The term "kingmaker", you must be willing to form the government with both sides, BN and PR. Otherwise, you do not have a leverage. Also, you must remember one simple fact, PR cannot form the government unless PKR wins more seats than UMNO and BN as UMNO and BN will have the first option of forming the government.Fourth, stop blaming PR for everything. Your party is holding PKR to ransom. Oh well, you know what they say, the enemy of my enemy, is my friend. So, maybe STAR would love to join forces with BN some day. .the one who REFUSED to talk to PR. PR were the ones who offered majority of the seats in Sabah.Fifth, how can PKR or PR control Sabah when major
Thirdly, the fact that you are open to the idea of forming the government with BN is an indication that you are not interested in seeing the downfall of BN.Its time for Sabah and Sarawak to be treated as equal to Malaya. BN and PR must take the lead and treat them with respect and fairly. In fact all Malaysians should enjoy the fruits of the nation rather than the elites of the ruling party.Sabah and Sarawak people should cut ties with BN now and declare their own 'merdeka' and take back.
labuan and brunei land, kot..
Jeffrey Kitingan must have really forgotten his roots, if the following article and statement is to be taken into account...Where was he at the time when the much revered- Tun Fuad Stephens was the CM? He has the guts of calling Tun Fuad an amateur, when his accomplishment is nowhere near the much-respected gentleman's achievement! Unlike him, he (Tun Fuad) didn't do a 'party-leap-frogging'! A Form 5 school leaver? He held the post of High Commissioner of Malaysia in Australia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuad_Stephens)...He(Jeffrey) and Joseph Pairin destroyed Sabah! The words from his mouth are so despicable and full of contempt, Sabahans should not even trust him for fighting for his purported Borneo agenda (who knows,he may lace it with his own personal agendas). the Sabahans have enough of the injustice going on since 49 years ago under UMNO/BN. Mathair and Harris have enough damages to this beloved country. The days of colonization and agree withhe must have conveniently forgotten history or he was trying to twist the facts of history to further his personal agenda (masked as Borneo agenda) for your own personal gain! Shame on him! So the noble title of Houguan Siau is not befitting on such lowlife, who thinks, just because he has a Harvard education, he is given the rights to walk over the beloved Tun Fuad!effrey were really honest, he would talk more about the powers of Sabah parliament, not about proportion of seats in Semenanjung parliament. He would talk about true autonomy. But he is not. This means his mindset is still the UMNO mindset. According to Jeffrey, Sabah will remain a colony under UMNO and the issue is rather how many seats he will get in federal.
2. Equating PR with UMNO/BN demonstrates that we cannot trust this man. He refuses to commit. Therefore voters do not know if he's really in favour of the Borneo Agenda, or if he's abusing it for his own power games, reserving himself a backdoor to support UMNO and his brother.
‘We want to be independent’
Sabah and Sarawak, he stressed, must appreciate and fully leverage their potential as the kingmaker comes the 13th general election to regain their status as equal partners to Malaya.
Towards this, he said, the people of Sabah and Sarawak should understand that this time around they have to unite outside the existing political frame controlled by peninsular-based parties.
“Sabahans and Sarawakians must start to think from outside the box to take charge of their future in Malaysia.
“Inside the box of Barisan, Umno controls you and inside the box of Pakatan Rakyat, PKR may control you.
“So we need to be outside the boxes, we want to be independent to make our own stand and to work with them, not under them.
“This means that if we have a choice, we should choose the right one, the right one being those who restore our rights, give back our oil and solve our problems.
“If both of them (BN and Pakatan) are 50-50, both of them offer the same thing. We shall choose for change, most likely Pakatan, to work with them not as as subservient but equal partner to change the country,” he said.
Jeffrey said Sabah and Sarawak should push for more parliamentary seats to have more decision making power in the parliament, as currently they are at the disadvantage with about two thirds of the parliamentary representation are currently concentrated in Peninsular Malaysia.
“It is so unfair now. For example, Keningau, my area, is almost 4,000 sq km. I can put three Semenanjung states, namely Perlis, Penang and Malacca inside Keningau with still plenty of room left.
“But Keningau consists only one parliamentary seat, two DUN (state seats), one district officer while in the three states on the other hand, there are 83 DUN seats, 26 parliaments, there Menteris Besar, two Sultans and one governor.
“If it is not even fair to compare the three states with Keningau, how do you imagine the whole of Sabah being compared to say Perlis.
“The service in Sabah is the same as in Perlis because they regard Sabah as just one of the 13 states.
“So, this is what I mean we need to do justice to Sabah. Don’t downgrade Sabah. Sabah is equal to the whole Peninsular Malaysia and Sarawak, not just the states in Peninsular,” he said.
Give local parties a chance
In this regards, he said it is also important for the people to understand why Pakatan or other Semenanjung-based parties should concentrate in Peninsular Malaysia and leave Sabah seats to local-based parties.
National parties must give a chance to local parties to contest seats meant for representing Sabah and Sarawak, otherwise it would mean they were not sincere in respecting the autonomy of the two states.
“They already have 165 parliamentary seats to contest, about 75 percent of what is available. In Sabah there is only 25 seats. Why do you want everything?
“We don’t want them to operate in the same manner like Umno, in the name of national politics you want to grab everything for your own agenda.
“We want genuine cooperation, working side by side as partners, not as subservient partner but equal partner,” he said.
On Sabah STAR’s preparation for the coming general election, Jeffrey, who is expected to contest Keningau seat currently held by his elder brother Pairin, said Sabah STAR has been confirmed as one of the registered political parties recognised by the Election Commission (EC).
He has prepared a long list of qualified candidates to be fielded, although the final names will only be finalised by Sept 6.
Sabah STAR candidates will be mostly new, young and fresh individuals who will identify with the young voters.
“We are eyeing 22 to 36 state seats and seven to eleven parliamentary seats. Of course we will be negotiating with other political parties and we are hoping at the end, we can contest 25 to 26 of the state seats,” he said.
Jeffrey said the United Borneo Alliance (UBA) headed by him will be organising a meeting on Sept 13 for all the opposition leaders to discuss common grounds.
Fact No. 1: Abim is not a political party. Therefore there was no hopping involved. Furthermore Anwar was invited by Dr Mahathir to join Umno!
Fact No. 2: Anwar did not leave Umno, he was sacked by Dr M and the Umno Supreme Council.
Fact No. 3: He did not jump into PKR, he formed it!
Today, most people understand a "coup d'etat" to signify unelected officials, almost always from a country's and/or intelligence institutions, seizing power from an existing government. Unlike a revolution, the "people" play little if any role in this process, although, as to happened in Malaysia , they are often bought into a revolutionary discourse after the fact retroactively to legitimise the new state of affairs.Of course, while UMNO political scientists, philosophers and political and theSpeacial branch like to talk about the "state" precisely as if it is an independent organism whose preservation transcends any other concerns (certainly Mahathir want to describe itself as the protector and even saviour of both the state and the nation), the reality is that the state is much more the effect of innumerable discourses, relationships and networks created by those who have access to political and economic power, and to means of violence necessary to maintain the balance of forces within a society.
Near dictatorial power
Some of the country's most well-known activists seem to be of the second opinion, even as they hope the first is in fact what is happening.
"our revolutionaries are more deserving of a safe exit" than the seniorUMNO leadership.
"Our battle now is the Constitution," (ma'arakatuna al'an hiya ad-dustur) she tweeted, echoing the sentiments of most revolutionary activists who, however happy they may be to see NAJIB near dictatorial power to act as both legislator and executor. That is - as has happened so many times in the past - the president has the power to become precisely the leader whose system he came to power to dismantle.
Another possibility is that ANWAR is being set up to fail by UMNO and the larger power elite it represents: that, by allowing ANWAR to retire mahathir, assume full control of the legislative and executive functions of an interim government, and even take direct responsibility for launching what is being reported as an extremely violentpolice assault on BERSIH,najib is being given full responsibility for the consequences of actions that he does not have enough power to carry out successfully.
In the end, the most important player in this drama is neither Mahathir nor UMNO, it's the MALAYSIAN people more broadly. Only the people, coming together as a "public" to demand a full transition to democracy and a fair economic system, will succeed in dismantling structures of power, wealth and violence that have had more than half a century to enmesh themselves in the fabric of society. In a sense, the MALALAYSIAN people are in the first steps of a long-term process of national recreation.
anwar ibrahim may or may not turn out to be a major player in this drama, but by his actions he has at least moved the revolution out of its doldrums and into a new and pivotal phase, where the laws and institutions of a potentially new state will be written with less domination by the umno than most people would have imagined only a few days ago.
Fact No. 4: Nazri's political journey has made him an idiot!
Observers of historical ironies would find plenty to relish in the one that seems to be coming up on the back of Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s decision to empower a royal commission of inquiry (RCI) on the issue of illegal migrants given citizenship in Sabah.
This irony has to do with hypothetical developments, which if they eventuate, may well prove Tunku Abdul Rahman, founding Prime Minister of Malaysia and, more importantly, resuscitator of UMNO in 1951 after the shock of party founder Onn Jaafar’s resignation, as a seer on the issue of UMNO’s entry into Sabah.
By the same token, the same developments could prove Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the Tunku’s nemesis and incubator of a mutant UMNO (‘UMNO Baru’ was its assumed name) as guilty of destructive myopia.
The Tunku had before he died in December 1990 warned UMNO not to spread its wings to Sabah. He said that from what he had seen and heard from his friend from USNO, Mustapha Harun, the latter always had problems controlling political factions in Sabah.
Therefore, the Tunku (right) advised UMNO, not to tread into waters that were inherently difficult to fathom.
We are going to see a new government in Putrajaya after the 13th general election. My prediction is that Barisan Nasional will end up with between 97 to 114 seats. There are 222 seats in parliament.
BN Chairman Najib Tun Razak knows that with just a three percent swing in popular votes, UMNO will be left with 71 seats.
With the same vote swing, MCA will end up with 10 seats and MIC will be reduced to two parliamentary seats. But it is more likely, MCA may only end up with two parliamentary seats having lost its legitimacy among the Chinese.
When this happens we will see a new team move into Putrajaya.When this happens, we can expect the current Chief Secretary Dr Ali Hamsa to tender his resignation.We will request former Chief Secretary Sidek Hassan to relinquish his post as chairman of Petronas.
We will let Najib know the business of government is not like playing musical chairs.Najib stops the music and shoves a chair underneath Sidek while pulling away some seats meant for other people. There’s no telling what Sidek will and can reveal if he were allowed to fall.
‘UMNO thinks in private’
It’s almost a protocol nowadays for former senior servants to kiss and tell all. We will also deal with Azman Mokhtar and see what Khazanah has been up to.
We will put their books under the knife and allow accountants to look at how and what the Ivy-league university boys have done with our funds.We will ask all loss making government-linked companies (GLCs) to stand and be counted and if after the count, they can’t stand, we will close them.
We will ask Syed Mokhtar Bukhary to reduce his debt exposure because we cannot allow such huge debt exposure to threaten our financial system and bring this country to an economic collapse.
We will also haul the bank that breached the limit in lending to one particular borrower. Probably the UMNO leaders have talked themselves into becoming block-headed to deny the overwhelming rejection of UMNO-BN by the people.
Let me tell you 90% of the Chinese reject UMNO-BN. So UMNO tries to stop the rising tide of discontent by pitting Malays against Chinese.
I hope the majority of Malays are sensible enough to be aware that numerically the Chinese will never be able to replace Malays.
As for the Malaysian Indians, only the most insensitive among them will want to support UMNO-BN after the “hang (BERSIH co-chairman) Ambiga” outburst.
Believe me that statement was not done in a fit of absent-mindedness.It was a calculated statement designed to create fear in those who opposed UMNO thinking. The UMNO MP who said it, said what UMNO thinks in private but doesn’t have the testicular fortitude to say it out in the open.
Of course, the Tunku did not help his argument by citing the troubles of Mustapha governing Sabah as a basis for his advice.
Mustapha behaved like an oriental potentate, with whims and fancies to match. Mahathir lambasted his ways during one election campaign in Sabah when USNO was in competition with Haris Salleh’s BERJAYA for the right to rule the state.
Stumping for Haris, Mahathir, who was then Deputy Prime Minister, observed that whenever he visited Sabah as Education Minister (August 1974-April 1976), he found the top leaders of the state to be absent – away in exotic locales like Lebanon.
Mahathir did not mention Mustapha by name but it was obvious he was referring to the USNO leader’s weakness for the sybarite’s lifestyle which was as likely to take him to the fleshpots of Beirut as to Spartan destinations like Tripoli where he once repaired to ask for help from Muammar Gaddafi over a perceived threat to Sabah’s security by the communists who had just overrun Indochina.
Though Tunku Abdul Rahman was something of a bon vivant, he was no sybarite, but this did not prevent him from being indulgent towards Mustapha who, like the Tunku, was of aristocratic descent. (A sense of class solidarity is hard to dispel among the high born.)
Despite the earnestness of the Tunku’s advice against UMNO’s entry into Sabah, there was little hope it would be heeded.
Flashing a cape before a bull
Mahathir has precious little time for the counsel of people whom he thinks weak and ineffective.
When Joseph Pairin Kitingan (left), the PBS Chief Minister of Sabah, took his party out of the federal BN coalition and joined Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah’s Gagasan Rakyat (People’s Might) coalition days before the October 1990 general election, his move was like the flash of a matador’s muleta (cape) before a bull.
Then-BN chief and Prime Minister Mahathir wasted no time after the election – which he won sensationally, thanks in no small part to cynical employment of the bogey of Christian plotting against Muslims (a prevision of Hasan Ali’s tactics more than two decades after) – setting in train the moves, including UMNO’s entry into Sabah, seat gerrymandering, and electoral roll padding – that pegged Pairin’s PBS to a narrow win in the Sabah state election of 1994, a win that vanished in the face of crossovers to Sabah BN.
Now, 18 years on, crossovers from Sabah BN to the independent bench by essentially the same invertebrates that ditched PBS for Sabah BN in 1994 have forced PM Najib into a forestalling manoeuvre in which the formation of a royal commission of inquiry to dig into how tens of thousands of illegal migrants in the state had been given citizenship and voting rights is in train.
The RCI would have to summon Mahathir to query him as to what his role in the entire episode had been. The man is going to discover that the whole imbroglio stemmed from a decision of his taken in contravention of the Tunku’s advice.
It’s hard to see how he could emerge from the inquiry, which would lose all credibility if it does not summon him to testify, with his bona fides as a law-abiding former Prime Minister intact.
Sabahans should reject the terms of reference for the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Illegal Immigrants proposed by Prime Minister Najib Razak, because they fail to address the issue of purging the State’s electoral roll of phantom voters.
The entire 8-item terms of reference are marked by hypocrisy and evasion of the real issues.
Item after item were centered on “whether” there were illegal identity cards or citizenship granted, and “whether” there were illegally registered voters in the electoral roll, when the whole world knows that the Sabah electoral roll is heavily infested with illegal immigrants who have been illegally registered as voters. There is already abundance of incontrovertible evidences produced in court as well as in books recording details of clandestine campaign to massively infuse these phantoms into the electoral roll so as to enable Umno to grab political power in Sabah; so why still keep up the pretence that such phenomenon is an hypothesis that requires exhaustive investigations to establish its veracity?
Other items concentrate on the “standard operating procedure” of issuing ICs and citizenship to immigrants and its possible improvement, as well as the “social implication” arising from such issuance of ICs and citizenship.
Investigation on these issues will of course throw further light on a calamity that has plagued Sabahans for decades, but will it really relieve the heartache that has long been tormenting the suffering Sabahans?
CORE ISSUES LEFT OUT
Truth be told, Najib’s proposed realm of investigations are way off the mark. It misses the bull’s eye by a wide margin.
For instance, what about Sabahans’ democratic right to elect the government of their choice, which has been robbed from them by the massive presence of these phantom voters? Not a single word on cleansing the electoral roll in the proposed terms of reference.
And what about Sabahans’ social, economic and security plight arising from being apparently out-numbered by these immigrants? Also not a word on measures to alleviate these predicaments which have reached crisis proportion.
Under the circumstances, one cannot help but wonder: is this RCI an adhoc election tactic to diffuse the mounting fury of Sabahans ahead of election or is it an act of contriction that signals a genuine change of heart by Umno to start treating Sabahans with decency and justice?
The answer is obvious, judging from Umno’s shameful history of callous disregard for the welfare of Sabahans, to the extent of virtually selling off their home land to foreigners, who have not only stripped Sabahans of their democratic rights through adulterating the electoral roll, but have also jeopardized Sabahans’ social and economic well being as well as threatening their very survival through sheer numerical superiority of the immigrants.
Knocking on the doors of Sabahans with this half-baked RCI package at this eleventh hour of an election is taken as election trickery. The general feeling is that, “it is too little, too late”.
The only saving grace that I can think of for Najib to salvage Umno’s tattered image is for him to incorporate into terms of reference for the RCI measures to rectify the electoral roll as well as an agenda to alleviate current hardships which should include an orderly repatriation program and measures to stop further influx of such immigrants.
SOVEREIGNTY NOT NEGOTIABLE
In view of the imminence of election, cleansing of electoral roll must be pushed through with the utmost urgency, for which an independent audit team of recognized integrity must be formed immediately to dig into the files in NRD (national registration department) and the Election Commission to identify phantom citizens and phantom voters respectively, and have them purged. This auditing team will make regular progress reports to the RCI through public hearings.
On top of that, and as proof of Umno’s sincerity, Prime Minister Najib Razak must give his solemn pledge that he will not call the next election until a properly cleansed electoral roll is completed for use in the polls.
Sovereignty of a free and independent people is a non-negotiable issue.
Umno must return sovereignty to the people of Sabah – before the election, not after; or face their wrath, which in all likelihood will result in Pakatan Rakyat taking over the rein of government by the next election.In the past the label self-hating Jew was associated with Jews who were ashamed of or who hid their heritage. But as criticism of Israeli policy toward Palestinians has intensified, self-hating Jew, like anti-Semite, has become a routinely brandished retaliatory weapon. The idea that a three-word label can encapsulate the character of a person is problematic. A human being is far more than what a single phrase can say about him, and accusations such as self-hating Jew are so divisive that they make tolerance and cooperation impossible, eradicating the possibility for genuine understanding.
Nearly every Jewish critic I've met believes that by opposing policies that relegate Palestinians to lives of second-class citizenship, they are rescuing the integrity of their religious tradition. These critics have no desire to harm the state of Israel. Their desire is to prevent the state of Israel from harming Palestinians. They advocate equal rights for all because they know that equal rights lead to peace.
What is self-hating (or anti-Semitic) in such a position? Is honoring the humanistic values many Jews were taught at synagogue a betrayal of their religious roots? Is caring about another people synonymous with hatred? Is learning about a painful subject likewise symptomatic of anti-Semitism? Isn't thirst for knowledge a hallmark of Judaism and isn't it fundamental to solving problems? If criticism of deliberate violations of international law expresses hatred, what does turning one's back on the suffering of millions express? If calling on Israel to end its human rights abuses expresses hatred, are we to forsake a people who cry out against the destruction of their homes or the traumatizing of their children?
Where, then, is the hatred? The hatred is conceived in the minds of those who are afraid to ask why someone is critical of Israel. Rather than conduct honest research to refute or confirm the criticism, the accuser panders to feelings of fear, confusion and anger, all of which are animated by unexamined beliefs and images within his own mind. This mind colors his perception so that he sees the world in terms of personal victimhood vs. the world's hostility.
Because he is unconscious of this pattern, the accuser can only project his perception onto the world and then presume that the world he sees proves the reality of his perception. Creating his own suffering, he narcissistically scapegoats and blames the world (in this case Palestinians and their sympathizers) for the suffering.
Triggered through denial, this inner thought process attributes to Palestinians and their sympathizers the accuser's own hatred. The accuser makes the other responsible for, and the repository of, his unresolved pain. He objectifies the other and rejects his humanity. Then he supports inhumane policies, which he justifies under the guise of an existential danger to Israel. In so doing, he brings the world's anger down upon Israel, which reinforces and perpetuates the cycle of perceived victimhood. This process is a defense mechanism that stems from the fear of inquiring into one's presumed identity through the questioning of one's beliefs and images.
I have not met one defender of Israeli policy who has impartially studied the actual history. The real conflict for these defenders is not Israel vs. a hostile world or Israel versus the Palestinians. The real conflict -- and the basis for claims of self-hatred and anti-Semitism -- is the failure to integrate the hard-to-believe but inescapable awareness of Israel's treatment of non-Jews with unquestioned loyalty to the Jewish state. One consideration acknowledges Israel's dark side; the other denies the dark side exists.
Only by committing myself to the truth was I able to apprehend that, in reality, criticism of Israel was never a serious concern. Incredibly, I had never defended Israel, at least the Israel that actually exists. I had always defended an idealistic image of Israel that was projected or superimposed upon the Israel that actually exists. This projection enabled me to repress or deny painful revelations that I would have learned about Israel and about myself if only I had looked without the errant influence of an unexamined mind. Denial and projection go hand in hand. What I denied about Israel and about myself, I projected onto the other, who necessarily became my enemy.
Equating Palestinian freedom with terrorism, I worried that if Israel relinquished strict control over its subjects, the lives of its Jewish citizens would be imperiled. Fearing annihilation, I unconsciously superimposed Nazi images onto the Palestinian people, and then refused to believe that the Jewish state could act indefensibly toward them. Fear prevented me from empathizing with the pain of Palestinians and it blinded me to the likelihood that a country I had invested so much faith in could administer such brutal policies.
I further indoctrinated myself into the idea that some Jews were willfully blind to the evil intentions of the Palestinians, and that their willfulness demonstrated support for that which I feared most: the annihilation of the Jewish people.
Truthfully, my reaction to criticism was motivated more by the fear of taking on the challenge that the criticism posed to my identity than by genuine disagreement or fear for Israel's existence. For a split second, though, before denial and repression set in, this challenge reflected the prejudice that induced me to deny the humanity of the other. And in order to avoid encountering my own lack of humanity, I ignored documented evidence, thereby consenting to the subjugation of millions. By turning my back on the suffering of others, I had sacrificed the very values Israel once personified.
I never used the term self-hating Jew. I am thankful I didn't. I believe the label is a powerful barrier to understanding. The key to understanding is dispassionate intelligence. Fear and anger permeated every argument I made in defense of Israel. Invariably I moved from the quandary of fear to the apparent certainty of anger. But I never crossed over into hate. There is a special feeling that accompanies the words self-hating Jew. The key is in "hate." Characterizing someone in any way with this word introduces viciousness to the mind. This viciousness makes the mind utterly dualistic -- and utterly obtuse. The subtle awareness that my ingrained perspective was perhaps incorrect would have been extinguished if I had described Israel's Jewish critics as self-hating. As it was, because I did not become involved in hate, I remained open to a dispassionate investigation of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The notion that any Jew who is dedicated to justice for all people harbors self-hatred defies common sense. Given the self-esteem it takes to stand for justice amidst fierce denunciation, a more accurate assessment is that these are self-loving Jews.
Given the current conversation about issue of Palestinian culture and its relationship to politics and economics, I feel it's appropriate for me to add my own Palestinian-American perspective. Palestinian culture has developed in the broader Arab, and more specifically Levantine, contexts. Contemporary Palestinian Arabs are among the primary, although not the sole, heirs of the accumulation of history in their land, including prehistoric, ancient, biblical and Jewish, Roman, Islamic, Crusader, Ottoman and British periods. Their distinct national identity emerged contemporaneously with and parallel to the Israeli identity and Zionist movement. Palestinians differ from other Arabs culturally in many ways, but within different localities they also differ from each other. It is the experiences of the 20th century, particularly the British mandate, the encounter with Zionism and Israel, and the often tense interaction with other Arab societies and states that has given the Palestinians their distinctive national culture. The persistence of the Palestinian issue for so many decades reflects the tenacity and resilience of their national identity and culture. The Palestinian quest for excellence in education isn't culturally hardwired or built into their DNA. It is rather the specific byproduct of the Palestinian experience in the past century. Palestinians, particularly of my generation, were forced to confront a reality without national institutions to rely on. Our parents and we knew, after the Nakba in 1948, that we had few real alternatives other than education in making our way in the world. The Palestinian spirit of entrepreneurship has been reflected around the region and the globe, and continues to resiliently operate in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This entrepreneurship and the knowledge-set acquired through intensive education significantly contributed to the whole region in the 50s-70s as Palestinians helped to develop many Arab societies. As former president Bill Clinton noted in 2011, Palestinians "have done remarkably well outside their country. I have never met a poor Palestinian in the United States; every Palestinian I know is a college professor or a doctor." This is not to say, of course, that all Palestinians belong to an elite group. But it does mean that there are other explanations for a struggling Palestinian economy in the occupied territories than simply the Palestinian mentality. Every serious study of the Palestinian economy has noted the deeply onerous effects of the restrictions of the Israeli occupation. Without them, there is no question that Palestinians would be faring better. During the first Intifada that began 1987 and the second that began in 2000, education among Palestinians was significantly disrupted and has not yet fully recovered. A World Bank report issued on July 25 recognized the centrality of occupation restrictions to hampering the development of a more robust Palestinian economy, but it also emphasized the need for Palestinians to revamp their educational system to better prepare their people for private-sector employment. Like most of the Arab, and much of the developing, world, Palestinian education tends to emphasize rote learning rather than fostering analytical skills and critical thinking. Prime Minister Salam Fayyad recognized this in an important speech on education he gave on August 8, 2010, in which he said the educational system in the West Bank should focus on critical thinking, language skills and combating fanaticism. Palestinian politics has, not surprisingly, mirrored that of other Arab societies and included elements of patronage, corruption, and a lack of transparency and accountability. But since at least the 1970s there has been an active and dynamic Palestinian civil society that was unusual in most of the Arab world. This relative political pluralism and openness, however imperfect, may be among the key reasons that Palestinians have not experienced their own uprising during the current "Arab Spring." And importantly it was the Palestinians themselves who began seriously tackling problems with governance and emphasizing self-reliance, particularly through the state and institution building program launched in 2009. Even before the "Arab Spring," serious reforms aimed at good governance, transparency and accountability were underway in one of the most unlikely Arab contexts: the occupied West Bank. The institution-building program led by Fayyad still stands as one of the most thoroughgoing efforts at reform in the Arab world and anticipated many of the key demands that erupted throughout the region in the past 18 months. Palestinian society is currently the scene of a wide-ranging set of debates about the role government, the rights and responsibilities of citizens, and the quality of private and public institutions. This debate should be acknowledged and encouraged. Over the past 30 years, the rise of religious fanaticism in some parts of Palestinian society, mirroring that in the broader Arab world as well as among Jewish Israelis, has also undermined healthy social, cultural and educational attitudes. However, such fanaticism does not define the Palestinian mainstream or essential national culture. To the contrary, most Palestinians, while devout and socially conservative, remain essentially secular and fundamentally worldly. Palestinians are no better or worse than any other group of human beings. They've reacted to a series of harsh developments over the past century much as any other group of people probably would have. As long as they remain without a country in which they can be first class citizens, this will continue to hamper their economic viability and stunt the development of their society and institutions. Palestinians deserve the opportunity they've been denied for so long, to build their own state and develop their culture in independence and freedom.
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