My letter to Al-Ahram

Al-Ahram English just printed yet another pseudo-scholarly article blaming Israel for all Palestinian Arab misery and predicting Israel's eventual downfall.

Here's my response:

It is ironic that people who claim to want what is best for Palestinians are the same people who refuse to actually help them. Egypt turned Gaza into a prison far before 1967, refusing to allow Palestinians to become citizens, a policy that continues to this day. Palestinians can become full citizens of most Western nations but not most of the Arab world, in stark contrast to the Jews who were chased out of Egypt in 1948, welcomed into Israel.

If you want to blame Israel for their plight in 1948, that is fine, but it is the Arab world who work hard to keep them in misery today (while claiming to be doing so for their "unity.") The Arab position is to keep them in camps and stateless for however many decades it takes to destroy Israel, even though survey after survey shows that many of not most Palestinians themselves would love to become full citizens of Arab countries given the chance.

So keep pretending that Israel will fall, keep telling Palestinians that they will be able to "return" to villages long gone. Keep publishing articles claiming that you care about Palestinians.

They might just disagree.