EXCERPTS: (via IMRA)
Clinton is opposed by a Congress that is solidly pro-Likud for
many domestic reasons.
Yes, there is an Israeli lobby, but the fact is that the
Republican Party in alliance with the Christian right-wing, plus conservative foundations
and business groups, and an uneducated, brainwashed public see in Israel not only a
stubborn ally forcing its intransigence on the entire world but also an international
partner which the US should emulate, doing what Israel does in thumbing its nose at the
very notion of an international community.
And all this has the advantage of being a slap in the face of Bill
Clinton whose corrupt, problem-ridden administration is seen by many Americans as too
enmeshed in the schemes of the UN and the international community, ... .
. . . {T}he Palestinian question has receded so dramatically in
the public mind as to be non-existent.
There are occasional references to the 13 per cent of West Bank
territory proposed by the US and accepted by the Palestinian leadership, but that is
always hedged with discussions of Palestinian terrorism and the PLO covenant, thereby
denuding the issue of land of any serious content.
To make matters worse, the almost total absence of any Palestinian
information effort in the US or in Western Europe is stark. Gone are the academics, the
students, the organisations that used to bear a message about dispossession and
injustice... .
To an outsider like myself, what is going on inside the Arab world
is no less discouraging. Leaders visit each other, talk about change and important
meetings, more meetings are held, more trips taken -- and nothing much changes. The fact
is that the Arab world is totally unmobilised, particularly inside Palestine ... .
{T}he prosperous Palestinian communities in London and Amman go
about their daily business, totally oblivious to what is happening to the dwindling
remains of their original homeland.
Huge weddings take place every day in the luxury hotels of those
capitals, young people drive their BMWs and Honda motorcycles noisily up and down the
hills of Abdoun and the leafy boulevards of Holland Park, and the impression is that of a
long day-dream, with not much thought given either to the past or the future.
Filled with pleasant interludes, school years in Harvard or
Georgetown, vacations in Gstaad and Cannes, careers in advertising, marketing, investment,
or construction, the privileged generation of Palestinian -- and indeed Arab -- youth,
whose parents made their fortunes in the easy days of the Gulf oil and construction boom,
go about their lives in a never-never land of tax-free spending that has made of it a
class unique in the history of the twentieth century for its wastefulness and
unproductivity.
And it is this class that is theoretically entrusted with the
future of our struggle against a ruthless and single-minded foe. . . .
We are an unmobilised people. We are unled. We are unmotivated.
....
In the past few weeks, a number of Israeli organisations against
house demolitions have been formed. They have demonstrations. They protest. But there
seems to be very little on the Palestinian side. . . .
Why this mania for bureaucracy, bodyguards, cellular phones,
expensive shopping expeditions, for fruitless, stupid negotiations that sap our strength
and our will and leave us utterly impotent as we witness our land disappearing before us?
I cannot understand our inaction and the spineless cowardice of
our leaders who prefer to engage in the harassment and abuse of their own people than in
safeguarding their nation and its territory.
I cannot understand the paralysis of Palestinian and other Arab
intellectuals for whom theorising about the best strategy is a higher priority than
actually going to Palestine (this is easily done by Egyptians and Jordanians whose
countries are at peace with Israel) to stand with a Palestinian family or village defying
the Israeli robbers.
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