen Israeli soldiers, full gear, camouflaged; some even had their tear gas rifles ready. But one soldier caught my attention more than the others; he was a ‘sharpshooter’, a sniper. I must have been one of the few people who took notice of his presence. He lay on the ground, at the edge of a rock, ready to shoot, like a skilful predator disguised in the shadow of its prey. He was close enough to hit any desired target; he was close enough to kill somebody. What did this sniper have in mind?

The line of traffic between the soldiers and the children started moving again. The site of the excited children soon became another vague image in my rear view mirror, and then it disappeared.

I wondered what would happen later on in Qalandia. I wondered if any of these boys would get hurt. And I wondered if any of these boys will eventually get killed. Did the sniper hit his target? Did the predator strike its prey?

Qalandia has witnessed some of the worst clashes over the past five months. There were times when the clashes were so fierce that I had to take the alternative road to Ramallah, through the camp itself. That would be another journey into guilt and thankfulness at the same time.

The narrow roads in Qalandia, the visible poverty, and the site of bare-footed children would haunt the by-passer like a bad dream. But then again, the traffic always seems to find its way out of Qalandia.

Its 9:30 in the evening, a news report just confirmed that a 15-year old boy was shot dead in Qalandia today. I guess the sniper hit his target.

Perhaps the line of traffic must finally make a stop in Qalandia, and stand between the prey and the predator, in the narrow roads of the camp, with the bare-footed Awlad Al-Mukhayyam.