Dilip Simeon's blog

As part of my original posting, I mirrored a map of modern Palestinian history that has the virtue of showing graphically what has happened to the Palestinians politically and territorially in the past century.  Andrew Sullivan then mirrored the map from my site , which set off a lot of thunder and noise among anti-Palestinian writers like Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic , but shed very little light. (PS, the map as a  hard copy mapcard is available from Sabeel. ) The map is useful and accurate. It begins by showing the British Mandate of Palestine as of the mid-1920s. The British conquered the Ottoman districts that came to be the Mandate during World War I (the Ottoman sultan threw in with Austria and Germany against Britain , France and Russia , mainly out of fear of Russia ).  But because of the rise of the League of Nations and the influence of President Woodrow Wilson’s ideas about self-determination, Britain and France could not decently simply make the...

News Release 08 August 2014 Quakers urge recognition of Palestine Amid faltering ceasefires and talks, Quakers in Britain are calling for urgent action on Gaza. They urge the UK Government to recognise Palestine as a nation state; they call for a comprehensive arms embargo on all sides in the conflict and for an end to Israel’s blockade of Gaza and occupation of Palestine. The calls for action come in a statement made by the decision making body of Quakers in Britain, the  Yearly Meeting , attended by 2,000 Quakers in Bath.  As part of their commitment to peacemaking, Quakers continue to challenge anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. The Yearly Meeting heard essential steps towards full and fair negotiations: Palestine to be recognised as a nation state An end to indiscriminate fire by all sides A comprehensive arms embargo An end to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and blockade of Gaza Freeing elected Palestinian leaders now held as political prisoners...

Nakba was remembered in many parts of the world. It is the Palestinian day of catastrophe. Palestinians fled their lands in the wake of the 1948 war — never to be able to return. They hold on to keys, real and symbolic, asserting their right to return to their lands, adding flesh to ‘the struggle of memory against forgetting’. Palestine has become a codeword for injustice to a people who had to flee their homes unwillingly. Most leading university campuses in the West have some form of Palestine solidarity activism. The present author was denied a competitive position due to his involvement with such initiatives at one point. Palestine spills over to general activism against militarism and occupation. Activist forces, however marginal and removed from the Middle East, support Palestine. The Nakba was a time when millions were frantically trying to prevent knots from untying — ancient knots out of which selfhoods emerged and thrived. Leaving behind the land of ancestors is somet...

By Salena Fay Tramel–   Opendemocracy.net   It has not been an easy year for Palestinians, if there ever was such a thing. With the turn of a new decade in January, the U.S. administration unveiled the paradoxically branded “deal of the century” plan—calling for Israel to unilaterally annex about a third of the West Bank. Then the coronavirus slipped through the checkpoints into Bethlehem in March, sending millions of Palestinians into lockdown. And in April, Israel formed a unity government with an eye on the immediate annexation of the Jordan Valley in direct violation of international law. Today, just weeks before that land grab is set to be pushed through in July, many Palestinians worry that it could go largely unnoticed with the world’s attention focused squarely on defeating the virus and curbing its economic fallout.  Palestine is often presented as an anomaly in global politics. Apologists of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories ha...

We, the undersigned African scholars and scholars of Africa, hold that silence about the latest humanitarian catastrophe caused by Israel’s new military assault on the Gaza Strip—the third and most devastating in six years—constitutes complicity. Member state of NATO which mounted an air war on Libya ostensibly to protect civilians in Benghazi have been by and large quiet about the fate of civilians in Gaza. World governments and mainstream media do not hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law. We, however, as a community of scholars have a moral responsibility to do so. Neither the violation of international law nor the destruction of Palestinian life in Gaza, however, began or will end with the current war[1]. The suffering of Palestinians is not limited to Gaza: the occupation and dispossession in East Jerusalem, the Naqab (Negev), and the West Bank; the construction of walls and fences around the Palestinian population, the curtailment of Pale...

The British government knew from the moment it planned to withdraw its forces from Palestine more than 60 years ago that partition of the territory and the founding of the state of  Israel  would lead to war and defeat for the Arabs, secret documents released make clear.  The documents, which have a remarkable contemporary resonance, reveal how British officials looked on as Jewish settlers took over more and more Arab land. In the weeks leading up to the partition of Palestine in 1948, when Britain gave up its UN mandate, Jewish terrorist groups were mounting increasing attacks on UK forces and Arab fighters, the Colonial Office papers show.  And they reveal how senior British officials were occupied in deciding how to allocate between them two Rolls-Royces and a Daimler.  The   papers, released at the National Archives , show how in regular intelligence reports to London, British officials in Jerusalem described a steady build-up of tension as Britain,...