Palestine Think Tank

"I had prayed Samer, prayed that I would not have to witness bloodshed at their hands because I would go for the kill.. period – and I can and I would, I was not worried about my dying.. that would have been fine.. lovely actually. I would rather die there so it made no difference, but I would not stand by and let any of my brothers or sisters lie hurt and bleeding.. because it is our blood.. all of us, our blood."

By Stuart Littlewood*
"O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!"
A few weeks ago, on the annual Robert Burns Night, these immortal lines from 1786 were being recited all over the world, but probably not in Palestine. The leadership there aren't blessed with the gift of seeing themselves as the [...]

We must reclaim the struggle as our own, by regaining our Palestinian popular voice, making sure it gets heard, and speaking up loudly and clearly for Palestinian unity and liberation. We also should always give priority to Palestinian speakers and writers, instead of rushing only to forward the articles of Amira Hass and Gideon Levy to our mailing lists, and barely giving any interest to the writings of our own people. Have you caught yourself doing this? Let us change it. We are not in a position to compete against each other – we should empower each other. Our own Palestinian voice is irreplaceable – if we let others speak for us, we have already killed our independence before it is even born.

Mr. "peace-loving" Obama hardly bothered to wipe the blood off his hands when he picked up his Nobel Peace Prize. Seeing the tremendous leap forward by the people of Iran towards a democratic future, Mr. Obama continues his old warlike rhetoric against Iran. Simultaneously, he tightens the deadly grip of sanctions on the people of Iran, as they fiercely fight for democracy in their own land. Then he dares to say that he supports freedom and democracy. Freedom and democracy my ass, Mr. President!

Whichever way you splice the figures, the disparity in media attention between Cairo and Tehran is inescapable. You can draw only one conclusion: western media outlets apply vastly different editorial judgements to these two countries and, as a result, readers at home are consuming a heavily skewed diet of Middle Eastern news. The issue is not, as some have suggested, why Egyptians remain so placid in the face of oppression from their political masters. They don't. The question is why nobody cares.

"The world stood silent, while we urged for help. The world turned their heads, while we were being slaughtered. The world turned deaf to our screams for help. They laughed with joy to the screams of pain, and sipped on their liquor while amusing themselves listening to the screams of the raped ones. They were [...]

The Palestine Strategy Study Group strongly urges fellow Palestinians to seize their destiny in their own hands by refusing even to enter these other discourses until it is appropriate to do so and to focus all their energies on explaining and promoting the prior Palestinian discourse. The appropriate discourse uses the language, not of peacemaking or statebuilding, but of national self-determination, of liberation, of emancipation from occupation, of individual and collective rights, of international law. This must be the primary discourse. Only when the priorities defined within the primary Palestinian discourse of emancipation are recognised can the hitherto rightly subordinated discourses of peacemaking and statebuilding move properly into the foreground.

It is essential in strategic thinking to take constant account of how the chessboard
looks from the perspective of the opponent. This is fundamental. A player who does not do this – who only looks at the board from its own perspective – will never be a grandmaster. Such a player will lose. The strategic purpose is to exert mounting pressure on the opponent to act as we want. This can only be done if we understand what the opponent desires and fears, and the sources and limits of the opponent’s power. The same applies to inducing third parties to behave in the ways we want them to.

The Israeli military may be much less effective in winning wars than it was in the past, thanks to the stiffness of Arab resistance. But its military strategists are as shrewd and unpredictable as ever. The recent rhetoric that has escalated from Israel suggests that a future war in Lebanon will most likely target Syria [...]

WRITTEN BY ANTOINE RAFFOUL
BACKGROUND:
In April 2002, Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield by invading the Palestinian
refugee camp of Jenin, south of Nazareth. In this operation which lasted about 8 days and followed a suicide bomb attack on the Israeli town of Netanya. Israel deployed 30,000 reserve soldiers against a camp population of 33,000 refugees. It sealed [...]

“We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change or resistance. Small acts, when multiplied by many people, can transform the world”
“If we remember those times and places–and there are so many–where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the [...]