Israel's bombing of Lebanon has roused international attention while Palestinians see in televised images scenes from their everyday lives, writes Khaled Amayreh in the West Bank Palestinians under military occupation have been watching with helpless anguish the gruesome images of Israel's campaign of murder and horror in Lebanon. For a people who have just buried an additional 100, victim to Israeli state terrorism which also targets schools, bridges and power stations, the merciless killing of Lebanese civilians and wanton destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure, clarion testimony to Israeli criminal savagery, are scenes all too familiar. Equally familiar for the Palestinians has been the brazen approval by the Bush administration of Israel's murderous aggression, as well as the impotent silence and betrayal by brotherly Arab states and segments of the international community as a whole. "What is happening in Lebanon doesn't surprise us at all. We ourselves have been -- and continue to be -- slaughtered by Israel on a daily basis while the Arabs are watching passively as if this was happening on another planet. The West is merely pleading with Israel to exercise a modicum of discretion while killing us," said a Hebron physician while watching dead Lebanese children and women being retrieved from under the rubble of a Tyre building bombed by Israeli warplanes. Palestinian identification with Hizbullah has assumed several manifestations. Portraits of Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, now available everywhere, are pasted prominently throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This is significant given that Palestinians are Sunni Muslims and that Nasrallah is a Shia leader who, unlike predominantly Sunni Arab states in the region, has made the Palestinian cause a central theme, if not the raison d'être, of Hizbullah. It is the camaraderie of the oppressed vis- à-vis the oppressor, said Khaled Al-Batsh, an Islamic Jihad leader in the Gaza Strip, explaining Palestinian solidarity and identification with Hizbullah. "Hizbullah is doing all of this for Palestine and because of Palestine. We must show the brothers in Lebanon that we are with them heart and soul." Apart from "the camaraderie of suffering", Palestinians are hoping that the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hizbullah last week, ostensibly triggering the current Israeli rampage, will eventually lead to the release from Israeli jails of hundreds of Palestinian political and resistance prisoners. Israel is holding as many as 10,000 Palestinian activists, including numerous women and children, in harsh conditions, many of them kept as hostages or bargaining chips against the resistance. Earlier this month, the Israeli army abducted scores of Palestinian lawmakers and ministers in a show of arrogance aimed at demonstrating to Palestinians that Israel is the master and that their democratically elected government -- indeed, the entire Palestinian Authority (PA) -- enjoys not one iota of sovereignty. Some of these detainees, like PA Minister of Endowment and Islamic Affairs Sheikh Nayef Rajoub, have been placed in solitary confinement in the notorious Askalan Prison for no apparent purpose or reason. The often open-ended imprisonment by Israel of so many Palestinians, and the unmitigated emotional anguish to numerous Palestinian families, has generated a solid Palestinian consensus in solidarity with the prisoners. According to a survey published in the West Bank this week, a vast majority of Palestinians believe that every conceivable effort must be made -- presumably including capturing Israeli soldiers -- in order to free the prisoners, especially those who have spent more than 20 years behind Israeli bars. According to the poll, conducted by Nabil Kukali of Hebron University, the vast bulk of Palestinians adamantly oppose releasing the Israeli soldier captured by Palestinian resistance fighters near Gaza a month ago without Israel releasing Palestinian prisoners and detainees in return. This despite the rampant destruction in Gaza, including entire families exterminated when Israeli F- 16s warplanes bombed their homes at night. By equal measure, virtually all Palestinians pray that Hizbullah will emerge defiant from the wrath of Israel's war machine. Many Palestinians have found pride in the firing of rockets by Hizbullah on several Israeli towns, including for the first time Haifa and Affula. "Now, the Israelis will feel some of the pain and death they have been meting out to us," said one northern Gazan whose home was destroyed by Israel's artillery bombardment. "Yes, I know their pain is nothing compared to the massacres they are carrying out here in Gaza and there in Lebanon, but at least they can get a taste of what we are undergoing," he added. Some Palestinian leaders meanwhile hope that when the dust settles in Lebanon the world community will pay more attention to the Palestinian issue, the core problem in the Middle East. "The war in Lebanon, the war in Iraq and so-called 'terror' are in the final analysis mere symptoms of the Palestinian plight," said a Palestinian government official and advisor to Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. "The world must know that there can be no stability or security in this region, and probably in the world as well, if the Palestinian people are not granted justice and freedom," he added. For his part, Arab League Secretary- General Amr Moussa this week reflected Arab frustration and disenchantment with the international community's powerlessness to end the Israeli occupation of the occupied Palestinian territories. He warned during an extraordinary meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo that chaos and terror would spread all over the region and beyond if the world -- and specifically the United States -- continues to treat Israel as above international law. "By now it is clear that the peace process is dead; there is no road and there is no map," said a visibly frustrated Moussa, alluding to the moribund American-backed "roadmap plan for peace". The question is black and white: If Arab youth sees that justice cannot be obtained through international law and via the moral authority of the international community, who is to blame them for resorting to force to gain their rights?
