Tzipi Livni sums up what Israelis and Palestinians need to focus on

Israel's foreign minister - and possibly next prime minister - Tzipi Livni, as quoted in today's New York Times:

We cannot solve who was right or wrong in 1948 or decide who is more just. The Palestinians can feel justice is on their side, and I can feel it is on my side. What we have to decide about is not history but the future.”

More "Islamic militants" under attack in the Levant

Now in Lebanon too. From the New York Times:

Fierce clashes erupted between Lebanese Army soldiers and Islamic militants in the vicinity of a Palestinian refugee camp [near Tripoli] on Sunday, leaving 22 Lebanese soldiers and 17 militants dead and dozens injured in one of the most significant challenges to the army since the end of Lebanon’s bloody civil war.

The Times reports that "the confrontation with the Islamist group, Fatah al-Islam, raised fears of a wider battle to rout militants in the rest of Lebanon’s 12 refugee camps, where radical Islam has been gaining in recent years."

But apparently not everyone would fear this "wider battle to rout militants" as the Times went on to report:

Lebanese citizens, who hold the Palestinians responsible for sparking the civil war in 1975, cheered the army on the streets of Tripoli and outside the camp.

Fatah al-Islam, the Times recalls, "subscribes to the fundamentalist precepts of Al Qaeda" and its leader was a partner in crime with the genocidal maniac and axe murderer, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia killed almost a year ago in Iraq. The two carried out the murder of an American diplomat, Lawrence Foley, in Jordan.

As "fighting raged throughout the afternoon at the camp, home to about 40,000 refugees, " the Times goes on to report, and "as army reinforcements rushed to the scene and tanks began shelling targets in the camp" many residents of Tripoli were seen clapping and cheering:

“This should have happened from the start,” said one man, who stood in a crowd of onlookers as the tanks fired into the camp. The crowd shouted, “God is great, and God protect the army,” with each shell fired.

“We wish the government would destroy the whole camp and the rest of the camps,” said another in the crowd, Ahmad al-Marooq. “Nothing good comes out of the Palestinians."

The Lebanese blame the Palestinians for inciting civil war in 1975 after Palestinian militias seeking refuge in the country - after having been booted out of Jordan for trying to foment revolution there - instigated the breakdown of the military and social and political order.

This Lebanese civil war raged for sixteen years, only ending with a heavy-handed presence of Syrian peacekeeping forces. In spite of increasing international pressure, Syria only agreed to withdraw its forces in Lebanon after elements of the Syrian regime were widely suspected of orchestrating the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005.

Brotherly love in a time of crisis

Anthony Shadid in today's Washington Post reports on the plight of Palestinians who have fled the violence in Iraq.

Before the U.S.-led invasion, there were some 35,000 Palestinian refugees in Iraq. Life was relatively good for the Palestinians under Saddam's regime. As Shadid reports:

Although Palestinians faced restrictions in Iraq that limited their access to land, cars and phone lines, they were perceived as a favored constituency under Hussein. Fashioning himself as a champion of their cause, he provided refugees free or subsidized housing and exempted them from military service.

But once Saddam was gone, as Shadid goes on to point out:

Many Iraqis resented Hussein's aid to families of suicide bombers and others killed in the Palestinian uprising that began in 2000. Weeks after his fall in April 2003, landlords set out to reclaim houses that the government had rented to Palestinians, sometimes for less than $1 a month.

"If you don't leave my house, I will burn it down -- you and your family inside," Abdel-Rahim, bearded and balding, said he was told by his landlord in the Baghdad neighborhood of Hayy al-Salam.

Even though Jordan and Syria have reportedly each welcomed some 700,000 Iraqi refugees since 2003, both countries have been considerably less open to the Palestinians among them.

According to the Washington Post:

For a brief time in 2003, Jordan allowed Palestinians, including Abdel-Rahim's family and a few hundred others, into the Ruweished camp, built about 40 miles from Iraq to house a feared influx of Iraqis fleeing the U.S.-led invasion. Jordan then closed the border. In summer 2006, Syria allowed more than 300 Palestinians into al-Hol camp, on its side of the frontier. Then, like Jordan, it sealed the border again.

Robert Breen, representative of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Jordan told the Post that the fear is "if you open up for some, the rest are going to come" adding, "I can't recall ever having seen this kind of situation in such a bleak environment," Breen said. "They can't go backward, and they aren't moving forward. They're literally stuck in the desert -- no way back, and nowhere to go."

What about the other neighboring states? The Palestinian Authority has reportedly offered the Palestinians sanctuary but Israel is not willing to grant the necessary permissions.

If Israel seems hard-boiled in refusing to consider this option, what to think about the "brotherly nations" of Iran, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia who have closed their doors to the refugees? Why don't these rich Islamic countries who claim to have such deep sympathy for Palestinians displaced by Israel, find room in their hearts or nations to provide these newly displaced Palestinians with sanctuary? Surely they could afford to do this what with oil prices being what they are.

But then these rich and prideful Islamic nations have also barred ordinary Iraqis from entering their countries, even as they run in fear of their lives.

So this is Arab unity? This is what it means to be an Islamic state?

Good thing the European "kuffir" nations are willing to come to the rescue.