Palestine Think Tank

The Dimensions of Occupation, the Occupational Lobby and the Age After

I am not a politician or a journalist or writer but I am thinking day and night, experiencing new dimensions of consciousness and seeking answers. How can we move forward strategically in our struggle for justice and peace?

An Insight

Looking into the current analyses that are making the rounds, I have yet to find a collective plan or process toward a plan that will enlarge our options or change the boundary conditions of our dilemma. It seems as if all the proposed alternatives are wrong.

Most of the analysis is done with the same logic, based on "certainty" and generally focusing on the reality of the Zionist aggressions and the failing politics of formal institutions superficially, with little self-critique, nor encompassing review of tactics or philosophy. The fact our leadership never admit this endorses my allegation.

We seem so certain, yet what have we achieved within "Palestine Activism" to alter the reality on the ground in the last eight years after the second Intifida?

Are we evaluating ourselves and reviewing our point of view? Can we even begin to do so if we are not able to create a common platform for debate, a platform from which a new level of unity can emerge?

So far, our communication channels are not well set up and our efforts are not measured against our goals and have no leverage. Activist Information Management is disorganized, so long as we each focus on our individual political point of view only, without listening, so long as open minded activists do not come together to evolve and develop our co-creative consciousness, that is how long we will not be able to plan any recognizable strategy that will actually work to change our situation.

The Power of Story, the Power of Imaginary Suspicion

Each activist has his/her own "Know-How" story for Palestine-Activism and that story can be very powerful especially when they come together with others. These stories are authentic, concerning what we have been doing and why, not what has been done to us or others think about us. They point the way.

From my own story as an activist (Engineer and Manager as well), I have learned: "If you do not find a solution, change the rules" and, "You can not change anything if you do not start with yourself and transform your own consciousness. Only then can you change the society/reality."

Starting by oneself requires "suspicion". Suspicion is also the condition for any real dialog. If both parties are "certain" – then there is no more dialog. Either it is communication in positive way, where both agree 100% on the idea or it is a fight, a negative communication style where no one is listening to the other. Without two-way communication, there is only oppression, where the powerful side dictates its idea.

In other words, based on openness and imagination, uncertainty or suspicion are the main underpinnings of any transformation of reality. In any case this kind of flexibility is at the core of intellectual dialectic and mind shift.

For the spirit of activism, taking such a step is powerful and demands self-sacrifice. It requires the ultimate in responsibility, which will surely lead to understanding what it means to BE Palestinian. It means developing a common consciousness that will manifest the Palestinian Identity.

Looking at the current Palestinian identity, we can see how it has been uprooted corrupted, and replaced by elements of Power-Society: Consumption Driven Culture, Hypocrisy, Threat, Violence, Oppression, Corruption, and so forth.

How difficult it is to educate society at its roots in the ideas of sustainable resistance – how much easier to make a call for the boycott of Israeli goods and organize related campaigns!

Power + Lobby = Occupation

On my investigations and questioning trip I am looking for the roots of this reality in order to struggle against those causes instead of dealing only with the symptoms. I have found that there are many other things to understand before we claim that it is all about the effects of Zionism and military Occupation or Leadership.

Let's start, for example, with the questions: How has criminal Zionism come to dominate our current political order? Why does the so-called "international community" recognize the PLO as an official representative for Palestinians, when they are actually not?

To answer these questions, we should understand the structure of our global political system, which is based on POWER and interests. Power is the main instrument to "occupy" political decision centres to ensure that certain private interests are obtained. And here it comes: If we want to fight Occupation, we should understand all of its dimensions and its mechanism. No Palestinian leadership can defeat Occupation, if they themselves try to become the new occupier. Any new perspective on conflict solving, cultural emergence and nation-building should question the current leadership philosophy and governance structure.

The widespread idea within our Palestinian, Arabic and even Moslem society is that we need comparable (military) power to "force" a solution. Violence has been always the fastest tool to establish change.

I doubt that we can reach real, just peace using the same instruments with which injustice has been implemented.

I doubt also that the institutions of our power-based national and global politics will create "justice". We say in Arabic: Faked Elshee La Yu3tih (One can not offer what one does not have). They create wars and poverty instead of peace.

Transformation of reality at the root level is the most challenging way. Wishful thinking on a superficial level will have little effect.

Palestinian consciousness in the core of global consciousness Evolution and its Movement

As I looked intensively for the lost justice at many levels over the last 3 years it became clearer and clearer to me that millions around the world are aware of the failing formal power-based international politics and are looking for alternatives. They share the same level of consciousness and willingness to co-create a new vision for our future. They feel not only responsible for their lives but also the lives of others (The global movement).

Palestinians should be the in the middle of this movement and form a common integral front with it.

Tons of conversations are taking place in the net about how to make our civilization emerge from the current power and materialism based structure into a community that cares for all. Not only Palestinians seek freedom. In a wide sense, the whole of humanity does.

Palestinians should never give up living in dignity in just peace in their home land, which can only be achieved for New Palestine in that New world that the majority of young Palestinians are looking for. We have to develop this new perspective in the eyes of the whole world.

We should not wait till our totalitarian institutions and political powers have admitted their failure. They enjoy the culture of privilege and mostly not aware about the dimension of the challenge, as they measure the possibilities and options with their narrow minds, own rules and care more for their own occupational lobby to stay in p o w e r.

Indeed within our growing global human consciousness we need new formulas for thinking and new solutions. Only such new approaches can break the circle of violence and injustice that commands our planet.

That's why the next step would be is to re-organize our knowledge, to collaboratively build best-in-class comprehensive web-application that unify and focus our efforts to build more leverage and dialog co-creating more efficient fronts, which allow us to research what we do not know (fusion process of informal inelegances) and reach our common objectives.

I wrote very often within my Palestinian correspondence, that the Palestinian ship to Yafa sails through Washington DC. Many may laugh at me. Believe me the issue is very complicated and starts with the evaluation process of own consciousness and society.

I hope these lines would help to refocus our debates. Hope is power.