From Occupied Palestine

Palestinians: divided we fall
AMIRA HASS
Le Monde diplomatique

Two locations, two rival political powers. Solidarity against Israel is gradually disintegrating as both regimes, and many individuals living under them, begin to see the future only in terms of their personal survival.

The Holocaust as political asset
AMIRA HASS
Ha'aretz, 18 April 2007

The High Court of Justice is in no hurry
AMIRA HASS
Ha'aretz, 17 January 2007

When Hamas learns how to adapt
AMIRA HASS
Ha'aretz, 10 January 2007

Not an internal Palestinian matter
AMIRA HASS
Ha'aretz, 4 October 2006

The experiment was a success: The Palestinians are killing each other. They are behaving as expected at the end of the extended experiment called "what happens when you imprison 1.3 million human beings in an enclosed space like battery hens."

Missing the government of thieves
AMIRA HASS
Ha'aretz, 28 September 2006

Slogans shouted at rallies sound better when they rhyme. "Not Ismail, not Haniyeh, we want back the government of haramiyeh." Haramiyeh means thieves, and the protesters in Ramallah - Palestinian Authority workers who have not received their salaries for the last seven months - shouted what can be heard in conversations in the streets of the West Bank and Gaza Strip: Hamas may be clean, but the Fatah thieves are preferable. After all, the reasoning goes, when Fatah was in power, our salaries were assured.

In the name of security, but not for its sake
AMIRA HASS
Ha'aretz, 20 September 2006

Six Palestinian churches in the West Bank and Gaza Strip suffered damage and arson attempts in reaction to the words of Pope Benedict XVI. Palestinian spokesmen of all stripes condemned these attacks and said that the Palestinian nation - Christians and Muslims alike - is one, and is united in its struggle against the occupation. Reports on the attacks in the Palestinian media described the perpetrators as "unknown." In the Palestinian subtext, "unknown" implies "of suspicious identity," a phrase that borders on a half-concealed accusation that Israel's Shin Bet security services sent agents provocateurs.

Can you really not see?
AMIRA HASS
Ha'aretz, 30 August 2006

Let us leave aside those Israelis whose ideology supports the dispossession of the Palestinian people because "God chose us." Leave aside the judges who whitewash every military policy of killing and destruction. Leave aside the military commanders who knowingly jail an entire nation in pens surrounded by walls, fortified observation towers, machine guns, barbed wire and blinding projectors. Leave aside the ministers. All of these are not counted among the collaborators. These are the architects, the planners, the designers, the executioners.

The occupier defines justice
AMIRA HASS
Ha'aretz, 23 August 2006

On Jerusalem's Jabotinsky Street, opposite the President's Residence, a medium-sized plaque is fixed on a locked gate, enclosing a broad building and a lovely garden: "This building was the location of the British Mandate Government's High Military Court, which held the trials of the Hebrew resistance fighters from the Haganah, Etzel and Lehi." The sign bears the emblems of the Jerusalem municipality and the three resistance organizations. It further notes: "The resistance fighters refused to acknowledge the authority of the court to judge them, and asked to be recognized as prisoners of war."

Nasrallah didn't mean to
AMIRA HASS
Ha'aretz, 16 August 2006

During the past month, Hezbollah's Katyushas killed 18 Israeli Arabs among the 41 Israeli civilians who died in the war. Clearly, Hassan Nasrallah didn't mean to kill them. But as someone who knows that many Arabs live in northern Israel, and as someone who knows that the launchers for his inaccurate Katyushas cannot choose the target they will hit - the fact that it was unintended is meaningless.