The Queens of Jordan, Busy at Work

I'm currently reading an autobiography of Queen Noor, the late King Hussein's wife, and I can't help but admire this woman. Not only that, but King Abdullah's wife Queen Rania of Jordan is on the same track, and is setting up lots of different programs and looking into humanitarian issues. These women are breaking the stereotypes that Western Society has tagged the Arab World with as ignorant and violent. And I am very proud of what Queen Noor accomplished and what she is accomplishing as well as Queen Rania. I can't imagine how Jordanians feel, if I, a Syrian is extremely happy. These women present the Arabic World in an elegant and professional way, and exhibit their knowledge to help causes such as AIDS in Africa, Land Mines in South America, and the Palestinian-Israeli crisis that is till now affecting millions of people. These women, I feel, represent the Arab world in the best way possible and show the International Society what the Arab world really is, and the level of understanding and desire for peace we have. I was looking through YouTube earlier today and I found out that Queen Rania has her own YouTube channel. On it, there were exclusive interviews and a series of videos called "Breaking the Stereotypes", which is a aimed at the understanding of the Arabic world and society, and to put aside the stereotypes that affect people's minds so negatively. I was also watching Queen Noor's response to the Gaza Crisis and I'm ecstatic when I saw her explaining the situation from our point of view, to CNN. She is a very intelligent person, and upon the host of the show commenting and saying, "Israel would not have had this offensive if there weren't rockets being launched by Hamas, and other extremest groups". She says (and I'm just paraphrasing) "The level of poverty in Gaza and the West Bank as well as the Israeli Occupation they are living under deprives the Palestinians of hope, and it is so much easier to be drawn by these extremist groups, that only form because of the absence of peace." And people should hear these words and this exact answer to understand the situation in the Middle East.

The autobiography that I'm reading now is called "Leap of Faith, Memoirs of an Unexpected Life" by Queen Noor. It's brilliantly written, and it's easy to read. I did not know very much about the country of Jordan, but now I'm starting to appreciate it's role in the Middle East and King Hussein's as well as Queen Noor's work on getting the Arab-Israeli peace process re-ignited. Queen Noor was born in the United States into an Arab-American family. She travelled to Jordan and met King Hussein. They fell in love and married, and she faced a lot of obstacles once she was queen. But she knew that she wanted to accomplish many things, to benefit Jordan and the whole world. She started on projects for the Palestinian refugees in Jordan, and many architectural as well as cultural projects, such as the Jerash Annual Festival. And to this day, she is still working, along with Queen Rania who is side by side with UNRWA, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Take a look at Queen Rania's YouTube channel, and the videos that are on there to build a bridge between the Western World and the Middle East:

http://www.youtube.com/QueenRania

Israel's Excuse for War

Israel, always "acting in defense of its citizens" has a lot of different tactics to spark war in the region. One of them being to push the surrounding Arab countries to the limits of their patience, until they say enough and resort to violence. In response, Israel launches an all out war, and the IDF destroys anything in their way, being houses or innocent children. Let's take the example of the 1967 Six Day War. The start of this war was not in June, but in April, two months before the official Six Day War. Israeli Settlers were advancing deeper and deeper into the heart of the Golan Heights in Syria and they were plowing land, in an area known as the demilitarized zone. The Israeli government was pushing these people further and further. And this strategy was well thought out beforehand. They wanted a reaction from the Syrian Government, they wanted them to shoot at the Israeli Settlers and that's exactly what happened. Because in this situation, there are only two choices the Syrian government could take, and only one choice to defend Syrian land. If they didn't shoot, the Israeli Settlers would advance more and more and settle in Syria, just like they are currently in the West Bank. But they did shoot, and the Israelis launched a disproportionate offensive. This is what Israel's Defense Minister, Moshe Dayan said at the time to the New York Times, "If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also". So the Israeli Defense Minister at the time, said it himself, that this advancement of settlers was to trigger a reaction from the Syrians, and in response Israel would be justified to attack Syria, as an "Act of Defense for the Israeli Citizens". And they did exactly that, causing heavy Syrian casualties as well as the shooting down of several planes over the city of Damascus. These are their tactics, provocation, violence, and lies. And this cycle will never end. We saw it just recently with the Gaza offensive. Israel blockades, Hamas shoots rockets, and Israel announces a war "to ensure the safety of the citizens of the State of Israel", and kills around a thousand and a half people in the process. And I don't have to mention the state of destruction the Gaza strip is in right now, and all of that just for home made rockets being launched and barely killing 5 people and doing any damage. Israel's disproportionate offensives and attacks will never end. The world witnessed in 2006 how Israel bombed Rafik al Hariri International Airport in Beirut, Lebanon. Why, because Hezbollah imprisoned two Israeli soldiers and won't release them, in comparison with the hundreds of innocent war prisoners in Israel. Not only did it bomb the airport, but this whole issue became a month long war that destroyed a portion of Beirut. So before the world points fingers at the Palestinians and neighboring Arab countries, they should recognize what Israel had done, what it is doing, and what it will do in the near future.

Israel's Disproportionate "Retaliations"

Much of the time, the Western World, and the United States most importantly, persuade themselves that what Israel is doing, and all the attacks and offensives that take place are a reaction to Palestinian violence and attacks. Let's take the example of the Gaza Offensive, which just ended a little over a month ago. Because of the rockets that Hamas was launching into Israel, Israel decided that it was enough and attacked the small, yet heavily populated Gaza Strip, first from the air and then on foot. Yet the Israeli government, or the world at that matter, never asks why they started attacking Israel in the first place. Maybe it was resistance to the occupation, but in my opinion it was an outcry to the ridiculous blockade that Israel has cast on all the Gaza strip. It controls what comes in and what goes out. There is barely any food, no electricity, no clean water. What could the Palestinians do other than launch rockets. I see these rockets as flares, fireworks that get the attention of the population around them. They were used as signals of desperate and immediate help, just like the sinking Titanic used flares to signal to ships in the distance. After this "Act of Defense for the safety of the Israeli people" was over, the result would be the slaughter of about 1,300 people and more than a fourth of these victims are innocent women and children. When the world confronts the Israeli government with this information, all it can say is "Hamas is using innocent civilians as human shields". If I were to ask the Israeli government to explain what they mean, they would say that "Hamas is hiding in heavily populated areas to get the sympathy of the world when there is a huge number of casualties". However, where can the ruling group of an area live, or hide in that matter. Gaza is one of the most heavily populated areas in the world, with about 1.5 million people living there. I won't deny the "Acts of Humanity" that Israel has done by releasing flyers to the Gazans reading "We Will Destroy Your Home Tomorrow, Go Somewhere Safe". But where is safety? Where is safety in a strip that barely measures 139 square miles that is bombarded by white phosphorous and other lethal bombs every two minutes. Where is the family that just received this flyer going to go? Out on the streets, where it's even more dangerous due to the land offensive, because there is no way out of the Gaza Strip. This is what Tzipi Livni said "We are not telling them to go out of Gaza, we are just telling them to go to a safer place in Gaza". As if the poor innocent families had a copy of the IDF's agenda on what to destroy next.

The West Bank: Reaching Prosperity

In the first part of this series of articles, I wrote about the awful checkpoints and the results of the Separation Wall Israel has built around the West Bank. Now I want to write about the possibility of prosperity reaching the land. There is only one obstacle in the Palestinians way of reaching prosperity, and that is Israel. (Shocking, right?) The Israelis, when building this wall, didn't even stay on the path of the Green Line, which is the official borders of the West Bank. They chose to take their own path and zigzag around the original borders, taking a huge amount of land from some villages. For example, in the village of Bi'lin, Israel took 50% of the land, where all the farming fields and vegetation was, originally belonging to the village, and built modern settlements for the Israelis. It's so ironic, to have beautiful houses sitting on lush valleys on one side of this wall, and on the other, poverty-stricken villages, with dirt roads and crumbling houses. The Israelis would say, why not let the Palestinian Authority invest in infrastructure. First of all, the financial issues. The neighboring Arab countries, including Saudia Arabia and the gulf states could donate and aid them. Now they have the money. Next thing is, how are they going to bring in building supplies and steel and all the necessities of building, with a wall this size. There is no way in or out of this area for some. And how can the Palestinians be sure that Israel will not take these buildings away from them, just like they did in 1948. They wouldn't want to build for nothing. And if they build homes and new buildings, who would buy them. At the level of poverty the Palestinians are in because of Israel, there is no hope for the occupants to increase their wage, and live a better lifestyle. The West Bank is not even a country! When the Palestinian Territories become a fully independent state, then they can build and prosper their new land. But not now, when Israel is controlling what comes in and what goes out, including water, electricity, and food. People often point out the success of the young state of Israel. But we can point our fingers to the United States, for all the financial aid, and the modern military aid, that helped them acquire this land, violently and with force, in the first place.

The West Bank: An Open Air Prison?

What we most often hear Israeli politicians say and repeat over and over again is this: Instead of spending so much money on rockets and war material, they can invest in infrastructure. It's very easy to say that, but when it comes time and the Palestinians want to do exactly that, we will see the Israelis taking back their words. Before I write about the infrastructure issue, let me write about the possibility of a Palestinian state existing on the other side of this fence. This picture, reminds me of a concentration camp, not a "wall to ensure the safety of Israeli citizens". It's three times the height of the Berlin Wall, and so much times longer, engulfing the whole West Bank when it will be complete in 2012. The United Nations has to wake up to this nightmare and order Israel to stop building this Apartheid Wall. It is in all sense apartheid and the West Bank is now a huge prison. People living in the West bank can't go to other villages without stopping hours on end at ridiculous checkpoints, operated by obnoxious teenage boys serving their military service. They have no citizenship, and no nation, they are simply a forgotten people on this earth. No one can cross this wall and go into Israel without a special permit, a permit that is impossible to get by most occupants of this territory. Most people are poor in the West Bank because what jobs in an area that's closed off by a fence would pay a good amount of money. The Israeli's don't give them a chance to work on their side, calling them terrorists and that such. I am fully against the idea of suicide bombing against innocent civilians, and that is not what Islam orders, (anyone can interpret anything in their own way). The suicide attacks are what caused this wall to be built. I could kind of see where they're coming from, but the most they could have done is build checkpoints at some locations on the West Bank because this is just absurd. The West Bank isn't even a country to be closed off by walls like these. Anyone challenging this idea, what do you call what Israel is doing to the Palestinians; protecting their civilians?, no I do not think so at all, and this wall that was built will only increase the tension between these two peoples and will cause more violence as a result. I once compared this wall to the wall that the US wants to build on their border with Mexico. But then I remembered one key fact, Mexico is a country of its own, that is responsible for it's own trade, import and export, economy, infrastructure and a lot more. The West Bank and Gaza have nothing! Wake up everyone, and condemn this act of apartheid, of this imprisonment of the innocent people that are stuck in a poverty-filled area with barely any money, and barely any education for their kids.

The Two State Solution

Sixty years have passed since the birth of the State of Israel, yet to this day, no Palestinian State has formed. My original solution to the Palestinian-Israeli crisis, was one unified and independent state in which Jews and Arabs coexist peacefully in Historic Palestine. Yet, that is never going to happen. So now I resort to the two state solution. This solution, as many people have been talking about for many years is to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. However, to some Palestinians, and Arabs in general, this is giving up to Israeli Occupation, and to accept this solution would be an act of cowardice. However, after I have given this issue a lot of thought, and researched into the history of this region, I think this is the only thing that will solve all the violence and terror that is going on in the Holy Land. When we talk about this solution, the Right of Return of Palestinians is always discussed and always seems to complicate the already tangled plan. Why should Jews from all over the world have the right to come to Israel and establish their homes, yet Palestinians do not. Some people that leave Jerusalem for example, can never enter it, even if it is their birthplace. All Palestinians were expelled from their homes in Palestine after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and went to the West Bank. These people lived in poor infrastructure, refugee camps, a place where no person can tolerate. However, now could be the chance to change all that. By working to establish a Palestinian State in the West Bank and Gaza, the Palestinians can then modernize their lives, elect a government, build airports and modern cities, thrive tourism and most importantly live in peace. But, another flaw that tends to creep up into these discussions is the amount of land. If this state was to be created, Israel would have 78 percent of Historic Palestine, and Palestinians would have only 22 percent. Another flaw are the vast numbers of settlements in the West Bank. Those are to be removed before this process can ever take place, yet the Israeli Government is very reluctant to take such a step, because the settlers are not willing to go. And by taking such a step, the Israeli Government could see an uprising from their people. The most important topic to be discussed is Jerusalem. Many Palestinians are looking towards East Jerusalem as the capital of the new Palestinian state that is to be established. However, it is crazy to cut in half this holy city, which means cutting in half all the sacred sites of the Muslims, Jews and Christians alike, as in the case of the Temple Mount, or the "Haram al Sharif" as known to Muslims. This is the third most sacred site in the world for Muslims, and they want to be its custodians, its keepers. However Israel wants the same site, and is not willing to give it up. My opinion on the issue of Jerusalem as the capital of both states is preposterous. Jerusalem should not be cut in half like a peace of meat. This city should be under the rule of the United Nations, as an international city, not belonging to any state, just like the Vatican. People, Muslims, Jews, and Christians should be able to move freely, with full safety and re-assurance. The first step in this peace process, is the recognition of both sides, and to stop all the violence from both sides.

US and Syria Working for Better Ties

Senator of Massachusetts, John Kerry, visited Syria to talk with President Bashar al Assad about future relationships with Syria. Both sides want better ties, but they disagree on many things. The United States, under the Bush administration had decided in 2005, to withdraw the American Ambassador from Damascus, following Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri's assassination in Beirut, which in result caused the Syrian troops to withdraw from Lebanon. The Syrian President, Bashar al Assad expressed his desire of the American ambassador to come back to Damascus. For better peace ties between the US and Syria, the United States wants Syria to stop supporting groups such as Hizballah and Hamas, (which they call terrorist groups), and then the relationships will be better and will reach new heights. However, President Bashar al Assad replied to this statement, in "The Guardian", a British newspaper, and said that the United States cannot simply ignore Syria in the Middle Eastern peace process because Syria has a huge role to play in this complicated process. He also stated, after the Israeli offensive in Gaza, reaching peace with Israel will be a very difficult thing, if not impossible. (I am just paraphrasing by the way, this is not the President's exact words).

"The Lemon Tree": Neutral Perspective of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East, is a book that explains the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in precise detail. It gives two points of view, one from a Palestinian, Bashir, that used to live in the town of al Ramla in present day Israel before the expulsions, and a Bulgarian Jew, Dalia, that emigrated to Israel and now lives in the house the Bashir and his family were forced to flee. I went to Borders two days ago to pick up a copy of this book and it took me about half an hour to find it after the employee said it was misplaced. But in the end I was determined to read it as it caught my interest when I was browsing for books online. This is a neutral book, until now at least.. I am on page 142, about halfway into it. All the facts are there and the author is following the story of these two individuals. This book is totally and completely nonfiction. I love the amount of detail the author uses, and that I am glad that he depicts everything that happened and the sad events of all the innocent Palestinian families’ expulsions from their homes, and their forcing of living as refugees in their own land. When I am finished with the book, I will put up my own review and a summary. So far, it is highly recommended by me. This is the exact description on the back cover of the book:

In 1967 Bashir Khairi, a twenty-five-year-old Palestinian, journeyed to Israel with the goal of seeing the beloved stone house with the lemon tree behind it that he and his family had fled nineteen years earlier. To his surprise, when he found the house he was greeted by Dalia Eshkanazi Landau, a nineteen year old Israeli college student, whose family fled Europe for Israel following the Holocaust. On the stoop of their shared home, Dalia and Bashir began a rare friendship, forged in the aftermath of war and tested over the next thirty-five years in ways that neither could imagine on that summer day in 1967. Sandy Tolan brings the Israeli-Palestinian conflict down to its most human level, suggesting that even amid the bleakest political realities there exist stories of hope and reconciliation.

Akon and Melissa in Damascus

It was an extremely surprising piece of news to hear. Akon, a famous American singer, and Melissa, an "ok" Lebanese singer in the Middle East, made a duet together. I was shocked, not just surprised, and I didn't believe it at first at all. There was a link to youtube to listen to the song, and there it was. Melissa and Akon singing together. They will also make this song a music video, directed by Oliver Ojeil. Apart from these pieces of information, they will also be performing together in the Middle East in cities like Cairo and Damascus,, yes Damascus! I was thrilled when I heard it, because I believe this could be a step for the Western World to be in contact with this marvelous country, Syria. We already saw the success of Enrique Iglesias when he came to Damascus, and how big his concert was. Akon and Melissa will be performing in the Opera House in Damascus, another surprising piece of information. Melissa will also go on to Lattakia, which is a city in northern Syria on the Mediteranean Coast, and sing in Le Meridien Hotel. I hope this is the first step for Damascus to edge closer to the Western world.

Did Palestine Ever Exist?

This question in my opinion is a mockery to all of the Middle East. I came across a website (link at bottom) today, while looking up Mark Twain, and this is what I found. Mark Twain, apparently described the land of Palestine as an empty and barren land, with no inhabitants or vegetation of any sort. In my opinion this is a total lie. Palestine is the holy land, and in his short visit to this area, he only explored certain areas, which might have been vacant. But his statements are too broad to fit the entire country. In the 20th century, Zionists started using Mark Twain's quotes to support their campaign in building a Jewish state in Palestine. They were stating that the land was "uninhabited" and that the Arabs that were living there were a minority in a comparison to the Jews. But the truth was not this. The people living in Palestine was as follows: 657,000 Muslims, 81,000 Christian Arabs, and 59,000 Jews. And after the creation of the State of Israel, Israelis started denying the nationality of the people living in Palestine, and going further to saying there never was a country called Palestine or people called Palestinians. Zionists say these people were ignorant peasants that had no right in their country's politics, and that they were waiting for the Jews to come build the country.
http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Famous-Zionist-Quotes/Story707.html

Introduction

Hi everyone. As this is going to be the first post on this blog, I have a few words to say. I hope this blog will be a huge success, and that it will give an insight about life in Damascus. If your asking yourself about how I came up with the name, then I will explain to you. It was very difficult choosing a name for this blog, it had to be just right, specific enough for my theme, yet general enough to cover many subjects. I was going to have the word Damascus in the title, yet I didn't know how to go about it. I came up with the word breeze, because life in Damascus, for me, is like a breeze. It carries you around the city, through the old narrow streets of the old city, to the peak of Mount Kassyoun. I finally decided upon it and hit enter. Throughout this blog, as I have in the description, you will find many posts about Damascus of course, but I will also write about topics concerning the news, and many other current events. Feel free to comment on anything you like. Once again, I hope this will be a huge success.