From Occupied Palestine

'All the dreams we had are now gone'
SHAHAR SMOOHA
Ha'aretz Magazine, 27 July 2007

Gaza is not Algeria
AHMED YOUSEF
Ha'aretz, 9 July 2007

The Abbas leadership has poorly calculated its political strategy, choosing to align itself with the Israeli regime and its Washington patrons in a bid to retain its hold on power. Yet it has compromised its legitimacy in the eyes of a large swath of the Palestinian public, and it has fallen into Israel's Machiavellian trap of sowing discord among Palestinians to avoid dealing with the real issue: ending the occupation, fairly and justly.

Our second biggest mistake in the Middle East
ALASTAIR CROOKE
London Review of Books, vol 29 no 13 (5 July 2007)

Hamas: Unwritten Chapters by Azzam Tamimi · Hurst, 344 pp, £14.95

Where Now for Palestine: The Demise of the Two-State Solution ed. Jamil Hilal · Zed, 260 pp, £17.99

Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict by Sara Roy · Pluto, 379 pp, £16.99

Laboratory for a fortressed world
NAOMI KLEIN
The Nation, 2 July 2007

Gaza in the hands of Hamas, with masked militants sitting in the president's chair; the West Bank on the edge; Israeli army camps hastily assembled in the Golan Heights; a spy satellite over Iran and Syria; war with Hezbollah a hair trigger away; a scandal-plagued political class facing a total loss of public faith.

Engage With Hamas
AHMED YOUSEF
Washington Post, 20 June 2007, p. A19

[ed. A second Ahmed Yousef piece from the New York Times follows]

1967: A personal testimony
URI AVNERY
Gush Shalom, June 2007

On May 25, 1967, twelve days before the Six-day war, I published in Haolam Hazeh, the news magazine of which I was the editor, an article entitled "Nasser Has Fallen Into a Trap". That sounded crazy, because, at the time, all Israel was in the grip of mortal fear.

Welcome to 'Palestine'
ROBERT FISK
Independent, 16 June 2007

How troublesome the Muslims of the Middle East are. First, we demand that the Palestinians embrace democracy and then they elect the wrong party - Hamas - and then Hamas wins a mini-civil war and presides over the Gaza Strip. And we Westerners still want to negotiate with the discredited President, Mahmoud Abbas. Today "Palestine" - and let's keep those quotation marks in place - has two prime ministers. Welcome to the Middle East.

U.S. Backing for Fatah stirs new conflict
JON ELMER and NORA BARROWS-FRIEDMAN
Inter Press Service, 2 February 2007

GAZA CITY, Feb 2 (IPS) - Explosions, fierce gunfights and ambulance sirens ripped through the Gaza strip again Thursday, only two days after a ceasefire ended a bloody week of factional fighting that left more than 30 Palestinians dead.

With aid, U.S. widens role in Palestinian crisis
CAM SIMPSON and NEIL KING JR.
Wall Street Journal, 12 January 2007, p. A1

Jerusalem -- In a move fraught with risk and historical ironies, the Bush administration is preparing to pour $86 million into strengthening security forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Elliott Abrams' Uncivil war
MARK PERRY and ALISTAIR CROOKE
Conflicts Forum, 7 January 2007

Is the Bush administration violating the law in an effort to provoke a Palestinian civil war?