I always envied them, the owners of the cars with the white plates who can be seen around Jerusalem. I always wanted to be one of them. We call them U.N., even though U.N. are generally foreign correspondents with leased cars and yellow plates.
Sometimes I wonder: What are the children thinking? And sometimes I wonder why the hell I'm not buying a tree like the other neighbors. After all, there is no mention in Christianity of Christmas trees, and even if there were - is there any good reason why I shouldn't be buying some red stockings?
'Arab Labor' was light, snappy. We got emotional over things, but from a safe place, from the terrace.
If there was genuine desire on the Israeli side, even without a solution, it would be possible to solve a large percentage of the problems between Israelis and Palestinians by means of simple statements from the Israelis.
It sometimes seems that the only plan the Israeli government has for the Palestinians is for them to sit quietly while Israel does whatever takes its fancy, equipped with its army, with laws it promulgated, and with courts it established.
There's a lot of hypocrisy and condescension in Israel's institutionalized support for Mubarak's tyrannical rule, in its backing of a corrupt leader who established a brutal secret police state to suppress his citizens and keep their mouths shut.
