Executive Summary

The ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip has compounded several humanitarian and legal violations, particularly inrelation to the reproductive rights of Palestinian women. Since the launch of its military offensive in October 2023, Israelhas systematically targeted Palestinian women in ways that undermine their ability to survive, give birth, and raisechildren. More than 12,300 women have been killed, 4,700 women and children are missing, and approximately 800,000women have been forcibly displaced. An estimated one million women and girls now suffer from acute food insecurity.Israel’s actions constitute a deliberate attempt to impair the reproductive capacities of Palestinian women, aimed atdismantling the future of Palestinian society. Through the bombing of shelters, destruction of hospitals, blockading ofmedical and hygiene supplies, and attacks on fertility clinics and maternity wards, Israel’s policy of erasure is notincidental, it is intentional.

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Executive Summary

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is vital inproviding humanitarian aid, education, and health services to Palestinian refugees across Jordan, Lebanon,Syria, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Beyond its humanitarian role, UNRWA represents aninternational commitment to Palestinian refugees' right of return, as established in UN General AssemblyResolution 194 in 1948. However, Israel has long sought to undermine the agency through financial, political,and military means.Recent Israeli actions have escalated, with the Israeli Knesset passing legislation banning UNRWAoperations in areas under Israeli control, effectively revoking its legal status. Concurrently, Israel hasintensified military attacks on UNRWA facilities. In the Gaza Strip since October 2023, Israeli forces havetargeted 310 UNRWA sites, destroying schools and killing 273 UNRWA employees alongside hundreds ofcivilians sheltering in its facilities. Throughout the occupied West Bank, the Israeli military has been turningUNRWA facilities into military bases and detention centers, and has closed UNRWA’s headquarters in EastJerusalem. These actions violate multiple international legal agreements and aim to erase Palestinian refugeeidentity and their legal rights.

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The shocking human cost that occupation has taken on Palestinian women is laid bare in research published today. Combining research, extensive surveys, and first-hand testimonies from over 40 Palestinian women, Palestinian Women: The Disproportionate Impact of The Israeli Occupation provides new insight into the gendered experience of occupation, looking into four issues in particular:

• women refugees
• the impact of residency revocation on Palestinian women in Jerusalem
• the experience of women prisoners
• Gazans’ access to health

Co-authored by four Palestinian NGOs – the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH), Palestinian Working Woman Society for Development (PWWSD), the Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling (WCLAC), and Women Media and Development (TAM), the report includes detailed findings that demonstrate how the oppression occupation has permeated women’s daily lives, and the particular impact is has had on women in Palestinian refugee camps, Palestinian women living in Jerusalem, women prisoners, and residents of Gaza who require health services.

The impact on refugee women

Researchers spoke to 500 Palestinian refugee women from 12 Palestinian camps (7 in the West Bank, 5 in Gaza). Their findings included the following:

• A third of women surveyed had been directly exposed to physical assault by Israeli Occupation Forces. 9% had been exposed to threats of being attacked by police dogs during Israeli night raids on their homes.
• Over a third (37%) of respondents had been exposed to detention or interrogation, while 38% said that they or members of their households had been exposed to verbal abuse during Israeli army raids, at checkpoints or while visiting religious places.
• Nearly a quarter (24%) were forced to live in shelters or with extended family. 22% were forced to live under unhealthy conditions. 13% stated that the female and male members of their families were separated as a result of having to live in shelters.
• More than one in five (21%) had been exposed to beatings or tear gas at Israeli checkpoints while they were pregnant. 4% reported that they aborted or gave birth at Israeli checkpoints.
• The majority (64%- 321 cases) had been unable to visit religious or recreational places because of Occupation restrictions.

Jerusalem: Residency Revocation and Family Reunification

According to official figures, 14,595 Palestinians from East Jerusalem had their residency status revoked between 1967 and the end of 2016.

Through residency revocations, Israel has separated husbands from wives, parents from children, and extended families from one another, causing traumatic complications for women attempting to remain with their families in both Jerusalem and the West Bank.

This leads to traumatic fears of separation from children for mothers and an entrenching of patriarchal practices across society. Palestinian women living in Jerusalem lose residency rights if they get divorced or their husbands remarry. Limiting their access to justice, female victims of domestic violence fear reporting abuse to authorities in case they are forcibly transferred away from their children.

Women prisoners

Since the beginning of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine in 1967, approximately 10,000 Palestinian women have been arrested and detained by Israeli military forces. According to the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs’ 2017 annual report, 1,467 children were arrested last year.

Our researchers spoke to prisoners who experienced physical and psychological torture at arrest and imprisonment, and traumatic, gendered treatment, including:

• Women denied access to menstrual products while detained
• A woman arrested while pregnant who gave birth while chained to a prison hospital bed
• Ex-prisoners who report being subjected to rape and death threats during interrogation, including a girl in of 15-years old threatened with rape
• Women who were subjected to frequent forced and violent strip searches
• A prisoner who reported toothache, only to have the wrong tooth removed

Access to Health in Gaza

Israel exercises strict control Gaza’s borders, a policy of ‘actual authority’, constituting continued occupation, despite the withdrawal of its permanent presence. This control in particular affects those who need medical treatment outside of Gaza’s struggling health system, who require permission to leave. The report shows that the rate of approval applications is falling year-by-year:

• 92.5% of applications were successful in 2012
• 88.7% in 2013
• 82.4% in 2014
• 77.5% in 2015
• 62.1% in 2016

Of the 26,282 permit applications submitted by patients aiming to exit through Erez in 2016, 8,242 (31.4%) were delayed. Many applicants received no response from border authorities, even after lawyers filed formal applications on their behalf. These delays regularly extend months and years beyond medical appointments, worsening already life-threatening diseases and in some cases resulting in death.

Read the full report here, or download it here:

Palestinian Women – The Disproportionate Impact of the Israeli Occupation

The passing of Edward Said today saddens us all because he was a voice for the ideas, hopes and visions that we hold true and cherish. His remarkable ability to express himself in several languages and various forums was a constant thorn in the side of those who wished to silence our voices, continue our dispossession, and destroy our will to be free. His message was that of universalism, not chauvinism,freedom, not subjugation, idelaism, not self-interest.. He will be sorely missed by all of us, who will feel empty in the absence of this giant, who articulated our aspirations and presented our case in ways that no one else could.

Edward Said was one of the 20th century's greatest thinkers, a unique person who made his mark in numerous fields and across many disciplines: an internationally renowned literary and cultural critic, a philosopher of history, a music critic, a Middle East specialist, a political theorist, an activist, and a voice of humane conscience. He was also a husband, a father and a treasured friend to many of us.

Rarely does one come across someone with such diversity of talents, devotion to principles and just causes, boundless energy, intellectual resources, analytical prowess, and elegance?elegance in writing, elegance in appearance, and elegance in his uncontested stature.

It is not surprising that his writings appear in 26 languages in many countries around the world, and in the most prestigious and widely read periodicals, newspapers and scholarly journals in North America, the Middle East and Europe. He has authored more than 20 books and over 250 articles and has presented at least 50 endowed lectures in the past 25 years. In addition to having served as University professor at Columbia University( the highest academic rank), he had been a visiting professor at Yale, Harvard, Johns Hopkins as well as a fellow at numerous centers of learning and advanced studies around the world. He was general editor of a book series at Harvard University Press titled Convergences: Inventories of the Present. He also wrote a regular music column for the Nation, and a regular column for Al-Ahram in Cairo, among many other journals and magazines, and newspapers.

It was his rich diversity and ground -breaking contributions, debated all around the world, that gave Edward Said his unique character. He was political and unpolitical. One readily sees the intermix of politics, culture, psychology, and the arts in his many works?Orientalism, Culture and imperialism, After the Last Sky, Representations of the Intellectual, Covering Islam, Beginnings, and his books on the Palestine question and Oslo, among others.

Perhaps a major contribution of Edward is his demonstration of how the justification for empire building was embedded in the Western cultural imagination during the age of empire, and how even today the imperial legacy colors relations between the West and the formerly colonized world, at all levels. The notion that all cultures are interdependent, hence the West and its former subjects must recognize that the true human community is global, also testifies to the genius of Edward Said?the political and the un-political.

One of his former students, Frank Motely, who became a dean at Iowa University School of Law described Edward quite accurately as follows:

"I suspect that Mozart had the same kind of intelligence, gift, and passion [as Edward]."

Perhaps the best way to honor Edward's legacy is to work as diligently as he did in the defense of justice and freedom, and to resolve not to be intimidated by the vulgar pressures, the stereo-typing and the attempt to silence our voices. Since he became inflicted with this horrible disease twelve years ago, he never let it deter him from writing, traveling and contributing. His unwavering commitment to the universal values that must govern just societies has been the hallmark of his scholarship and activism. Indeed he was the epitome of the scholar-activist, and he remained loyal to the vision of a free democratic secular Palestine until the end. What made Edward so special was that he never succumbed to the seduction of accomodation with those in power. He always remained true to his ideas no matter the personal cost. Life would have been easier had he chosen to be a detached intellectual, not having to endure the threats on his life and vicious attacks on his character by those who wished to silence his potent voice. those attacks were in essence a tribute to his stature, steadfastness, and superior intellect. He will be sorely missed, but the ideals and principles he so ably articulated will surely live on and be a source of inspiration for generations to come.

As the Bush Administration beats the war trumpets against Iraq, a remarkable similarity can be discerned between the Middle East today and eighty years ago. The important question is whether the United States is likely to succeed in reshaping the strategic landscape in this troubled region more than did the British. There is a legacy of imperial domination, trickery, un-kept promises, and double-speak, all of which have combined to undermine the notion that any progress or healthy transformation, could ever emanate from dealing with the West, be that at the military, diplomatic, or economic levels.

Arab lands have been conquered military and through diplomatic means under presumed peace conditions. Military campaigns were disguised as humanitarian missions designed to bring democracy and human rights to supposedly un-enlightened and backward societies. In fact, during the past two centuries, Western empires have mapped and re-mapped the Middle East repeatedly. They appointed, promoted, demoted, and dethroned local leaders to suit their strategic interests. One thing remained consistent and was omnipresent in their successive attempts to readjust borders and consolidate hegemonies: the availability of local demons to justify the frequent strategic reshaping and remapping.

One hundred and seventy years ago, Mohamed Ali of Egypt was declared a threat to free trade and was overthrown in favor of weak successors. Four decades later, Ahmed Urabi was removed from office and Egypt became a British occupied country (1882). A long line of successors, who pursued an independent course, provided the empire the necessary pretext to intervene. All the way from Sa'ad Zaghlul during the First World War period, to Saddam Hussein, with Rashid Ali Kilani, Nasser, Ben Bella, and Qaddafi, in between, a sense of threat kept the West busy fine tuning the empire to insure the perpetual dependency of the natives. Irrespective of their level of rationality, the Arab demons were declared a threat either to their own people, to their neighbors, to regional; stability, to America's standard of living or even to US national security, if not to the heart of American cities. Nasser was declared a mad man bent on wanting to throw the Jews in the sea. Reagan described Qaddafi as a mad dog, a terrorist and a looney tune. George W. Bush described Saddam Hussein as a "nuclear holy warrior."

The present build- up against Iraq can be understood against the background of this imperial legacy. It is time to reshape the empire, to reallocate power, including "ending states," in the words of Paul Wolfowitz, and not only to create "regime change." If the people of the Arab world are incapable of effecting a circulation of elites, we will do it for them. Never mind the tyrants, whom we created, sponsored or kept in power to look after western interests-all the way from Nuri al-Said in monarchical Iraq, to the Saudi dynasty, the Hashemites, the Shah of Iran, Sadat and Mubarak. We treated them just as we treated Marcos, Mobutu, Suharto, Pinochet and the Vietnam generals. And we are prepared to depose them just as we deposed Noriega, Diem and are now threatening to depose Saddam. It may even be time to bring about a regime change in our favorite countries such as Saudi Arabia and may be Egypt, since their leaders are no longer presumed to be assets and became liabilities. These two countries are likely to be destabilized in the event of a war against Iraq.

EIGHT DECADES OF IMPERIAL RE-SHUFFLING:

Fighting a war in Iraq has nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction, but it has everything to do with re-drawing maps and reallocating resources. It is not untypical of the imperial reshuffling which has taken place over the past eight decades. Let us review briefly eight principal episodes during the past eight decades:

1. After World War I, the old empires-Britain and France- carved up the region into spheres of influence in blatant contradiction of solemn promises to grant the natives independence. Instead of sovereignty, the Arab people were subjected to a protectorate status or League of Nations mandates. Moreover, the post-war re-mapping bestowed legitimacy on a colonial settler movement, depriving the indigenous Palestinians of their right to their land and their ancestral home.

2. The Second World War arrangements brought additional suffering to the region as the destiny of its people was linked to the competition between the two new superpowers. Meanwhile, the new map showed the disappearance of Palestine and the creation of Israel in its place, with immediate blessings by the superpowers.

3. Less than a decade later, the old empires challenged the new geo-political realities and tried to reassert their hegemony. Britain and France, together with Israel, invaded Egypt in 1956 trying to defeat Nasserism, which promised the unity and independence, which eluded the Arabs after WWI. They were ordered out of Egypt by the new superpower, not out of love for Nasserism, or out of respect for Arab aspirations for independence, but as an assertion of America's imperial role.

4. What Israel had failed to do, with Anglo-French collusion in 1956, it was able to achieve eleven years later, when it changed the maps of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Palestine in but six days. What had remained of Palestine outside Israeli control in 1948 was conquered in 1967, making the entire area laying between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean an exclusively Jewish colonial state. Meanwhile, the 15 year- old achievements of Nasserism would be undermined in accordance with US wishes. The three components including Arab unity, Arab socialism and non-alignment, seen as a threat by Washington, were largely removed from the agenda by Israel's proxy war, which anticipated the Nixon doctrine: "We (US) provide the hose and water, while they (our Vietnamese, Iranian and Israeli surrogates) provide the firemen."

The problem with that strategy was the inability of the Iranian surrogate to carry out its duties or to even survive. With the demise of the Shah, the US concluded that its empire-building in the Middle East requires direct intervention to augment the proxy role.

5. The 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon was a typical proxy action coordinated with the US, as Carter had revealed. The mutual goals were: A) to redraw the political map of Lebanon. B) to pre-empt a Palestinian state-in-formation. C) to reduce Syria to manageable proportions. Two of these goals were foiled by a determined Lebanese resistance, while the third relating to the Palestinians, had resulted in shifting the center of gravity to the inside, hence the 1987 Intifada.

Meanwhile, Saddam's Iraq was aspiring to become a US surrogate when it invaded America's nemesis, Iran, and was rewarded with generous agricultural credit and a delivery of biological material by none other than Rumsfeld. Ironically, we have to rely on new friends such as Robert Novak and Senator Byrd for such privileged information.

Much to his surprise, the gullible Iraqi tyrant was not able to meet America's requirements for proxies. His ill-fated attack on Kuwait was to bring about a painful reminder that an ambitious third world leader cannot possibly be accepted by the lone super power as a pace setter in the strategic gulf.

6. Hence, America's strategy to deal such a crippling blow to Iraq and its potential, irrespective of its leadership, in order not only to reassert its imperial role in the region vis a vis Arabs and Muslims, but to convey to Israel that the serious business of collective security in the region belongs to the superpower. Political talks and the future remapping can only take place at an international conference where even Israel would have to come to terms with its 1967 occupation, despite their strategic alliance.

7. The Bush I strategy was discarded when his successor Clinton adopted the two-pronged policy of pursuing the Oslo charade in Palestine, and containment in Iraq, which, to-gather, turned out to be nothing more than an interlude awaiting the second Bush.

8. With Bush II in power, the father's strategy was abandoned in Iraq and Palestine. The Oslo process was allowed to die, while containment and coalition became passé. Instead, Sharon, the war criminal "cum man of peace" boards the Bush train of anti-terror, while Sharon's allies in Washington's think tanks and the civilian defense establishment begin to plan the next war and the next remapping. The lone voice in the Bush I administration for coalition, Colin Powell, has been silenced. Harry Belafonte described him as the slave whose privilege of living in the master's house is dependent on good behavior; otherwise he would be banished to the plantation.

BUSH'S WORLD VIEW AND THE REAL AIMS OF HIS WAR:

Bush I's concept of coalition and the semblance of multilateralism has become a relic of the past in the White House of Bush I, whose neo-conservative/Zionist mentors have the greatest contempt for such constraints. When the threat was finally real on 9/11, the what- to- do became easier to justify and undertake. The fear and danger associated with it seem to have elevated pre-emption into a moral principle.

Containment now belongs to a by-gone era. It is passé for the Wolfowitzs and Perles of the world. Their world and that of their "boss" is a Hobbesian world, where the landscape is rough and evil all around, calling for a strong hand. Thus you do not wait for evil-doers to attack; you attack first. This is the new national security doctrine for the 21st century-the Bush doctrine, apparently inspired by the very little reading that has been done by George Bush. From Robert Kaplan, author of Eastward to Tartary, the President received an on-the-job-training at the White House, adding pseudo- intellectual content to his gut feeling and unstructured inclinations. This world view of the world has given Bush an incontestable sense of mission, which has been reinforced by the influence of former professor Paul Wolfowitz, who postulated that that there is no need "for proof beyond reasonable doubt." The emphasis must be on "intentions" and "capability," says Wolfowitz as he beats the drum of the Iraq war. There is no need for the "proof," if we know the "intentions" and capability." You anticipate and act, since "this is closer to a state of war than to a judicial proceeding. Such is the Wolfowitz configuration of the calculus of warfare and the cost ­benefit analysis, which has become acceptable to a hawkish circle, none of whose members has fought in a war, but seems to be ready to commit millions of the underclass to war.

Unlike 1991, Israel is not expected to remain in the closet. Bush has already reaffirmed a right of "self defense" for Israel upon meeting Sharon on his seventh visit (October 16). In fact, Israel has been pushing for this war in order to accomplish what it had failed to accomplish in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1978, 1982, and throughout the seven years of Oslo. For Israel, the war on Iraq constitutes a post-Oslo strategy. As Bush II tries to complete what his father left unfinished, Israel will be revisiting 1982 all over again. That is why when the Anglo-American Invasion of Iraq occurs, it will not only be a continuation of the same war, which began in 1990­1991, but a war whose broader agenda includes reshaping the strategic landscape in the Middle East and Central Asia. It will be the war of the civilian hawks in the Pentagon and of their allies in a number of right-wing and pro-Israel think tanks, such as the Hudson Institute, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and the Jewish Institute for National Security (JINSA), among others. It would be a war to create a pro-American regime in Iraq and enable Washington to redraw the Middle East maps of both the First and Second World wars periods. The adventure would aim to deprive Saudi Arabia of leverage over oil prices, intimidate Syria, and manipulate the domestic balance in Iran, with the purpose of eventually dismantling the Islamic Revolution. Its intent further is to settle the Arab-Israeli conflict on terms wholly agreeable to General Sharon, who remains indicted in his own country for the massacres of thousands of Palestinians in Lebanon, exactly twenty years ago.

THE ISRAELI CONNECTION:

None of these objectives has anything to do with President Bush's declared concerns about a threat to the security of the United States. Israel's supporters in the administration, think tanks, media, and Congress, who beat the trumpets of war, view it as providing cover for Israel to expel the Palestinians (called "transfer" in Israel), which is why the political-military elite in Israel want it and why the parrots from pro-Israel institutions in the administration are pushing so hard for it.

The Israeli connection was recently exposed in the Israeli press by a number of respected Israeli analysts. One such person is Meron Benvinisti, the former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, who made the link last month in the daily newspaper Ha'aretz between Israel's advocacy of an American war against Iraq and Israel's overall objective of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. Israeli Major Gen. Yitzhak Eitan hinted at the strong connection between a war in Iraq and the war against the Palestinians when he said that such a war would enable Israel to "execute the old Jordanian option - expelling hundreds of thousands of Palestinians across the Jordan River." Moreover, attitudes of the Israeli leadership were underscored by Israeli public opinion: a survey in the largest-circulation Israeli daily Maariv, conducted in August 2002, revealed that 57 percent of Israelis were in favor of an American attack on Iraq to unseat Saddam Hussein.

The leading war advocates in this country include Richard Perle, head of the Defense Advisory Board and resident fellow of the AEI, his close friend and political ally at AEI, David Wurmser of the Hudson Institute. Mr Wurmser's wife, Meyrav, is co-founder, along with Colonel Yigal Carmon, formerly of Israeli military intelligence of the Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri), which translates and distributes articles that specialize in Arab bashing. Bush's advisors pushing this war also include Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Defense Secretary, Douglas Feith, another Deputy Defense Secretary, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Chief of Staff of Vice President Cheney's Office, Michael Rubin, a specialist on Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, who recently arrived from yet another pro-Israel lobby, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and many others who cannot be included here due to space limitations. Administration hawks pushing this war such as Vice President, Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, are all on record supporting Sharon's draconian measures in the occupied territories. Rumsfeld is the first senior US public official who used the phrase "the so-called occupied territories" in describing the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Rice defended the Israeli strategy of pre-emption instead of deterrence or containment, and she considers that policy worthy of duplication in Iraq and on a global scale.

As the US and UK maintains almost daily bombing of Iraq, and amidst the constant reports about an imminent full-scale war, the message is clear: new rules of international conduct are being drafted. The proposed and forthcoming war on Iraq, the aerial bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999, and the full-scale invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 illustrate that the theater of operations for the US military is now world- wide. A single war in these theatres, such as in Iraq, would cost according to the White House economic advisor an estimated $100-200 billion plus additional billions for reconstruction and would place the post-World War II international system in great jeopardy. It is absolutely not true that Iraq constitutes a clear and present danger to the security of the United States. It would be important to ask: whose war this really is?

CONCLUSION:

It would be important to ask whether the US and its principal gendarme would prove more successful than previous ventures of colonization and re-colonization since World War I. It will be prudent to ask whether Bush's "war on terror" will eliminate or rather generate terror, chaos and destruction. Is it not time for America to review its priorities? Is it not time to re-examine the root causes of the present blowback? Is it not time to let people all over the world to live in freedom and dignity? To organize their lives and societies in accordance with their needs and not to suit the strategic proclivities of major powers? It is certainly time to repair our own inner cities, to improve health, education, public transportation, and to develop real conservation instead of using war as a policy of conservation? Is it not time for regime change-- here in Washington?

Naseer Aruri is Chancellor Professor (Emeritus) at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth; Co-author of Iraq Under Siege, South End Press, 2000 and author of the forthcoming book Dishonest broker: America's Role in Israel and Palestine. South End Press, Jan 2003. Aruri can be reached at: Naruri@aol.com

Overview: The fact that Israel was born in the sin of dispossession of another people has never been seriously laid out for public discussion in the West. Moreover, this has occurred despite an abundance of irrefutable facts about Israel’s culpability, even from its own “revisionist historians,” many of whom now refuse to accept moral and legal responsibility. In fact, the mere thought of such a discourse is certain to cast the issue as questioning the very existence of the state of Israel, a forbidden and profane exercise.

How, therefore, can restitution or atonement to the Palestinian people even be raised as issues if the genesis of the problem must remain outside the parameters of discussion? Additionally, the anti-Semitic label would be readily invoked if a non-Zionist narrative of Palestinian dispossession and corresponding Israeli usurpation were to come to the fore.

The undeniable fact, however, is that had there been no Israel, there would have been neither Palestinian displacement, nor dispossession, and dispersion. And yet, that simple and logical connection must be expurgated from the discourse about Palestine/Israel, and a phony and distorted historical narrative inserted, otherwise the suppressed taboos would be disastrously unleashed for the whole world to see.

Thus, the excision of such concepts as moral responsibility for the Palestinian catastrophe (Al-Nakba) was and remains essential for the success of the Zionist colonial project. 1948 was the year of Palestinian catastrophe and, at the same time, the year of Israel’s “independence,” the making of Israel. Neither event would have happened without the other.

Legalized conquest: Until today, Zionists have not made it convincingly clear from whom that “independence” was wrested, and how their ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinians—occurring largely during the first half of 1948, while Britain was still responsible for law and order—by paramilitary Jewish forces, produced independence. The indigenous population was neither self-governing, nor ruling over the Jews in Palestine. Independence from Britain, on the other hand, is an oxymoronic conceptualization given that Britain’s Balfour Declaration had provided the first justification for a Jewish national home in Palestine. Indeed, it was the British Mandate authorities that provided privileges, empowerment, and protection for the Jewish settler minority.

Despite that inextricable connection between the Palestinian Nakba and Israel’s creation on the land of Palestine, no Israeli official has ever ventured to call for atonement. The less Israel needs moral and legal justification, the more potent it appears. Trying to marshal legal and moral justification for its existence would be seen as a clear sign of weakness, self-doubt, and lack of moral resolve. Indeed, Israel’s leadership perceives an offensive strategy as the best form of defense.

Israel’s verbal strategy turns history on its head. The indigenous Palestinians are declared non-existent, the victims became victimizer, colonization is development, resistance to occupation is terrorism, and the refugees’ right of return is a threat to Israel’s demographic security and Jewish character.

Israel’s current offensive strategy towards the Palestinians under military occupation is trumpeted as a defensive war, much like the “war against terrorism” declared by the United States. The fact that it is launching an all-out attack against a predominantly civilian population struggling to end an illegal military occupation is being obscured by a pernicious public relations campaign in which the U.S. media plays a complicit role. The daily horrendous war crimes do not merit even meager attention in the same media. The fact that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s long political-military career was stained in blood since the early 1950s massacres in Gaza, Sinai, Qibya, Sabra, and Shatila never surfaces in the United States, despite his pending war crimes suit in the Belgian judicial system.

As the Palestinian uprising (intifada) enters its sixteenth month, U.S. leaders parrot Sharon’s call on the Palestinians under occupation to “stop the violence” and “end the terrorism,” while his government persists in assassinating Palestinian leaders and other non-combatants with U.S.-supplied arms, and tightening the siege on more than 3 million Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Territories.

The new rules of international conduct: In a world in which the international balance of power has completely vanished, the rules of the international order are clearly being set by the mighty. The latter alone define rogue states and terrorist groups with world reach, and they alone determine how and when such deviants are punished. No longer does the younger President George Bush need a legal basis, such as his father’s Security Council resolution to justify a war on Iraq. A destabilized world was caught up in a guessing game as to who would be America’s next target, until Bush defined his “axis of evil”: Iran, Iraq, and Korea. This is certainly not an exhaustive list given his promise that the “war against terrorism” would be ongoing for a long time.

In such a world order in which the United States, Israel, and even India are setting the rules of international conduct, there seems to be little room, if any, for the grievances of weaker parties to be raised. Such offensive strategies have clearly emerged as the best pre-emptive measures against such things as “root causes,” justice, restitution, or atonement. It is the victim who now has to atone and pay compensation. The powerful can only decide whether the victim and the disempowered have been adequately compliant and sufficiently intimidated.

Israel’s strategic alliance with the United States and its current piggy-backing on America’s “war against terrorism” will not only shelter Israel from any and all Palestinian and Arab grievances, but has effectively enrolled it among the few privileged participants in the virtual redefinition of the rules of international conduct and international law. Expecting Israel to now acknowledge its wrongdoing in 1948 is not a likely prospect, and yet the prospects for a genuine reconciliation and an historic compromise are unlikely to succeed without such an acknowledgment.

Acknowledgement and restitution: The marginalization of international law and the corresponding ascendancy of the Israeli role, promoted and protected by the U.S.’s virtual diplomatic monopoly, have combined to create a situation in which culpability for the Palestinian catastrophe is reassigned to the victim. Unlike other indigenous people, the Palestinians received neither apologies nor acknowledgments of responsibility for displacement, dispossession, massacres, legalized torture, home demolition, ethnic cleansing, and other atrocities.

The Palestinians have experienced the historical process of conquest, dispossession, and domination and never, contrary to other colonized people, experienced de-colonization. A South African-style commission of truth and reconciliation is not in the offing, given that the Palestinians have not yet reached the stage of emancipation.

The Palestinians in the current context have to look away from restitution from established governments and conventional means, and look toward building an international grassroots movement toward that end. The structure of inequality is global, and thus reparations and restitution have emerged as central issues separating the affluent North from the poor South, with the United States leading the anti-reparations camp.

For the Palestinians, redress and restitution have been impeded by having to confront a powerful enemy, fortified by a strategic alliance with the world’s only superpower. Moreover, an inept leadership and complicit Arab “allies” have proven disastrous to the cause, while the Palestine question itself remains deliberately surrounded by fog. Any efforts, therefore, towards restitution and reparations have to be creative, innovative, and directed toward building an international solidarity movement whose goal is to force the hands of states and international institutions of justice.