A letter from a Palestinian Child to the US President

Precaution: The Palestinian child doesn't have a specific clear definition for terms like "terrorism" and "peace".

Dear Mr. President,

First I would like to congratulate you for your new post; I guess it is a good but tiring job.
I want to apologize for not watching your inaugural ceremony, we have no electricity in Gaza, and moreover, I was busy dragging out the corpses of my family while the ceremony was taking place. I heard it was a hell of a ceremony, I wish I could shared the world its joy, but you know, it was a bit difficult to feel happy in such circumstances.

But I heard you after the ceremony, two days later a neighbour came to us while we were still searching for the corps of my little sister carrying with him a portable TV. He looked very serious and said: Youth, the new president of the United States is going to comment on what happened. He said that he is optimistic because you assigned someone called Michael or… Mitchell, something like that. He added that he is a good person.

Oh, we found the corps of my three years old sister, she was completely burnt, my twenty one years old cousin fainted, but I remembered my father's advice for me: Be a man. I was about to faint while I was pulling out her body which was stuck under the devastated building and her body started to crumble…. It was totally scorched. Before I lose control, I remembered my mother's suggestion when we were frightened of the loud voice of the Israeli strikes: When you feel frightened try to think of something else.

Thank you Mr. President, it was your speech that distracted me while I was collecting my sister's fragments. I heard you saying: Israel has the right to defend itself… achieving peace in the middle east…. Hamas was sending rockets ….. democracy … and other words that I cannot remember. I am sorry again, I was striving to concentrate in your speech but the smell of my sister's body and my fear that I may lose some of it didn't help me to grasp what you were saying exactly. I just realised our neighbour's anger when he turned the TV off murmuring that he wasted the battery for nothing.

We had already pulled out the corps of my mother and half of the corps of my father; we couldn't find the rest of his body.
To be frank with you, I never thought of addressing any American president, I mean, it goes without saying that we are killed with American weapons and taxes. The doctors in the hospitals said that Americans were experimenting a new weapon called DIME in this war, I mean the war on Gaza. We don't talk to the enemy.

But during the funeral I heard you – on the same TV that belongs to the same neighbour who usually turns it off after your speeches cursing his stupid persistence on wasting the battery - in an interview with an Arab TV channel saying that you want to deliver us a message that America is not our enemy.

Oh, I felt responsibility, it seems Mr. President that someone is playing behind your back, it seems that you don't know that we are killed with your weapons, it seems that those who use the veto to protect Israel and let it get away with its crimes against us in the security council are just doing this without even telling you, it seems that you don't know that your country annually pumps a huge amount of money to Israel, well Mr. President, Israel is the enemy, and we didn't choose it. We didn't beg for check points, we didn't beg for blockage, we didn't beg for cluster bombs, phosphorus bombs and this new bomb you are experimenting on us.

Besides, I heard you saying that you want to achieve peace in the Middle East; I know, I know, it is us, we are theMiddle East. Why Mr. President? Why do you want to achieve more peace in us? We had enough peace; we had more than enough peace during the last war. Do you want to achieve more?
The blond woman called Livni said that she wants peace that is why Israel waged this aggression on us. I lost my whole family in this peace process. And those who imposed the blockage on Gaza – during which one of my cousins died because of the shortage of medicine – always talk about peace: Abbas, Fayyad, Mubarak. They are men of peace, exactly like Livni. They did all what they can to achieve peace, I don't think that you need more peace, do you?

I went to my cousin's home, he also lost all his family, I am in his custody now. He is my all family and I am his only family. He is twenty one years old as I told you before, he was a student in the faculty of medicine, but he was not allowed to graduate, the blockage and the bad circumstances pushed him to leave the university and work, then he joined the resistance during this last war. He is a Hamas member now. You said you will achieve peace on them.. in them … within them? Something like that… right? Anyway, I don't remember, I just remember that you want to harm my cousin too because he is a terrorist. I wonder what is wrong with terrorists like my cousin. He is a very nice guy, you would like him if you meet him. He prepares breakfast for me, he cooks very delicious smashed eggs, he takes me to school, he stays all night besides me because I have nightmares every night, and when I wake up startled with the frightening nightmare he puts his hand on my forehead and recites some verses from the Quran and sing me beautiful songs till I fall asleep again.

After school he plays with me soccer in the street, he tells me very funny jokes and gorgeous fairy tales, he swings me along with his friends whom you call terrorists and I laugh to tears. On my neighbour's TV I watched you practicing some terrorism with your daughters; you were playing with them exactly like my cousin plays with me. Why don't you want my cousin to be a good terrorist like you?
Why do you want to make peace in my country while you all live in terrorism happily? Did we annoy you Mr. President? We don't even know you, if someone in my district did anything wrong to you just tell me and I will oblige him to apologize for you.

Then you tell us that you are not our enemy! Then who is our enemy Mr. President? I see, it is the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Oho, my mother used to tell me that I have to lessen my satirical remarks, I am sorry Mr. President, but imagine Mr. Obama that you were dragging the corps of one of you girls – God forbids – while someone is nagging behind you blaming you for the death of your own daughter and never blames the one who killed her, on the contrary, he thinks that the murderer's crime is entirely justified and you and your daughter deserve what happened to you, what would you think of that guy? Would you think that he is your friend?

Mr. President, I know that you are "not an Arab but you are a decent family man", but that doesn't mean that those indecent family Arab men, women and children deserve to be barbequed. You don't kill people because they are indecent. By the way, my parents were not Hamas members, truly they elected Hamas, but they didn't work with the resistance.
My mother was happy with the elections; she said that this is democracy. I am very sad that my mother didn't know that democracy means destruction; she thought it is a nice thing. Now I know that democracy is like peace, they both kill families and children. But it is too late; I wish my mother read more books to know better than that.

The whole situation really confuses me, my cousin says that is because I am still a child, but I am not a child, I am seven years old and I am a man as my father wanted me. Yet I really do not understand when people are occupied what usually they do except resisting? When they are the natives, the owners of the land and someone comes and expel them from this land and build settlements, are they supposed to just leave without any resistance? Would you do this Mr. President? Would you give up your home to somebody else that easy? Why would you live with your daughters safely at home while my home is devastated? I am not a creature with a tail, I really do not have any tails, you can check yourself. I am a human being like you, exactly like you.

Apparently you believe the blond woman when she says that Hamas is hiding among civilians. I will tell you the story because it is obvious that they are deceiving you. Hamas is not a ghost or a monster, it is a movement, that is to say… hmmm how can I explain it to you, yea, like a club or stuff like that, a group of people, very large number of people, those people are mostly like my cousin, I mean, ordinary people, cousins, brothers, neighbours…etc, and naturally such people have families and homes, these homes are in Gaza, so if someone of them is sitting at home with his brothers and sisters and this home is in a building that is full of women and children, actually he is not hiding, I mean if you phone called him he will answer, if you called him from the street he will look to you from the window as he does with his friends. They are the tenants, they don't have any place to go to except Gaza, they don't have any homes except their homes. And the blond woman says that they send rockets, well besides that Israel is occupation and we have to get them out of our lands, and these "cities" you are referring to are settlements built on our occupied lands, and those "civilians" whom you sympathise with are occupiers who were brought by the Israeli armyto live in our lands, beside all this, she is a liar, there was no ceasefire at all, during the calming or the ceasefire we had the Israeli planes flying over our heads, striking, killing six people one of them was my cousin's neighbour, he was wounded and left on the passage to Egypt because the borders were blocked and he died on the borders.

So I can assure you that these six were dead, because my cousin attended his neighbour's funeral. See? she is lying. I wonder how an adult woman like her lies all the time like that, and you are a kind person, I can understand why you believe her, that is because naturally an adult shouldn't lie, but life is full of surprises, I swear she is lying, I tell you what, let her face me personally with what she is telling the world, I will tell her that she is lying and she will never be able to deny it, I bet she will even refuse to face me.

I really don't want to be your enemy Mr. President, you Americans have nice movies, nice burger, nice coke, we can easily love you, but you don't give us any space. Arming Israelis to shower us with phosphorus peace, burning us with peace, destroying our schools with peace and peacefully making me an orphan… and now I am threatened to lose the last person left in my family, that doesn't make you a biased mediator or a strong ally to the enemy Mr. President, that makes you THE ENEMY.

I don't think it is smart to have a strong enemy like you, but what can I do Mr. President? Apparently it is your choice and I have nothing to do about it.
Don't worry Mr. President, everything is settled, I live with my cousin, he is preparing me emotionally that I may lose him, he told me what to do when he dies.

I know what to do, I went to a friend and I asked him to list me with the resistance and not to tell my cousin, he said that I am still a child, so I asked my cousin (without telling him the reasons of course) to find a way to smuggle milk and cheese through the tunnels so I can grow up fast and strong and join the resistance to be a nice young man like my cousin, to defend other families, to save the souls of other mothers and fathers, to protect other children from becoming orphans like me.

As for you, try to reconsider finding out who annoyed you in my district and made you insisting on killing us all, I swear I will tear him into pieces.
Best regards to you and special respect to your daughters…. I'll pray for them in order not to face my destiny.

Sincerely

Ali

Hamas is not going away

Mel Frykberg, The Electronic Intifada, 9 February 2009

RAMALLAH, occupied West Bank (IPS) -

Despite intensive efforts by Israel, the international community and a number of Arab leaders to weaken and destroy Hamas through economic, punitive and military action, the Islamist organization continues to be a force to reckon with.

Hamas won free and fair democratic elections in January 2006. The United States pushed for these elections, which were monitored by international observers including ex-US President Jimmy Carter, and Israel permitted them to be held.

Hamas has since then been dominant, though it took effective control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, more than a year after its election victory. The Gaza Strip took a serious battering during Israel's 22-day military assault, codenamed Operation Cast Lead.

The coastal territory has also been economically crippled by nearly two years of an Israeli embargo which has hermetically sealed Gaza off from the rest of the world, preventing the import of all but a tiny flow of humanitarian aid and goods.

Israel purportedly carried out the military operation to stop Palestinian rockets from hitting Israeli cities and towns bordering the Gaza Strip.

However, rocket fire on Israel had virtually ceased in the five months of ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that preceded an Israeli cross-border military operation into Gaza on 4 November. This operation provoked a barrage of retaliatory missiles on Israel.

Prior to Operation Cast Lead, a delegation of British parliamentarians met with Hamas leaders in Gaza. The parliamentarians were told that Hamas would be prepared to accept Israel's existence, within the internationally recognized borders of 1967, provided the Jewish state legitimized the rights of Palestinians in return.

Despite the immense scale of death and destruction wrought by Operation Cast Lead, which left over 1,300 Palestinians, mostly civilians dead, rockets continue to be fired at Israel in spite of disproportionate responses from the Israeli army.

Following the recent ceasefire most of Hamas's leadership emerged from underground bunkers unscathed. The digging of smuggling tunnels for everyday necessities as well as arms has resumed.

Furthermore, there are also growing signs that the Europeans, some Israelis and previous Arab opponents are resigned to factoring Hamas into any political equation to address a resolution of the conflict.

Last week after several days of intensive diplomatic pressure, the Israeli government managed to stymie a French initiative to weaken Israel's stance on Hamas.

Following a meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Brussels, France tried to change a pre-written closing statement released by the ministers regarding the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel.

Paris wanted the statement to say that the EU would be prepared to hold talks with a future Palestinian unity government which included Hamas as long as it agreed to honor the principles of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Additionally, the French delegation to Brussels proposed opening Israeli border crossings into Gaza immediately without any conditions. A previous agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 2005 stipulated that the PA had to control the crossings.

However, following intervention by Israel, the Czech Republic -- the current holder of the EU presidency -- Germany, Italy and the Netherlands pushed the French initiative off the agenda.

Israel viewed the French move as an attempt to get the Quartet for Middle East peace - the UN, the US, Russia and the EU -- to soften its conditions for international recognition of Hamas.

A senior Israeli official said that since the end of the Gaza operation, his country was concerned about a possible break in European support for the boycott of the Hamas government in Gaza.

US President Barack Obama's Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, met French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner in Paris recently.

During the meeting the Gaza ceasefire was discussed and Kouchner stressed the need for inter-Palestinian dialogue and for the border crossings into Gaza to be reopened.

Kouchner again suggested France was open to the idea of a unity government if Hamas softened its stance.

Meanwhile, Irish Foreign Minister Michael Martin told reporters in Damascus on Monday that some kind of engagement with Hamas may have to feature in future European Union policy.

Hamas's erstwhile foe and bitter rival Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who controls the West Bank, also discussed the issue with French President Nicholas Sarkozy in Paris on Monday.

Abbas too called for a unity Palestinian government and said Hamas's inclusion was imperative as long as it recognized his supreme authority.

On Monday Sarkozy also met Qatar's Prime Minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani, whose Persian Gulf country has emerged as a regional mediator since helping to resolve a political crisis in Lebanon last year. Al-Thani insisted Hamas should not be sidelined from peace efforts.

"We must work for a government of national unity between the Palestinians. There should not be efforts to delete or distance one of the Palestinian parties present on the ground," al-Thani told reporters.

Israeli columnist and analyst Akiva Elder noted in the daily Haaretz that Israel's continual denial of the reality of Hamas as a legitimate political entity was short-sighted.

For 20 years Israel has tried to destroy the movement using carrots and sticks alternately. The only difference between the ruling Kadima party's leader and minister of foreign affairs, Tzipi Livni, and the more right-wing opposition Likud party leader Binyamin Netanyahu is the size of the clubs to be used, argued Eldar.

"Precisely because of the many children killed in Gaza, Cast Lead has been assured a place of honor in the ethos of the struggle of the Palestinian David, armed with primitive Qassams, and the Israeli Goliath, with his F-16s," said Eldar.

"When they hear the proud declarations of Israel's leaders, to the effect that deterrence has been restored, Hamas's leaders certainly laugh themselves to death, and not just because of the rockets that continue to fall on the people of Ashkelon.

"The threat of a few more bombs on Gaza deters them like the death penalty deters a suicide bomber on the way to carry out an attack," said Eldar.

Only a long-term ceasefire, it seems, accompanied by a real diplomatic context, can pull the rug of popular support out from under Hamas and restore it to its natural proportions.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10285.shtml