News & opinions from a Palestinian-American
living & working in Ramallah/Al-Bireh, Palestine
17 post/s found with this tag.
The current government’s policies and actions are an apex towards realizing a strategy designed to fulfill a political vision of applying full Israeli sovereignty to the West Bank while establishing a reality of Jewish supremacy and relegating the Palestinians living in the territory to the smallest possible geographical area.
Although much has been written about the Wall, few efforts have sought to dig deeper into why States turned a blind eye to all its illegalities, which were clearly ingredients for a troubling road ahead, as we are now witnessing. Mohammed Alatar has taken this aspect of the Wall head on in a newly released documentary titled, “BROKEN”. Watch the trailer and read Sam’s article on Mondoweiss.
“The tallest man in Ramallah offered to give us a tour of his cage. We would not even have to leave our table at Rukab’s Ice Cream, on Rukab Street; all he needed to do was reach into his pocket…” Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon roams the West Bank with Sam Bahour. This essay was first published on Literary Hub before appearing in the writers’ compendium, “Kingdom of Olives and Ash” (2017).
![‘The Two-State Delusion,’ a well-researched but mistitled saga of a failed peace process [Book Review]](https://epalestine.ps/sambahour/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/9780143129172-1.jpg)
University of Massachusetts Boston professor Padraig O’Malley’s The Two-State Delusion’s title suggests that there is something paradoxical in persevering with a proposed solution of two states, Israel and Palestine, as a way forward; the thrust of the historical accounts and the arguments made, however, are actually geared more toward convincing the reader that what failed is the process rather than the two-state paradigm itself, which has never yet been tested. A more accurate title would have been “Eulogy for a U.S.-Monopolized Peace Process.”
![Zionism’s Invented State [Book Review]](https://epalestine.ps/sambahour/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/israeli-exceptionalism-m-shahid-alam.jpg)
This was not the first time I have read the word “exceptionalism” in relation to Israel. New York Times columnist Roger Cohen recently wrote that Israel “lives in a perpetual state of exceptionalism.” (New York Times, Oct. 16, 2009). However, Professor Alam explored this Israeli phenomenon on a deeper level of its underlying ideology to shed light on why this abnormal state seems to be unable to come to terms with modern day realities.
!["Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness" by Rashid Khalidi [Recommended]](https://epalestine.ps/sambahour/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/PalestinianIdentity.jpg)