Opinions
The United States was then a babe-in-arms as far as Middle East activity was concerned. That was a region shared by the British and French. But as these powers receded and America
became world number one and began 50 years of struggle for supremacy with the USSR, it became necessary to have a strong position in the Middle East and what better place than Palestine where Zionists were on the verge of establishing a state. First Truman, then the rest of American presidents, suddenly discovered that the very people they had denied entry to 10 years earlier were about to seize lands on the Mediterranean that would make a most desirable base for American oversight of the region.
Once committed the USA has not changed its support and has financed and armed the state and assisted it to establish a variety of industry to make it a powerhouse in the region far in excess of its size and population, even though the latter expanded considerably with immigration and the former somewhat with seizure of Palestinian lands.
While Palestine struggled with allegiances during the Cold War Israel remained solidly backed by the USA and NATO powers. Palestinian leaders of that time had relied too much on ethnic and religious allegiances particularly the latter and placed an enormous faith in the solidarity of Arab and Muslim states – both those in their immediate neighbourhood, for example Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Iraq, Turkey and the Persian Gulf states, as well as others more remote such as Soviet Muslims, Pakistan and Indonesia. They overlooked or perhaps minimized the reality that the United States, while supporting Israel, maintained treaties with Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and certain Persian Gulf states, their main supplier of oil, the blood of America and to retain which they would happily fight wars, as Bush recently demonstrated.
It is also sad to note that Arabic and Islamic states have had almost no impact on Israel's resolve to retain occupied lands which they held on the principle that conquered lands belong to the conqueror.
With the reality of Jewish settlement in Palestine, the United Nations suggested partition which was opposed by a majority of Palestinian leaders, supported by Syria, Egypt and Jordan, resulting in wars which only strengthened the Zionist state and gave it control over lands that would otherwise have remained Palestinian had partition been accepted.
The strength, resolve and preparedness of the Israelis was matched by the incompetence, weakness and disunity among Muslim states, whether Arabic or not. The loss of territory and the eventual occupation of Palestine further inflamed the region and despite much posturing by Arab states, nothing changed, certainly not the attitude of the United States, NATO or Israel.
The United Nations did try, by many resolutions, to bring some order and justice to the region, spurned by successive Israeli governments, assured of American support, however embarrassing and hypocritical, and proceeded to nibble away at Palestine, reducing it to today's Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Today old militants have passed on, most killed by Israelis, and those that remain have tried to cope with Israeli restrictions and impositions.
Meanwhile Americans, under successive presidents following Jimmy Carter, have encouraged Palestinians to be patient while supporting Israel and failing to criticise its merciless acts of terrorism against Gaza and the West Bank.
It has never surprised me that militant, even recalcitrant groups should arise among Palestinians through the decades of Israeli oppression, to harass the tyrant, hoping that this might force a solution or at least serious negotiation.
The ascendancy of Netanyahu signalled that Israel would yield nothing. His militancy was maintained despite Obama's promise to end the injustice; indeed he rebuked Obama for his stance.
It is clear that Abbas has little choice but to try to rouse Netanyahu from his stonewalling and infamous hypocritical posturing. I doubt though whether the three most influential pro-Zionist states – Israel, the USA and Canada – will allow Mr Abbas to get very far with his petition, especially with a 40% Jewish US Congressional district after recent changes.
The USA will certainly veto it at the United Nations.
Memory as delicious as was
dinner itself
When I was growing up back home breakfast was not like today where vehicles patiently wait at drive-thru windows. It is here where a gloved hand is stuck through a hole in the wall to transact a wireless purchase. The hand then emerges with coffee, breakfast sandwiches and an up-sell of fries after the plastic card with the chip has been verified by a satellite transmitting to a computer half a world away.
Breakfast was simple when I was a boy. It was freshly cooked. "Roti" and a "choka" were served at least four times a week. It was a pleasant breakfast when the "roti" was accompanied with tomato "choka".
This "choka" was made by roasting tomatoes among the embers in the fireside, or the "chulha". The tomatoes came from the kitchen garden, picked a few days before and stacked in a basin to ripen under the "matchan" - the table where the pots and pans drained after washing.
Ma would assess the tomatoes for ripeness the night before. She would hold them gently in hands covered with tributaries of thick, raised veins. I remember how callused her palms were from the laborious work in the canefields. She swung a cutlass all day, up past her shoulders, sometimes in an arc over her head, harvesting the canes by the "task". She stacked the cut canes in carts that were drawn by mules powering out of fields rugged with wheel ruts and thick with mud.
Ma made "garden" in the evenings after she returned from the fields. It was more tiring work, driving the gardening fork down into thick, red clay, lifting a mound of earth upwards and turning it over. Earthworms retracted into the turned-up earth like pieces of rubber bands. Ma had finesse with the weeding, acquired with the years of labour in the canefields. She "moulded" the young tomato plants by packing the roots with earth, bits of yellowing grass and manure.
After all the hard work, it was a joy to watch her pick the "full" tomatoes. And it was a happy moment when she gently selected the ripened tomatoes to make the "choka" for breakfast the next day. It was with these same aging, work-hardened hands that she had gently massaged her young children. It was with these coarsened, muscle-bound fingers with its cracked, non-manicured fingernails that she had massaged both legs of her grandson so they would not become "bandy" like a race-horse jockey.
She would select tomatoes the evening before that were ready for her "choka". These she would put by the "chulha." My younger uncle, half-naked from his bath by the water barrel outside, a towel around his hirsute mid-section the only garment, would scamper through the back door of the kitchen on his way to the bedroom. The tomatoes in a line always made him stop.
"Laaard! Damadole kay choka in the maarning!" He would lick his lips in anticipation. My grandmother, mindful of her "lepayed", mud-packed floor, would scold.
"Bhoi! Look, haul yuh tail from the kitchen. You dropping water bucket-a-drop on the floor!"
The next morning, after the "chulha" fire had been lit and the wood smoldering with charcoal, she would build a crater where she would place the tomatoes. They were then covered with more embers.
They would hiss. Ma poked at them occasionally, as if they were the eggs of hatching snakes, using a pair of tongs that were long and limber. These were her "chimters". She adjusted the heat by adding more embers, or opening up the crater so the tomatoes cooled. She roasted them to "doneness", which meant the insides were cooked to steaming. Outside the skin crackled and was blackened in spots. It all added to the flavour.
Even as she roasted the tomatoes she was kneading the flour for "roti". This she did in a large enamel basin. It was dented in spots on the bottom, with a few chips in the enamel on the inside showing the rusted metal below.
By then, age was getting to Ma. Her fingers were starting to curve with arthritis. Her knuckles were prominent where the skin on her hands had tightened like a drum. She spent long, contemplative moments each morning by the back kitchen window gently rubbing the pain out of her hands. The leftover wet flour from the kneading fell to the ground in twists like small, white worms. These were carefully pecked at and rejected with a dismissive shake of the head by the chickens that gathered below.
Ma peeled and crushed the tomatoes in a bowl. Then she added seasonings of salt, pepper and raw onions. And then, the coup d'grâce. For this, crushed garlic was heated up in oil to brown crispiness. This was then poured into the crushed, roasted and seasoned tomatoes. It sizzled silly. Hunger heightened.
My uncle would leap out of bed as if the house was on fire. The last to do anything around the house, he was the first in line, plate in one hand, a cup of diabolically sweetened, diabetes-inducing tea spilling in the other.