Bust of Yasser Arafat unveiled in Havana

By Aliana Nieves Quesada
THE ambassador of the State of Palestine, Akram Samhan, stated on November 21 that his people are living in an exceptional situation due to Israeli acts of aggression, while assuring that "the force of right will prevail over the right of force."

Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat

Speaking during the unveiling in Havana of a bust of Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestinian Revolution, sculpted by Cuban artist Andrés González, the diplomat accused Israeli leaders of trying to prevent Palestine from requesting recognition as an observer state at the UN General Assembly on November 29.

Rodrigo Alvarez Cambras, president of the Cuban-Arab Friendship Association, read a joint statement with the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), condemning the acts of genocide perpetrated against Palestinian territories occupied by Israel.

Alvarez Cambras called on the international solidarity movement with Cuba and Palestine to make full use of the alternative media to denounce these crimes.

During the event, led by José Ramón Balaguer, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party Secretariat and head of its International Relations Department, Kenia Serrano, president of ICAP, noted that despite the brutality with which the Israelis attacked the Mukata (presidential palace) in Ramallah, they were unable to assassinate Arafat, and the media campaign which attempted to discredit him in his people’s eyes only served to increase his status as a man who had become a martyr.

US and hidden Israeli nuke facilities

By Gordon Duff

The project is one of several, moving Israel underground, safe from prying eyes of what is now clearly deep suspicion by “old friends” and genuine outrage by most of the world. We saw this clearly in the aftermath of the Gaza attacks and Israel and America’s staggering defeat at the UN.

Massive construction projects have been discovered that involve nuclear storage facilities, bioweapons labs and silos for nuclear missiles, some supplied by India, with range sufficient to reach key population centers in the United States.

The story was initially broken by Walter Pincus for the Washington Post. Pincus describes in detail the projects paid for by the American taxpayer and contracted out by the Army Corps of Engineers, the organization responsible for construction of the concentration camp known as “Gaza.”

The design is based on NORAD headquarters at Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, built to withstand direct hits of up to 30-megaton thermonuclear warheads. The cost, listed as 100 million dollars for each of what is minimally three such “Fuhrer Bunkers,” will, in actuality, be closer to 20 billion dollars each.

From the Washington Post:

“U.S. overseeing mysterious construction project in Israel

“The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to supervise construction of a five-story underground facility for an Israel Defense Forces complex, oddly named “Site 911,” at an Israeli Air Force base near Tel Aviv.

“…the facility is to have… a laboratory, shock-resistant doors, protection from nonionizing radiation and very tight security.

“The 1998 Wye River Memorandum between Israel and the Palestinian Authority has led to about $500 million in U.S. construction of military facilities for the Israelis, most of them initially in an undeveloped part of the Negev Desert.

“…three bases were built to support 20,000 troops, and eventually the Israeli air force moved into the same area, creating Nevatim air base. A new runway, 2.5 miles long, was built there by the Corps along with about 100 new buildings and 10 miles of roads.

“…the Corps has built underground hangers for Israeli fighter-bombers, facilities for handling nuclear weapons (though Israel does not admit having such weapons), command centers, training bases, intelligence facilities and simulators, according to Corps publications.

“…according to the Corps notice, “The employment of Palestinians is also forbidden.”

Army Corps of Engineers, Racist, Political and Religious Crusaders

The Army Corps of Engineers has a long history of unaccountable behavior bordering on “rogue.” They are, within all aspects of American military and government, long “above the law,” seizing land anywhere they choose; unaccountable for expenditures and known to build massive projects that later prove not only useless, but also damaging and even ridiculous.

The massive projects in Israel, funded by “black budget billions,” money previously believed “missing” during Department of Defense Audits, a slush fund of nearly three trillion dollars, are in support of activities never approved and most probably violations of, not just international conventions, but make America complicit in war crimes as well.

We must remember it was the Corps of Engineers that built the wall around Gaza and the guard towers where Israeli snipers fire into what the world now officially recognizes as the free Palestinian State.

Legally, the law, based on the disputed Oslo Accords, which expired in 2000, would require the dismantling of the “Gaza Wall,” a project no different than the Warsaw Ghetto, the Berlin Wall or Buchenwald.

Not only is America restricting employment in what is really a multi-billion dollar project to “slave labor” workers brought in through illegal human trafficking, but the entire project, supervised by the Israeli architectural firm, Ada Karmi Melamende, is under Rabbinical supervision.

From the Army Corps of Engineers description of the mezuzah requirements, the Torahanical parchments that American taxpayers are paying for:

“for each door or opening exclusive of toilets or shower rooms… shall be written in inerasable ink, on… uncoated leather parchment” (done by scribes) “holding a written authorization according to Jewish law.” (written in) Ashkenazik or Sepharadik… not a mixture… (and) …must be uniform

…The Mezuzahs shall be proof-read by a computer at an authorized institution for Mezuzah inspection, as well as manually proof-read for the form of the letters by a proof-reader authorized by the Chief Rabbinate. All Mezuzahs for the facility shall be affixed by the Base’s Rabbi or his appointed representative and not by the contractor staff.”

Nuclear Silos Secure Missiles Aimed at Europe and America?

Along with the multiple bunkers, reminiscent in some ways of those constructed under the Reich Chancellery in Berlin during World War II, believed by most to be the last refuge of Adolf Hitler, the Corps of Engineers, without approval, has built Israel’s missile silos.

However, now that the “sham” of America’s denial of Israel’s nuclear capability is “in the dust,” a question top American journalist Helen Thomas had queried of every American president, the US must not acknowledge full complicity in, not just Israel’s nuclear proliferation violations but advancement of their program from its infancy to a threat to, not just the Middle East but all of Europe and America as well.

Two years ago, it was revealed through multiple official intelligence sources that India’s AGNI 6 ballistic missile system had been pushed forward and had entered the production stage due to the illegal transfer of American technology through Israeli intelligence.

This missile, with a range of over 6,000 miles, carrying ten nuclear MIRV warheads, has been tested and deployed in India and, in accordance with a secret protocol between India and Israel; three units were delivered to Israel.

Along with this, a submarine launched version capable of carrying five nuclear warheads with a range of 4,000 miles has been deployed by both India and Israel and was adapted for the six German built Dolphin submarines Israel was essentially “given.”

The nuclear upgrades were done at the personal orders of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Today Gaza, Tomorrow the World

A statement made by Martin Van Cleveld, taken from Wikipedia and confirmed through the Guardian affirms his assessment on Israeli intentions:

“In a September 2003 interview in Elsevier, a Dutch weekly, on Israel and the dangers it faces from Iran, the Palestinians and world opinion van Cleveld stated:

‘We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force… We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.’”

Cleveld, an internationally respected scholar and professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem is an expert on Middle Eastern affairs and issues of “nuclear blackmail.”

Netanyahu, the Real “Dr. Strangelove”

What is now clear is that Israel is preparing for a nuclear apocalypse, not just for survival, but one they are preparing to start.

What is also clear, more than clear, is that America’s role, building underground labs for biological and chemical warfare and also facilities for “handling nuclear weapons,” as stated by the Washington Post, is one of an active belligerent, a plotter, a full participant in preparations for wars of aggression, wars of Apocalypse.

Gaza war turns the world against Israel

 

By Zaakir Ahmed Mayet

In 2008 the world was filled with hope as global attention centred on the first black president entering the White House. As the New Year approached, families, friends and loved ones got together to celebrate the success of making it to a new year.

However, in a small stretch of land in the Middle East, their new year was very different. In Gaza, New Year was marked by Operation Cast Lead that murdered 1400 Palestinians injured 1000s and stunted the world with the brutality of the operation.

Initially Israel boasted about their well crafted propaganda campaign of using female spokespersons instead of males, striking only Hamas ‘terrorist’ sites and only ‘responding’ to attacks. This system worked for roughly the first week of the operation until the truth began to emerge. From the powerless, waterless and foodless Gaza strip, horrific images began to emerge of children buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings, bodies missing limbs after being blown of by Israeli munitions and children burnt by white phosphorous fired into the their homes. The world was shocked by the cruelty of Israel as they destroyed UN facilities, schools, mosque and even food depots.

On the 14th of November 2012 Israel once again attempted to re-enact the slaughter of 2008/9. Just as in 2008/9, Israel had violated the ceasefire and in this case, violated it by killing 13year old Ahmed Daqqa whilst he played soccer outside his home in the Gaza strip. As the Palestinian resistance retaliated, Israel attempted to unleash its full military might on the besieged population of the Gaza by calling in 75 000 reserve troops. But something was different this time, something that would change Israel’s plan. Within hours of the first massive munitions falling on the Gaza strip journalists began broadcasting the wanton destruction being unleashed from the skies. Instantaneously, people around the world responded with condemnation and began sit-ins, protests and petitions for the recall of their ambassadors to Israel.

Unlike 2008/9, information surfaces in real time and the populations of the world felt it their duty to raise their voices against this aggression. However, Israel being protected by the veto wielding USA has never been very concerned about global opinion. Defying the findings of the highest legal body in the world, the International Court of Justice on the Apartheid Wall in the West Bank, defying numerous UN resolutions and the continuous murder of Palestinians reflects the Israeli states utter disregard for International law and global opinion.

As the death toll in Gaza began to rise, the Resistance rolled out new weaponry to put up some opposition despite it being merely symbolic. Rockets began hitting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem al-Quds for the first time in decades sending a message to the Generals of Israel that the taking of Palestinian lives will not come without a price. A terrified Israel watched for the first time as the Palestinians shot down an F16 fighter jet over the coastal prison. This new form of resistance that denied Israel its military objective forced a recalibration of strategy. Along with that, in the last few days of the operation we witnessed reckless bombardment by the Israeli Occupation Forces of essential infrastructure such as cement factories, homes and vital government ministries.

Enter Anonymous, a global movement of hacktivists that took a moral decision to stand as a vanguard for Palestinians against Israel’s barbaric aggression. They began cyber operations such as #OpIsrael #OpMossad #PillarOfAnonymous that changed the status quo completely. As Israeli based pages began collapsing and massive information leaks of 35000 documents as well as the hacking of the infamous Israeli intelligence Mossad, Israel was faced with a dilemma that they had not factored in. Previously, Israel would embark on a military campaign with little or no loss incurred other than to replenish its US stockpile of weapons. Today, the continuous murdered perpetrated by Israel in Gaza came at a cost of compromising their cyber space, sensitive information of the state and intelligence. As the collective of Anonymous began rolling out aid to the civilians in Gaza, packages on how to avoid drones, basic first aid and how to remain connected to the internet despite Israel’s electronic warfare, the operation Pillar of Defence came to a thunderous collapse.

Egyptians began gathering at the Rafah crossing to enter the Gaza strip and protests in Jordan and the rest of the Arab world post the Arab awakening was another grave consideration for the Israelis. As Egypt recalled its ambassador to Israel, a clear message began to emerge that the Mubarak loyalties were long gone and buried. Furthermore it reflected an Arab world now shaped by the will of the people more than it had ever been before. It was in this context that Israel was forced to accept defeat and accept a truce. There is no doubt that Israel will violate the newly brokered truce and ceasefire in order to demonstrate some form of perceived bravado but the question that will now plague Israeli Generals and its leaders is - “At what Cost?”

As the Palestinians of Gaza once again pay the price for Israel’s adventurism to re-establish its deterrence capacity, a new world has emerged with new realities. The reality that Israel is more isolated today than it has been in the past; that the collective digital citizenry named Anonymous will not let Israel’s military aggression go unchallenged and that the Arab populations now have the courage to stand against Israel. Israel has suffered a defeat, far greater than that of 2006 at the hands of the Hezbollah. Failing to achieve any military objectives in Gaza, increased isolation and the digital axe that now hovers over the state should they embark on another killing spree has sent one message - israel is being restrained, not by the UN, not the USA but by the global citizenry. That is a victory for human rights and the collective; this is a victory for human conscience.

US plans political genocide in Palestine

By Finian Cunningham

The backing of 138 nations at the UN can be seen as resounding worldwide support for the Palestinian people. There is little doubt that the majority of the world’s people share Palestinian grievances over long-denied justice, territorial and refugee rights and the historic injuries inflicted by the Israeli colonial regime and its European and American sponsors.

Conversely, the UN vote can be seen as a global snub to the Zionist entity and its relentless criminality. Those states that stood in the rogue minority camp of nine along with Tel Aviv, including the United States and Canada, have indeed indicted themselves with infamy.

Nonetheless, the support among the UN General Assembly for Palestinians can be seen as a double-edged sword.

Beyond the welcome symbolic endorsement for the Palestinian cause, there should be some hard and rational reflection on the practical meaning of the “non-member observer status” awarded. First of all, there is a danger that the designation will in practice result in the institutionalization of second-class status for the Palestinian people. After decades of violations and treachery, it is understandable that the recent vote at the UN is celebrated as a sign of international solidarity, respect and endorsement of the Palestinian cause.

But why should the Palestinian people settle for any thing less than full member status at the UN? The rather clumsy-sounding “non-member observer status” sounds like a pale imitation of the real thing, and in fact can be perceived as an insult to the cause of Palestine, even if those countries voting for it meant the designation in good will.

Let’s face it: the current Palestinian territories of West Bank and Gaza and a diminishing presence in Al Quds/East Jerusalem represent only 22 per cent of the original territory. And the gradualist, criminal theft and encroachment of Palestinian land by the Israeli regime continue unabated, making a mockery of international law.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned of retribution for the Palestinian diplomatic coup at the UN on Thursday. Within hours, the sullen Netanyahu swung into action with the announcement that 3,000 more settlements were to be built in Judea and Samaria. This is on top of the 500,000 Israelis who already live illegally - in contravention of numerous UN resolutions - in the West Bank and Al Quds/East Jerusalem. In other words, the fanatical, lawless Israeli regime is embarking on accelerated theft and dispossession, euphemistically called changing facts on the ground.

Much more ominous are the Israeli plans to build unspecified thousands of new settler units in the controversial strip of land known as E1 around Al Quds. That move would finally cut off the historic capital of Palestine from the remaining enclaves. It would be tantamount to decapitating the already enfeebled and emaciated corpse of the Palestinian territory.

This is what Netanyahu meant when he haughtily dismissed the UN vote for Palestine as “a meaningless decision that would not change anything on the ground”. Yes, arrogant and criminal. But in a certain sense, Netanyahu is correct.

On the ground, the Israelis are stealing Palestinian territory and bulldozing Palestinian and world heritage. It is a brutal genocidal project that has been going on for 64 years ever since the Americans, British and French betrayed the Arabs at the UN by imposing the Israeli regime on the region in 1948.

The mealy-mouthed reaction this week of US secretary of state Hillary Clinton to the latest announcement of accelerated illegal colonization of Palestinian land was typical of the de facto green light that the terror regime in Tel Aviv has continuously received from Washington since its ignominious inception.

Washington also threatened in response to the UN vote to suspend over $200 million in state aid to Palestinian authorities. This is of course a drop in the bucket compared with the $3,000 million that Washington funnels to Tel Aviv every year. Nevertheless, the callous withdrawal of US aid to bombed-out and besieged Palestinian communities will be a harsh material blow.

As colleague and writer Stephen Lendman points out, Palestinians are, as it is, being forced to subsist on crumbs off the US/European/Israeli table and to eke out barely an existence on barren tracts of scrubland. This deprivation is under the shadow of state terrorism in which Palestinian communities can be attacked and assaulted at any time with impunity by the American and European-backed Israeli military machine.

Furthermore, the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, led by its chairman Mahmoud Abbas, is in effect serving as an enforcer of Zionist occupation since it polices its own people, thwarts any dissent and has declared official recognition of the so-called “state of Israel”. Recognising “Israel’s right to exist” is the same as acquiescing to a giant crime against Palestinians. It is like saying to a burglar in your house: “Yes, make yourself comfortable and, while you are at it, put your feet up and pour yourself a drink.”

The recognition of Israel is a de facto corollary of accepting the so-called “two-state solution”. For more than two decades, the two-state solution has been pushed by the American and European dishonest brokers as the only show in town. The concept has become almost sacrosanct. To question it is to be denounced as a heretic. Yet, despite all sorts of grand-sounding accords and much-vaunted putative peace talks, over more than 20 years the cause of Palestinian rights and restitution has become increasingly debased and dissipated to the point of almost nothingness. In truth, the two-state so-called solution is nothing but a cynical charade. It is a cover for continuing Western-backed Zionist expansion and genocide against the Palestinian people.

What needs to be resurrected therefore is the legitimate and entirely reasonable political position of demanding one Palestinian territory for all those who want to live in peace as equals in this historic territory. It will be a long, hard road, involving difficult obstacles such as the revoking of Israeli UN member status. The latter has to be recognized as an historic violation perpetrated by Western-backed Zionist usurpers against the inalienable rights and territorial integrity of Palestine.

However, the one-state solution has much to recommend it. It begins from the legally and morally correct premise of not recognizing the Zionist colonial settler regime. The position also maintains the territorial integrity of Palestine and rejects its defilement into scraps of scrubland.

Moreover, by campaigning for one indivisible historic Palestine, it places the moral and political responsibility for this conflict squarely where it belongs: on the Western-backed Zionist regime that is daily stealing and illegally occupying sovereign land. In one fell swoop, the charade of peace talks and two-state blind alley is exposed and rendered redundant for the whole world to see.

The vote at the UN this week should be seen as a measure of noble international solidarity for the Palestinian cause. But it is not a solution. Indeed, it could make the situation worse and more intractable for the Palestinians. What needs to be done is for that resounding international good will to be channeled into the only proper and sustainable solution for Palestine - a single state for all.

Palestine at crossroads after UN status

By Ramzy Baroud

Palestine has become a “non-member state” at the United Nations as of Thursday November 29, 2012. The draft of the UN resolution beckoning what many perceive as a historic moment passed with an overwhelming majority of General Assembly members: 138 votes in favor, nine against and 41 abstentions.

Palestinian women celebrate the defeat of Israel in recent war

It was accompanied by a passionate speech delivered by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. But decades earlier, a more impressive and animated Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat sought international solidarity as well. The occasion then was also termed ‘historic’.

Empowered by Arab support at the Rabat Arab League summit in October 1974, which bestowed on the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the ever-opaque title "the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people", Arafat was invited to speak at the UN General Assembly. Despite the fervor that accompanied the newly found global solidarity, Arafat's language singled a departure from what was perceived by Western powers as radical and unrealistic political and territorial ambitions.

In his speech on November 13, Arafat spoke of the growing PLO’s legitimacy that compelled his actions: “The PLO has earned its legitimacy because of the sacrifice inherent in its pioneering role and also because of its dedicated leadership of the struggle. It has also been granted this legitimacy by the Palestinian masses… The PLO has also gained its legitimacy by representing every faction, union or group as well as every Palestinian talent, either in the National Council or in people’s institutions…” The list went on, and, despite some reservations, each had a reasonable degree of merit.

The same however can hardly be said of Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA), which exists as a result of an ambiguous ‘peace process’ nearly 20-years ago. It has all but completely destroyed the PLO’s once functioning institutions, redefined the Palestinian national project of liberation around a more ‘pragmatic’ - read self-serving - discourse that is largely tailored around self-preservation, absence of financial accountability and a system of political tribalism.

Abbas is no Yasser Arafat. But equally important, the Arafat of 1974 was a slightly different version of an earlier Arafat who was the leader of the revolutionary Fatah party. In 1974, Arafat made a statehood proposal that itself represented a departure from Fatah's own previous commitment to a ‘democratic state on all Palestine’. Arafat's revised demands contained the willingness to settle for "establishing an independent national state on all liberated Palestinian territory".

While the difference between both visions may be attributed to a reinterpretation of the Palestinian liberation strategy, history showed that it was much more. Since that date and despite much saber-rattling by the US and Israel against Arafat’s ‘terrorism’ and such, the PLO under Arafat’s Fatah leadership underwent a decade-long scrutiny process, where the US placed austere demands in exchange for an American ‘engagement’ of the Palestinian leadership. This itself was the precondition that yielded Oslo and its abysmal consequences.

Arafat was careful to always sugarcoat any of his concessions with a parallel decision that was promoted to Palestinians as a national triumph of some sort. Back then there was no Hamas to stage a major challenge to the PLO’s policies, and Leftist groups within the PLO structure were either politically marginalized by Fatah or had no substantial presences among the Palestinian masses. The field was virtually empty of any real opposition, and Arafat’s credibility was rarely questioned. Even some of his opponents found him sincere, despite their protests against his style and distressing concessions.

The rise of the PLO’s acceptability in international arenas was demonstrated in its admission to the United Nations as a “non-state entity” with an observer status on Nov 22, 1974. The Israeli war and subsequent invasion of Lebanon in 1982 had the declared goal of destroying the PLO and was in fact aimed at stifling the growing legitimacy of the PLO regionally and internationally. Without an actual power base, in this case, Lebanon, Israeli leaders calculated that the PLO would either fully collapse or politically capitulate.

Weakened, but not obliterated, the post-Lebanon war PLO was a different entity than the one which existed prior to 1982. Armed resistance was no longer on the table, at least not in any practical terms. Such change suited some Arab countries just fine. A few years later, Arafat and Fatah were assessing the new reality from headquarters in Tunisia.

The political landscape in Palestine was vastly changing. A popular uprising (Intifada) erupted in 1987 and quite spontaneously a local leadership was being formed throughout the occupied territories. New names of Palestinian intellectuals were emerging. They were community leaders and freedom fighters that mostly organized around a new discourse that was created out of local universities, Israeli prisons and Palestinian streets.

It was then that the legend of the Intifada was born with characters such as children with slingshots, mothers battling soldiers, and a massive reservoir of a new type of Palestinian fighter along with fresh language and discourse. Equally important, new movements were appearing from outside the traditional PLO confines. One such movement is Hamas, which has grown in numbers and political relevance in ways once thought impossible.

That reality proved alarming to the US, Israel and of course, the traditional PLO leadership. There were enough vested interests to reach a ‘compromise'. This naturally meant more concessions by the Palestinian leadership in exchange for some symbolic recompense by the Americans. The latter happily floated Israel’s trial balloons so that the Israeli leadership didn't appear weak or compromising. Two major events defined that stage of politics in 1988: On Nov 15, the PLO’s National Council (PNC) proclaimed a Palestinian state in exile from Algiers and merely two weeks later, US Ambassador to Tunisia Robert H. Pelletreau Jr., was designated as the sole American liaison whose mission was to establish contacts with the PLO.

Despite the US’ declared objection of Arafat’s move, the US was in fact pleased to see that the symbolic declaration was accompanied by major political concessions. The PNC stipulated the establishment of an independent state on Palestinian 'national soil’ and called for the institution of “arrangements for security and peace of all states in the region” through a negotiated settlements at an international peace conference on the basis of UN resolution 242 and 338 and Palestinian national rights.

Although Arafat was repeatedly confronted by even more American demands - that truly never ceased until his alleged murder by poison in Ramallah in 2004 - the deceleration was the real preamble of the Oslo accords some few years later. Since then, Palestinians have gained little aside from symbolic victories starting in 1988 when the UNGA “acknowledged” the Algiers proclamation. It then voted to replace the reference to the “Palestine Liberation Organization” with that of “Palestine”. And since then, it has been one symbolic victory after another, exemplified in an officially acknowledged Palestinian flag, postage stamps, a national anthem and the like.

On the ground, the reality was starkly and disturbingly different: fledgling illegal settlements became fortified cities and a relatively small settler population now morphed to number over half a million settlers; Jerusalem is completely besieged by settlements, and cut off from the rest of the occupied territories; the Palestinian Authority, established in 1994 to guide Palestinians towards independence, became a permanent status of a Palestinian leadership that existed as far as Israel would permit it to exist; polarization caused by the corruption of the PA and its security coordination with Israel lead to civil strife that divided the Palestinian national project between factional and self-serving agendas.

The support that ‘Palestine’ has received at the United Nations must be heartening, to say the least, for most Palestinians. The overwhelming support, especially by Palestine’s traditional supporters (most of humanity with few exceptions) indicates that the US hegemony, arm twisting and Israeli-US propaganda was of little use after all. However, that should not be misidentified as a real change of course in the behavior of the Palestinian Authority which still lacks legal, political and especially moral legitimacy among Palestinians who are seeking tangible drive towards freedom, not mere symbolic victories.

If Abbas thinks that obtaining a new wording for Palestine status at the UN would provide a needed political theater to justify another 20 years of utter failures, then time is surely to prove him wrong. If the new status, however, is used as a platform for a radically different strategy that would revitalize a haggard political discourse with the sole aim of unifying the ranks of all Palestinians around a new proud national project, then, there is something worth discussing. Indeed, it is not the new status that truly matters, but rather how it is interpreted and employed. While history is not exactly promising, the future will have the last word.