Bro,
Thanks for the forwards

BMK

>Palestinians' lives got worse: Israel continued to demolish homes;
>Jewish-only bypass roads connecting settlements to Israel increasingly
>chopped up the West Bank, dividing Palestinian communities into
>disconnected Bantustans; Israel retained control of water and other
>resources and continued to confiscate Palestinian land. And it certainly
>didn't help that corrupt officials in Arafat's Palestinian Authority
>pocketed funds meant for economic development. Americans hadn't paid much
>attention, so when the Al Aqsa Intifada erupted, it was easy enough for
>them to buy the Israeli version of what had gone wrong: the Palestinians
>simply didn't want peace.
>
>"We had done a good job during the first intifada of showing the
>occupation," says Phyllis Bennis, a fellow with the Institute for Policy
>Studies who specializes in the Middle East. "But our mistake was in not
>continuing to talk about human rights violations as an ongoing reality of a
>repressive, spirit-killing, military occupation. It seemed as though if
>guns weren't being fired, then things must have been fine. But you don't
>have to fire a gun to control someone, you only have to have it. That's why
>if you hold up a store by aiming a gun at the cashier, you've committed
>armed robbery, even if you never pulled the trigger. Israel was still
>holding the gun, but we had stopped pointing at it."
>

Though "not an optimist in the short run," Ali Abunimah remains convinced
that "a broad-based movement against the occupation and in favor of a just
peace, based on equality and ending domination," can succeed. "People forget
that there was a strong business lobby in this country for South Africa
during apartheid and that American policy was turned around entirely due to
public pressure," he says. "There are precedents."
>


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