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04/14/2004: "What goes around comes around"
The big news of the day is that the US has decided to side with the only democracy in the Middle East against the people who danced in the streets on 9/11 and thought Saddam Hussein taking over Kuwait was peachy:
Joyless Palestinians took bitter consolation from the prospect of ruling Gaza on Wednesday as the United States backed Israel's hold on chunks of West Bank land.
Marking a historic U.S. policy shift, President George W. Bush implicitly recognised Israel's claim to some West Bank settlements and crushed the faint hope of Palestinian refugees that they might someday return to homes fled decades ago.
Even in Gaza, there was no celebration that the world's most powerful country also endorsed an Israeli plan to pull out troops and Jewish settlers from the desert strip.
"Why should we be happy when they gave us Gaza and swallowed the West Bank," said Ali Khalil at a Gaza City cafe.
"When they cancel our right of return and abort the dream of a Palestinian state, why should we be happy?"
Ah, the "right of return"–the Palestinian dream of destroying the Jewish state through demography. Your "right of return" to homes your people fled when told to by Arab states whose armies were trying to crush Israel at its birth was a fable, Mr. Khalil. A fantasy fed you by your corrupt leadership in an effort to prevent you from holding them responsible for the misery of your life. Why, even today, do you let them succeed?
Some cried, some just stared empty-faced at televisions beaming Bush's words from the White House as he stood beside Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Palestinians said they had not felt such loss of hope since the start of an uprising in 2000 when talks foundered on setting up an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza–territories seized by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.
To how many Palestinians do you suppose it has occurred that the intifada, and the extraordinary disregard for innocent human life shown in it, may have been one of the more significant contributing factors leading up to today's event?
Militants sworn to destroy Israel vowed to step up their war.
But few Palestinians could offer new ideas for how they could challenge Israel with such firm backing from the United States.
In Gaza, Amenah Abu Sharekh said she still guarded her dream.
"We will return from where we were forced to flee," she cried, surrounded by 11 grandchildren. "The Jews will go and we will return."
And thus will the fantasy world the Palestinians have lived in since 1948 be passed on to the next generation, and the next, and the next...
