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.

Throughout the years, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has spilled over onto many different stages – movie award ceremonies, the theater, musicians’ lyrics, photography exhibitions and so on... Major newspapers have apparently only now realized that this political conflict is being reflected in sports as well, and of course, they are up in arms about it. Dubai is now taking the brunt of hostility and criticism for its decision to bar entry to an Israeli tennis player, Shahar Peer, who formerly served in the Israeli army. She was travelling to compete in the Barclays Dubai Championships next week.

The tournament’s organizers explained that their decision was based on security concerns, saying that Peer's presence would antagonize local tennis fans who had only a few weeks ago watched horrific events unfold during Israel’s 22-day assault on Gaza which left more than 1,300 Palestinians dead. The organizers said that they simply could not guarantee Peer’s safety on the tennis court. Ironically, the Israel Football Association took a similar decision during its military offensive in Gaza when it barred any football matches from being held in Palestinian communities inside Israel, citing concerns for the ‘safety’ of its Israeli players. While Dubai’s decision is officially based on security concerns, many agree that it is also influenced by politics, an indirect condemnation of Israel for its indiscriminate killing in Gaza.

Despite the circumstances, newspapers, tennis players, and organizers expressed outrage at Dubai’s decision. The Wall Street Journal, one of the sponsors of the event, immediately withdrew its funding when it heard about Peer’s visa rejection. The Tennis Channel protested the decision by announcing its refusal to televise the event as previously planned. A U.S. tour company, IsramWorld, also canceled its tours to Dubai because of the visa incident, calling Dubai’s decision “an odious act of political bigotry.” In addition, famous tennis players such as Amelie Mauresmo, Ana Ivanovic and Venus Williams criticized the decision, saying it was “not acceptable”, and that “sports should be above politics”. As Ken Solomon, the chairman and chief executive of the Tennis Channel, said, “Sports are about merit, absent of background, class, race, creed, color or religion. They are simply about talent… If Israel were barring a citizen of an Arab nation, we would have made the same decision.”

These are all noble sentiments indeed, but do they actually work both ways? Do they apply to Palestinian athletes as well as Israeli ones? Anybody who has taken even the briefest of looks at the state of sports in Palestine will answer with a quick and decisive ‘No’. Instead, what we have here is just another example of double standards – one standard for Israelis, but another standard completely for Palestinians. Did any of these newspapers, athletes, and sport channel executives say anything when Israel bombed the headquarters of the Palestinian Football Association, built partially with funds from the Federation of International Football Associations (FIFA)? The facility, which housed the men and women’s football teams, now lies in ruins. What about when Israeli air strikes destroyed sports clubs and youth organization headquarters? What about when three top Palestinian football players in the prime of their careers were killed in their homes in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead?

If you cast your memory a bit further back to 2004, you might remember when Israel prevented the Palestinian football team from playing on an international level during the World Cup qualifiers. Israel banned several key members of the team from leaving the Gaza Strip for what would have been the second leg of a match against Chinese Taipei, after Palestine won the first leg by eight goals to none. Palestine lost the second match, but more significantly, they lost their chance as World Cup contenders. In 2007, Gazan residents of the Palestinian team once again were refused exit visas to travel to Singapore for a match which Singapore then won by default. That same year, the Palestinian Gaza under-19 team was banned from playing in Britain when the British consulate in Jerusalem refused to grant them visas because of a risk that they would not return home to Gaza. Governments and consulates reserved and used their right to refuse entry and exit to those aspiring young athletes, but no major news channel or organization said a word about it.

When the Palestinian sports foundation, Atlas Sport, published a report in October 2008 detailing the Israeli targeting of Palestinian athletes and their affiliates, the report was largely ignored. It listed the 375 Palestinian sportsmen killed and the 2000 injured at the hands of Israeli forces since late 2000, as well as the dozens of sports facilities and club buildings which had been destroyed for various reasons in both the West Bank and Gaza, preventing Palestinian youth from engaging in high-level competitions or even local club sports.

The fact is that any Palestinian athlete from the West Bank or Gaza faces many physical and mental barriers when it comes to exit and entry visas, training facilities, morale, and funding. Funding, when it does come, is intermittent, and many athletes and coaches often volunteer their own money for the training they so desperately need. The fact is that in the outside world, sports may be purely about talent, separate of nationality, race, or religion. But in Israel, your talent will always be given secondary importance compared to your background. If you were the most talented athlete in the world, but you happened to be from Gaza, you could kiss goodbye to any opportunity of competing internationally on a level playing field. There will never be a level playing field for Palestinians until they can travel to competitions freely, without the risk of returning to a bombed training facility.

There is no limit to the extent of double standards. Israel can ban anybody it wants from entering Israel for no reason at all, including high-ranking UN officials, but will complain and cry ‘racism’ and ‘anti-Semitism’ when their own citizens are faced with a similar situation. Believing that sports are above politics is an admirable thought, if only it were true.

I’m going to risk a limb here and dip my toe into the extremely controversial Israeli ‘loyalty’ debate. This debate heated up when Israeli politician Avigdor Lieberman made it one of the major themes for which his party, Israel Beytenu, is campaigning. Translated as ‘Israel Our Homeland’, the party was originally formed by Lieberman as a platform for Russian immigrants. It takes a strong stance against peace negotiations, considers the ‘land for peace’ concept to be immoral and wrong, and aims to reduce the number of Palestinians living in Israel by as many as possible. As part of his Israeli election campaigning, Lieberman is calling for a loyalty test, or pledge of allegiance, for all Israeli citizens, including the Palestinians. You may ask yourself, so what’s the big deal? Don’t most countries require pledges of allegiance? Of course, most countries didn’t begin and maintain an illegal occupation, didn’t create millions of refugees, and don’t treat a large number of their citizens as second class. Lieberman and his supporters argue that they are not asking Palestinian-Israelis to renounce their identity. Instead, they are asking that they recognize and pledge loyalty to Israel as a Jewish state. If they wish to live here as citizens with full rights and benefits, they must contribute to Israel’s success.

Of course, your average Palestinian-Israeli, after laughing at the part about full rights and benefits, will argue that to pledge allegiance to the Jewishness of Israel does indeed sacrifice one’s own identity as a Palestinian Muslim or Christian. And look at the term ‘Israeli Arab’, which is widely used in Israeli discourse to refer to Palestinians living in Israel. This term in itself reveals a great deal about the Israeli psyche; for if you were to replace it with the phrase Palestinian-Israeli, you would shock many Israelis, even secular, left-wing ones. Israelis, whether they know it or not, are conditioned to think of the Palestinians amongst them (20 percent of the population) as a people who happen to live on the Israeli side of the border and who are tolerated so long as they submit themselves to the Zionist ideal. Calling them Arabs also strips them of their Palestinian identity, lumping them in with the general Arab population. They are never considered to be what they are – the indigenous population.

Back in December 2006, Palestinian-Israeli leaders published a report called "The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel", which outlined strategies to be implemented by The National Committee of the Local Arab Authorities in Israel. Why did they feel the need to publish this report? Because,

“Since the Al-Nakba of 1948 (the Palestinian catastrophe), we have been suffering from extreme structural discrimination policies, national oppression, military rule that lasted till 1966, land confiscation policies, unequal budget and resources allocations, rights discrimination, and threats of transfer. The State has also abused and killed its own Arab citizens, as in the Kufr Qassem massacre, on Land Day in 1976 and Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000.”

The report called for a consensual democracy, a system that embodies the presence of two groups, the Jews and the Palestinians, as opposed to a solely Jewish democracy, an oxymoron in itself. While democracy can be defined as the rule of the majority, it more importantly embodies the principles of social equality and respect for the individual within a community.

An Israeli Jew might argue that the Israeli government is representative of its Palestinian population, and there are Palestinian Arab parties which currently hold seven of 120 seats in the Israeli Knesset. However, what is not widely known is that it is normal for some of these parties to be banned by the Central Election Committee during an election year, a ban that is usually then overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court after an appeal. Why go through this rigmarole? It gives parties such as Israel Beytenu the chance to make the point that they believe Palestinian Arab parties who, God forbid, criticize Israel’s discriminative policies, should not be allowed to exist in the Knesset.

Israel is not a normal country to be making what appears to be a normal request. Why should Palestinian-Israelis pledge allegiance to a government that regularly discriminates against them, and includes powerful right-wing parties who consider them to be enemies, or even worse, irrelevant for consideration. Worse still, would you pledge allegiance to a government that often refers to your transfer to another land as a matter of fact rather than a matter of choice? What if that government had just completed a ‘defensive’ killing spree on your fellow people blockaded nearby? Does this test include the Palestinian Bedouins who have no rights and have been forced to exist on arid land in the Negev Desert? Adding insult to injury, what if the one asking you - a member of the indigenous population - to prove your loyalty was himself an immigrant? Yes, Lieberman was actually born in Moldova and left there when he was 20 years old.

The fact is that Israel has no right to make such demands until a peaceful resolution is reached between Israelis and Palestinians, and after Palestinian-Israelis have been given the choice (emphasis on the word choice here) to join a Palestinian state or remain where they are. After that, some Palestinian-Israelis might well prefer to remain full citizens of Israel.

Unfortunately, Palestinian-Israelis will have a lot to be concerned about in the future, least of all the possibility of a loyalty test. Lieberman’s party is set to win a large number of Knesset seats, giving it much more influence in the Knesset. It is also liable to be a partner in the governing coalition when it is formed, most likely, by Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing Likud party.

Included in the top 10 reasons to vote for Israel Beytenu are ‘greater efforts to entice Jews from all over the world to come to Israel, promoting the Jewish Identity, and increasing the Jewish presence in the Golan and east Jerusalem…’ While some of Lieberman’s policies may never be enforced, such as his plan to carve out areas inside Israel that are highly populated by Palestinian villages (as though they were cancerous bodies), the fact that his influence is increasing suggests something even more worrying. It suggests that Israeli society is becoming more accepting of his ideas – which are discriminatory, racist and extreme to say the least.

Gideon Levy, an Israeli journalist, might be right when he says, “When the intifada of Israel's Arabs breaks out here [Israel] one day, we will know whom to blame - those who criminally incited against them and, no less, those who turned this incitement into something acceptable and legitimate.”

While the cats are away, it is guaranteed that the mice will go out and play. Of course, the analogy here refers to media, short-span attentions, and Israel’s latest occupation-cementing activities. While the world was focusing on Gaza and the devastation taking place there at the hands of a lethal Israeli army, other alarming events were going on largely unnoticed in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Israel may not have appreciated its forces being under critical limelight in Gaza, but they were certainly able to take advantage of a distracted media trying to cope with reporting on the rapidly rising death toll there.

In the weeks during and immediately after Operation ‘Cast Lead’, Israeli occupation forces were very busy in the West Bank and east Jerusalem doing what occupation forces apparently do – conducting incursions and raids, arrests, demolitions and land confiscations. In the period just before December 27 and leading up to this week, Israeli forces have killed 10 Palestinians in the West Bank, including children, and arrested at least 214 others (also including children). Moreover, they arrested 584 Palestinians who were working without permits in Israel proper, along with some 16 Israeli employers. Troops also conducted a minimum of 138 incursions into various villages and towns around the West Bank.

Of course, raids and arrests are the norm for Palestinians. What is more disturbing, however, is the amount of land, the thousands of dunums that were expropriated while Palestinians, Arabs and the world were looking towards Gaza. Three thousand dunums of land was confiscated in Yatta, a village south of Hebron, for the purpose of illegal settlement expansion. Another 23 dunums were taken over near Bethlehem, including 13.4 dunums stolen from the nearby villages of Hussan and Nahalin. In Jerusalem, yet another 500 dunums were confiscated in the neighborhood of Abu Dis in east Jerusalem. Bear in mind here that a dunum is 1,000 square meters, which means that well over three million square meters of land was stolen. Obviously, the 78 percent of historical Palestine Israel has now isn’t enough, as they insist on grabbing more land from the remaining 22 percent which was earmarked to be a Palestinian state.

Israeli bulldozers were also busy demolishing homes and issuing orders for more planned demolitions. On January 19, Israeli troops raided the houses of the Abu Duheim family in the Jabal el-Mukabber neighborhood of east Jerusalem, forcing the 18 residents of four apartments out on the street. They then demolished the apartments and closed the remainder of the building using concrete. The four apartments comprised the second and third floors of the four-storey apartment building.

Early on the morning of January 28, troops and bulldozers moved into the Wadi Qaddoum quarter of Silwan, a village overlooked by the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. They demolished the top floor of a three-storey house belonging to Talal al-Shwaiki, claiming that it was built without a valid permit. That same morning, they also entered the Tal al-Foul area of Beit Hanina, north of Jerusalem and demolished a residential building belonging to Mohammed Eid al-Jaabari, in which 45 people from five families were living. Once again, the usual excuse that the building was constructed without a permit was given.

On February 1, two more homes owned by a Palestinian family were surrounded and destroyed in the Shufat neighborhood of Jerusalem. The homes were owned by the Ghith family. The Israeli authorities say that the homes were built without the required planning permits. Later that day, the Israeli army bulldozed four dunums of land belonging to the Al-Abbasi family in the Al-Bustan neighborhood of Silwan, which led to clashes between Silwan residents and occupation forces.

It is important to note that planning permits for Palestinians are almost impossible to come by. Many a Palestinian has spent thousands of shekels and wasted years waiting for planning permission from the Israelis. Alas, almost all of the time, they receive a resounding “NO”. Palestinian natural growth and expansion is a non-existent concept in Israel.

While this may look like the usual laundry list of illegal occupation-perpetuating activities, it worried Palestinians enough to host a conference earlier this week in east Jerusalem under the title “Aggression on Gaza and the Targeting of Jerusalem”. In addition to the land confiscation and home demolitions, Israel has stepped up its excavations under Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Al-Haram El-Sharif compound, Islam’s third holiest site, as well as excavating on land in the village of Silwan. Leaders of the conference stressed that the dangers surrounding the city were large and looming, and that the timing of the assault on Gaza also gave Israel the chance to further its illegal settlement expansion plans. Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, head of the Supreme Islamic Conference, took the opportunity during the conference to stress that the Israeli excavations under the Al-Haram El-Sharif compound “threaten heritage, history and civilization.” Sheikh Taysir Al Tamimi, Jerusalem’s Muslim chief justice, also said, “The world must take immediate action to save the city and its Islamic and Christian sanctities.”

Settlement expansion, confiscations and demolitions have reached such an alarming pace that when George Mitchell, the newly appointed US envoy to the Middle East, met Palestinian chief negotiator Ahmed Qurei, it was reported that he was actually shocked by Qurei’s expressions of desperation and despair. Qurei briefed Mitchell on Israel’s plan to construct 3,500 housing units and invest hundreds of millions of dollars for infrastructure to build a new Jewish neighborhood in occupied east Jerusalem, calling it “a way to kill negotiations and a violation of all laws, conventions and principles of international legitimacy”.

Unfortunately, at the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter if the world is paying attention or not. Israel will continue to do what it wishes, flying in the face of criticism, conventions, and international law. A distracted media just makes their job a little easier, allowing them to throw around random comments unabashedly, including the latest from Israeli prime ministerial contender and current defense minister Ehud Barak, who suggested that Israel dig a 48 kilometer tunnel for the Palestinians between Gaza and the West Bank to achieve the territorial continuity Israel is destroying above ground. To ‘sweeten’ the suggestion, Barak added, "Palestinians would have unlimited access to the tunnel, and would be able to travel it undisturbed.”

A distracted media also makes it easier for Israel to allow the convening of the World Jewish Congress and its 600 delegates in Jerusalem under the slogan, 'We Stand by Israel', while preventing Palestinians from celebrating Jerusalem as the Arab capital of culture this year. There is definitely something wrong when such celebrations have to be organized in secret and at the last minute to prevent Israeli forces from disrupting and cancelling them.

The fact is that there is so much wrong with the way Israel treats the Palestinians that it is overwhelming, and only a fraction of Israel’s transgressions are reported to the world. For Palestinians, comments and statistics that would have shocked them weeks, months, or years ago don’t even make them pause now. Reading the newspaper and watching the news has merely become a game to see how much worse things can get, because every time Palestinians think they have seen the worst, the next day they will be proven wrong again. Israel’s audacity truly knows no bounds.

Back in October, a month that seems oh so long ago, I wrote in an editorial, “If Labor does not lose as much ground as it is projected to [in the upcoming Israeli elections], and if [Foreign Minister Tzipi] Livni… is able to convince the Israeli public to elect her party [Kadima], they might just be able to shift the dynamics enough to give the likes of Shas and UTJ [ultra right-wing parties] less power to demand … concessions from the major parties.” I truly believed back then that Kadima, a centrist party, could swing the elections their way; that Labor (a left of center party) could regain some of its footing; and that the Israeli public could withstand the inclination to lean to the right. Basically, I clung to any possibility that would prevent Benjamin Netanyahu (Bibi) and his right-wing Likud party from winning the Israeli elections on February 10. Alas, I'm now sadly amused at how naïve I was.

Of course, this was all before the shaky truce between Israel and Hamas became defunct, and before Israel launched its missiles, phosphorus shells, and God knows what else at Gaza. Palestinian unity talks were still on the table back then too and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was in a more authoritative position than he is today. Leave it to Israel to hugely alter that reality.

As the war on Gaza raged, Israeli military and government spokespeople would rarely bring up the topic of the impending Israeli elections in February. But anybody with a little bit of insight into Israeli politics would have realized that Operation Cast Lead, seen as the brainchild of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, was also conveniently aimed at helping their parties, Kadima and Labor, to win more seats in those upcoming elections. Kadima and Labor, perceived as too weak and too ‘dove-ish’ by the Israeli public, had to show they could be tough on Hamas and the Palestinians. In the words of one Prussian general, Carl von Clausewitz, "War is but a continuation of an election campaign by other means."

When I wrote my first piece on this topic, Kadima and Likud were neck and neck in the polls, though there were hints that Kadima might edge forward. The same polls also showed that Labor was likely to lose seats. It would seem that today, the ‘let’s destroy Hamas and make ourselves look tougher’ plan has backfired. Operation Cast Lead has not instilled the Israeli public with confidence in Kadima or Labor. The most recent survey puts Likud ahead of Kadima by eight seats. Labor, however, has regained some footing, and might not lose the seats it had feared for. Nevertheless, on the prime ministerial front, the survey showed that 29 percent of Israelis still favor Benjamin Netanyahu as their next Prime Minister. Only 16 percent preferred Livni, while a mere nine percent said they would support Barak.

Ironically, the poll also indicated that Netanyahu was also the top choice for the role of Finance Minister. Clearly your average Israeli’s memory does not extend as far back as 1997 and 2000, when Netanyahu and his wife were investigated for corruption on more than one occasion. They were investigated for allegations that they had illegally kept 700 state gifts amassed while he was in office and said to be worth $100,000. Netanyahu was also investigated for misusing state funds after he received more than $100,000 worth of services from a private building contractor who did the work for free in anticipation of political favors (but upon receiving nothing, later tried to bill the state). And of course, there were the accusations that Netanyahu made a deal with right-wing Shas party ministers, asking for their support on a deal in exchange for Netanyahu arranging a plea bargain for their leader, Ariye Deri, who was at the time on trial for corruption.

No… Despite all these allegations of corruption, Netanyahu is likely to become the next Prime Minister of Israel, and Likud is likely to become the largest political party in the Israeli Knesset. To make matters worse, Likud’s primaries, held in early December, catapulted several ultra right-wing hawks into the top 30 places on the party's line up of candidates for the elections. The top five candidates, MK Gideon Sa'ar, MK Gilad Erdan, and former MKs Reuven Rivlin, Moshe Kachlon, and Benny Begin, have won the unequivocal endorsement of infamous Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin. If you don’t understand how worrying that is, consider that Moshe Feiglin’s idea of a utopia would be a 'purely Jewish' state of Israel. Yes, these are the most likely contenders for the role of Palestine’s partners for peace. In short, any future peace talks may be in deep trouble.

And why did the Cast Lead plan backfire? Because Netanyahu and his Likud party were in a win-win situation all along. Netanyahu openly and loudly gave it his full support. If it was a success, Netanyahu could ride on the coattails of its victory. If it failed, he could blame it on Olmert, Barak and Livni - it was their idea after all. Uri Avnery, an Israeli peace activist, recently wrote, “Every war helps the Right. War, by its very nature, arouses in the population the most primitive emotions – hate and fear, fear and hate. These are the emotions on which the Right has been riding for centuries.”

Still, at least if Netanyahu wins, we Palestinians will know who we’re dealing with and what to expect. Netanyahu is about as extremist as they come in Israeli politics, though perhaps not as extremist as the notorious Arab hater Avigdor Lieberman. The wife of assassinated Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin confessed she held Netanyahu responsible for creating the hostile climate that encouraged a right-wing extremist to assassinate her husband. This accusation came after a photograph was taken of Netanyahu leading a mass demonstration in which people carried a coffin adorned with the sign, ‘Yitzhak Rabin – murderer of Zionism’. At least with Netanyahu, he shows his stripes openly. Barak and Livni, on the other hand, talk about peace and war in the same breath. Livni has spoken about the two-state solution with the Palestinians, yet has turned around and discussed with Israeli school students the prospect that Palestinian-Israelis will be expected to move to that future Palestinian state.

All the same, even if we think we understand him, deep down all Palestinians fear Netanyahu’s probable takeover in February. Netanyahu is one of those who believe that God gave Israel the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He constantly talks of Palestinian economic growth rather than the transition to an independent Palestinian state. And I suspect that Barack Obama might find it more difficult to deal with Netanyahu as opposed to Olmert or Livni. There may come a day not long after February 10 when we all realize that Olmert was perhaps the lesser of two evils.