UNMIA

by Ido Zelkovitz
Middle East Quarterly
Spring 2008, pp. 19-26
http://www.meforum.org/article/1874

Many U.S. and European diplomats contrast Fatah’s Palestinian nationalism with Hamas’s Islamism. At a November 28, 2007 press conference, U.S. national security advisor Stephen Hadley praised Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas and cited President George W. Bush’s argument that “Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al-Qaeda [are] different faces of the same evil: a radical ideology seeking to impose its world-view throughout the Middle East and beyond.”[1] But, while Fatah, the core of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), may have its roots in the revolutionary, secular-oriented ideologies of the 1960s and 1970s,[2] Islamist discourse is also integral to the movement.[3] Indeed, even as Western diplomats seek to bolster Fatah’s Abbas as an alternative to Hamas, they underestimate the degree to which Palestinian nationalism now intertwines itself with Islam.[4] Since the 2000 Palestinian uprising, Fatah has fused national and religious symbols in order to use Islam as an instrument of mobilization.[5]
Fatah Imagery in the Twentieth Century

In the 1970s, Fatah graphic art promoted the culture of armed struggle which was at the heart of Fatah’s ideology. (See Figure 1.) This enabled Fatah to mobilize the masses in the absence of a solid ideology among the divided and …

Published online by Zionism-Israel, Ami Isserhoff

HIDDEN HISTORY, SECRET PRESENT: THE ORIGINS AND STATUS OF AFRICAN PALESTINIANS

By Susan Beckerleg, translated by Salah Al Zaroo

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This project was made possible by a Nuffield Foundation, Social Science Award, administered by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

I wish to thank my colleagues working on European Union Avicenne Initiative Projects for their advice and support, in particular Salah Al Zaroo and Gillian Hundt. My husband Abudi Kibwana Sizi assisted during two visits to the Palestine. In the Nagab and Gaza many people helped to put me in touch with colleagues, neighbours and friends of African descent. They include Ibrahim Abu Jaffar, Adnan El Sanne, Fatme Kassim, and Shahada Ebbweini.
Last but not least, I wish to thank all the people of African descent who talked with me in Jeruslaem, Gaza and the Nagab. They are not named so that their privacy can be maintained.

INTRODUCTION

This report summarises the findings of a project has addressed a neglected and sensitive area of research about the history of Palestine. The history of the region has been turbulent and has involved the settlement of peoples from Asia, Africa and Europe. Since the establishment of Israel in 1948, Palestinians …

By Nonie Darwish in the Huffington Post

“Gaza conditions at ‘40-year low’” the BBC headlined last week. Rarely a week goes by without a politician or organization deploring the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip. But I do not hear anyone describe its root cause: 60 years of Arab policy aimed at maintaining Palestinians as stateless refugees in order to pressure Israel.

I lived in Gaza as a child in the 1950s when Egypt conducted guerrilla-style operations against Israel from Gaza, then under Egyptian control. My father commanded these operations, carried out by “fedayeen,” (which means, “self sacrifice”). This became the frontline of Arab Jihad against Israel. My father was killed by Israel in a targeted assassination in 1956.

Today the Gaza Strip, now under the control of Hamas, has become the Gaza prison camp for 1.5 million Palestinians and continues to serve as the launching pad for attacks against Israeli citizens.

This is the legacy of the Arab world’s Palestinian refugee policy, started 60 years ago, when the Arab League implemented special laws regarding Palestinians that all Arab countries had to abide by. Arab countries could not absorb Palestinians. Even if a Palestinian married a …