Report from Ramallah.....By Jamil Shawwa

Reports and people are telling a story of a city that is thriving, some call it the capital of the new Palestinian state and others call it the temporary capital until the eastern part of Jerusalem is ready to be declared as the capital of the Palestinian state, with the western part of Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel; both parts open and free for all residents and visitors. Ramallah since 1994 has been the actual capital of the Palestinian authority; being few miles away from Jerusalem gave it that importance. Gaza really has always been the other city, the girlfriend, or the companion, or the second wife- If you are in the Middle East, you could qualify to have**four wives at a time- or the city in the waiting to be on its own. It happened in 2006 when Hamas kicked the Palestinian authority and declared Gaza as a separate governing part from Ramallah... Two elected authorities, one in Gaza and one in Ramallah tell the story in brief of the Palestinian people. A story that is filled with disappointments, mistrusts, conspiracies, and pain. The Palestinian politicians fight, conspire and the people suffer. However, the people also are not so innocent; they are to a large part a reflection of the leadership. It looks like they are somehow do not expect more of their leadership, as if they expect them to fight and mistrust each other, otherwise the story would not ring true. Throughout their history, the Palestinians never had a leader, except for one, Yasser Arafat, that took historic and monumental, in some views, in mine, natural, steps to ensure the real and normal course of evolution. The Palestinians in the 40s of the last century had the worst leader, the most terrible by the name of Amin El-Husseini, a demagogue, opportunist with no morals or any values or at least any political skills, who went to the criminals the Nazis to plan some sort of post world war II German influence in the Middle East. El-Husseini like most of the Palestinian leadership has always read history wrong, has always been on the side of the losers and the defeated. If you look objectively at the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the *UN partition of the pre 1948 historic Palestine, you cannot but notice that the Arabs and the Palestinians were the aggressors, those that missed all the opportunities to have a Palestinian state side by side of the state of Israel. The UN and the international community gave the Palestinians a state over 60 years ago on a silver platter, but they reject it then and continue to reject. Their history has been the history of the self-defeat; Israel has nothing to do with what the Palestinians think that they did not achieve.  Yasser Arafat read history well, saw the signs and understood the clues. The present and the future of the Palestinian people and the future Palestinian state does not reside with the way the Palestinians are within their Arab neighbors but most important on the relationship with the State of Israel. The future of the Middle East is the future that will have the State of Israel as a vibrant participant and part of it. The Palestinians will have a part too. The interest of having a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is an Israeli national and strategic interest, the Palestinians, some of them must know this fact, but they must be careful not to try to twist arms with Israel; It will not work, and it is if it happens would be just dumb politics. The most help to establish the state of Palestine will come from the neighbor to the north, the State of Israel. Anyone, whoever they might be or position, that would say otherwise, or contradict the importance of the State of Israel either in the Middle East or in establishing and supporting the Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, is either does not know anything about anything, or are pursuing an agenda that needs to be ignored, the least to say. The Palestinians need to hold elections, and if Hamas wins, then let it be but must first have a national project or a national model that identify the principles of the future of the state of Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza, which is a secular government, no other way, and a government that knows, identify, recognize, believe that the Palestinian state means only and nothing more and once and for all just the territories in the West Bank and The Gaza Strip. Anything other than that would be done for demagoguery and hypocrisy purposes and in this field, the Arabs and the Palestinians compete with the Iranians. Also those that would deny the previous, are those that do not want to see a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, and those, the Palestinians, need to ignore. My telephone speaker from Ramallah all of sudden asked, when was the last time you were here, I said just recently, twenty six years ago, maybe around 1986, I remember I went to Abu Iskandar for Shawerma sandwich and then to Rukab for ice-cream. I told her, you know Ramallah is Ramallah, a small town. She interrupted and said; forget about it, it is now looks like Tel-Aviv, Cairo, Amman or Beirut. She talked of hotels, conference halls, restaurants, nightclubs, banks, embassies, everything right now is in Ramallah; it became a mini capital and country by itself. I asked one more time, but please, answer this one, what happened to Abu Iskandar, she said he is there; the sons took over after the passing of the father. I said fine, if Abu Iskandar is still in Ramallah, then Ramallah might not be too bad.

*UN Resolution 181, 1947. 
**The strict rule of the Quran allows a man to have four wives at a time with the absolute precondition of complete equal treatments among them in everything. According to scholars, basically, it is something almost impossible to achieve, and thus the four wives cannot in actuality be materialized. Therefore, as any society, one wife at a time is the prevailing Islamic preference :)