The Palestinian Israeli Conflict

The Palestinian Israeli conflict can and will be resolved when both Palestinians and Israelis do the following:

1-Recognize as a matter of destiny the point of no return that both are destined to live together in that strip of land called Israel and Palestine.
2-Both countries must have viable and internationally recognized borders.
3-Both Israel and Palestine must move on and get over two issues: the refugees and the settlements. Both issues are bargaining chips to get to the final status for Palestine. The Palestinian refugees can not come back and the Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip must be redirected to settle inside the state of Israel.
4-Jerusalem should be an open city and a capital for both countries.

Lebanon 2005

Until recently, I continued to believe that there is a country called Lebanon. I mean by country, a government, institutions, people, defense forces, etc. But I changed my mind. Looking back at the history of this beautiful land, we can see that it's people have been famous of being merchants of services, all kind of services. This land called Lebanon has the best food in the middle east, the sexiest women, nicest nature, but it does not have a country! Since independence, Lebanon had two authorities, the formal one, the government, and a militia, that decided for whatever reason, to maintain an army parallel to the formal one. The current example is Hizbullah and the formal government. The Lebanese are famous of trade, they have been trading their country and their existence since the mid fifties to whoever pays more or protects more. The Lebanese people never found a common ground to agree on to form a country and government based on institutions; their system is based on strange formula to share power among the religious groups. They used to say, Lebanon strength is in it's weakness. This statement proved to be one of the most deceiving political statements ever created. Lebanon's weakness, and the fact that you can buy it's leaders, have wrecked this beautiful land and killed it's leaders, last, but maybe not least, Rafiq Al Hariri, the former prime minister, and a Sunni leader. Lebanon could have been the Switzerland of the East, both countries have different ethnic groups, Switzerland has even different languages, yet it managed to found a formula to exist as a country and gained an international recognition of it's unique status. In Lebanon everyone speaks the same language, Arabic, and they speak other languages. The Israeli Arab conflict has affected Lebanon since the start. Lebanon has couple of hundred of thousands Palestinian refugees in it's areas, some are militarized. Lebanon, more than any border Arab country with Israel, has been torn apart by this conflict, the Arab Israeli. From now on, to the unforeseen future, there is a piece of land in the middle east called Lebanon. One day this land might produce an example of a transparent democracy in the area.

Mission

This site will focus on making the news clearer to both Americans and Arabs. We will analyze the news and as much as we can, we will say why this media outlet or person said what they said or what they should have said or done instead. We will clear the misunderstandings that happen daily because we do not understand each others' culture and psychology. We will analyze the psychology behind the behavior or the news. Basically, we will strip the news to its smallest component and run a root cause analysis to get to the bottom line. Although the focus will be on open source news that affect both Arab and American audiences, nevertheless, we might analyze any piece of information from anywhere in the world. I will provide two simple examples from both the US and the Arab world on how news could have been better and smarter if put in its right cultural and psychological perspective. Both the New York Times and The Washington Post, two of the most respected newspapers in the US, kept referring to the former Iraqi president as Hussein, in their headlines. In fact no one in the Middle East or in Iraq ever referred to the former president as Hussein, but as Saddam. This , some might say, is a ridicules example, but it's not. It's so small but important in its dimension. Elakhbar, an Egyptian newspaper, put a cartoon the other day for a man, clearly a western or American from the way the cartoonist drown it, telling a friend that” he is going to Egypt to buy few votes in the upcoming presidential elections because he heard that in Egypt you can bought some people” this cartoon is a stereotypical of how the Arab establishment in general and not only in Egypt have injected the people of ideas that the west is out to get them. A little background here, Elakhbar considers that anyone or most candidates who will or might run against president Mubarak of Egypt are either traitors or easy for the west to buy. Moreover, it’s the fear factor that the political politburo in the Middle East have injected its people with against the west in particular.Now, hear this: fanatics are in part a product of that environment that I have just mentioned above. They are born hearing all sorts of stuff against the west, in government run TVs, papers, schools, movies, etc. When those brain washed individuals go out and commit crimes against humanities, Arab governments look around and wonder what happened?