[/caption]
Hana Shalabi is one of thousands of Palestinians that have been detained by the Israeli government over the decades since Israel’s founding. Her story, as well as that of Khader Adnan, has not only sparked similar protests among dozens of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails but has also captured worldwide attention.
At the same time, western media outlets are publishing more stories than ever on the transgressions of Israel and its chronic inability and outright refusal to make peace with the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world.
For example, the editor of The New Yorker, David Remnick, recently published a comment in which he argues that, “An intensifying conflict of values has put its [Israel’s] democratic nature under tremendous stress.”
He goes on to write, “The political corrosion begins, of course, with the occupation of the Palestinian territories—the subjugation of Palestinian men, women, and children—that has lasted for forty-five years.”
Emanating from the pen of one of the most influential Jewish writers in our time and one of the most known and respected magazines in the US, this is a big statement.
Senior Foreign Policy Fellow, MJ Rosenberg, notes in a blog entry published by the Huffington Post, that the silence among the American Jewish elite was shattered by a long-time editor of the New Republic, Peter Beinart, who, in The New York Review of Books, lambasted the Israeli government and AIPAC for “alienating young Jews from Israel.”
Rosenberg contends that neither Remnick nor Beinart would have considered publishing such comments a few years ago.
A combination of factors has created a more complex environment in which prominent American individuals can publicly voice criticism of Israeli conduct.
First and foremost, the largely peaceful revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt have dramatically improved the image of Arabs in western societies, increasing that of Palestinians, whose immeasurable and numerous suffering at the hands of the Israeli state are finally reaching mainstream western media.
Binyamin Netanyahu’s right wing policies have decimated the center in Israeli politics and presented an Israel that is more extreme and unyielding in nature, and therefore not an ideal partner for peace.
At the same time, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s state-building efforts have emphasized the seriousness of the Palestinian side in its pursuit of a viable state. This has been spearheaded by the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) quest for full membership at the UN. I think too that the PA’s stand against Israeli settlement building, ultimately in defiance of the US position, has earned the Palestinians respect all over the world.
Palestinian criticism of the PA abounds, and the internal absence of unity has not only been detrimental to Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation, but it has also been the most conspicuous thorn in the side of the PA as representative of the Palestinian people, leaving it little room to negotiate a settlement with Israel.
Even so, more and more people are waking up to the fact that the main threat to Israel is Israel itself. The Palestinians are merely a sideshow and a convenient one at that.
Worldwide grassroots initiatives such as the Gaza Flotilla, the Welcome to Palestine campaign, and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement have all served to draw attention to the Palestinian experience under occupation.
So while the balance is clearly tipping away from Israel toward a just solution for both peoples, key western leaders and politicians are, of course, still missing from the growing cacophony.
The question is how can the Palestinians turn this growing support into decisive political action? Unfortunately, their chances will depend a lot on the result of the US presidential election, as well as the political discourse inside of Israel.
Nevertheless, in the coming months and years, this is a crucial question for the PA and those Palestinians who have the means to act in the international arena. Certainly, getting their own house in order is essential, but it can be in parallel to an overarching strategy to win over the American public and the wider western world.
