(Updated: Originally published November 20, 2006)
The Palestinians take it on the chin daily, and I just wanted you to hear some of their voices today:
"Many Palestinians feel isolation will endure; Expect troubles to remain with or or without Hamas" by Anne Barnard/Boston Globe November 19, 2006
HIZMA, West Bank -- Awad Dhiab, Omar Salahuddin, and Mohammed Saleh sat one recent morning in the tiny, bare municipal office where Saleh works as town secretary, contemplating the possible demise of the Hamas-led Palestinian government and wondering whether it would bring this town's 6,000 people what they want: jobs, roads, schools, and, more than anything, the freedom to travel to Jerusalem, just a couple of miles away but increasingly out of reach behind Israeli security barriers.
Awad Dhiab, 50, a chicken farmer with a red-checked keffiyeh wrapped around his shoulders, said Hamas tried to establish what he sees as the right kind of government -- one that "follows religion and is not corrupt" -- but that the world didn't want it to succeed.
Omar Salahuddin, 58, a taxi driver wearing a traditional white headcovering over jeans and a leather jacket, said he hadn't even kept up with the negotiations.... and hadn't bothered to vote in the January election because:
"I don't care much about it. I don't trust anyone. People can get to Jerusalem from Hawaii, but not from here. I'm 58 years old and I can't go to pray in Jerusalem. I want to go to pray, not to destroy Israel. [Unemployment is skyrocketing. Education is out of reach for many]. Our sons are in ignorance."
Mohammed Saleh, 35, an accountant with a master's degree in English, said Hamas and Israel had both missed a huge opportunity to make peace. If Hamas could have made progress toward agreements with Israel's right-leaning parties, moderates on both sides would have "come along right away."
But Hamas didn't even carry out what little of its reform program it could have implemented, he said, and Fatah ended up looking like a US stooge as it pushed for Hamas's failure. Now he's disillusioned with everyone. A longtime Fatah supporter, he said he would now vote for Hamas.
"Not because I like Hamas, but Fatah implements the policies of the West."
Ahmed Khatib, the deputy chairman of the municipal council, a longtime Fatah supporter in a gray cardigan and close-cropped beard who also administers Hizma's mosques, walked in, listened a bit, and offered an answer:
"The new government will make cosmetic changes. If now we wait at a checkpoint for two hours, maybe under them it will be one hour. [A new government is] better than nothing. It won't end the boycott, but it will alleviate it. [Also, a unity Cabinet] could ease internal violence among Palestinian militant factions."
Their attitude -- expressed by municipal workers and residents on official business who drifted in and out of the conversation in Saleh's office -- helped explain the sense of detachment and hopelessness that many Palestinians describe even as their leaders say they are closing in on a breakthrough compromise....
Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said that his government would resign to make way for a new government of politically unaffiliated technocrats, or for a unity government including members of the rival Fatah faction, if that would end the sanctions that have crushed the already struggling Palestinian economy.
That does not sound like a terrorist to me! How unreasonable!
Stepping down for the good of his people!
More voices:
Ahmed Abdelkarim, 50, a municipal council member, said he supported Hamas but thought its officials should have formed a government of technocrats from the beginning, rather than trying to hold office themselves:
"[The past eight months have only shown how powerless the Palestinian government is, no matter who's running it]. Everything is in the hands of Israel and the United States. The Palestinian Authority just orbits them. If they decide to end the Authority, they can do it in one minute."
Mufeed Abu Khalil, the council president, boasted: "[Overcrowding now forces 250 children to travel to the next town], but we have 35 doctors, 200 teachers, and 600 students in the university. We are the best village in the West Bank."
It must be an act! Bloodthirsty Palestinians seem just like everybody else, trying to live life; however, I know that can't be true.
Not when my government and MSM have told me different!
