By Gitanjali Bakshi

According to a Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Poll in April 2006, a majority of Israelis and Palestinians favored third-party intervention in peace negotiations. The 60-year-old conflict between these two parties has given rise to so much resentment, complexity and discord over the years that a third-party mediator seems almost necessary. America has always been the conventional choice for such a role; and the onus to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict has largely fallen on the shoulders of US administrations - past and present.  Yet, although the United States might posses the power and influence to take on such a role, it might not necessarily have the political or economic will to follow through.

Noam Chomsky recently wrote an opinion editorial titled, 'A Middle East Peace that Could Happen (but won't)' where he propounds that the US remains as much a problem to peace as Israel. Several obstacles lie in the path of US intervention in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Recent US domestic policy to finance an $800 billion healthcare bill for instance can limit future foreign policy actions. After the healthcare bill, the stimulus bill and TARP, expensive projects to furnish cost-heavy foreign policy decisions will be met with some resistance in the Congress. Even if a strong foreign policy agenda were possible, other competing interests in Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran would slow down the Israel-Palestine peace process considerably, if not halt it completely.

EXCLUSIVE ARTICLE FROM MEMO

By Mahan Abedin

Situated deep inside the Bekaa valley, a stone's throw away from the historic town of Baalbek, sits the Jalil Palestinian refugee camp, the most idiosyncratic of all the eleven Palestinian camps still inhabited in Lebanon. Poor, remote and subject to the harsh local weather, Jalil - also known as "Wavel" still manages to accommodate arguably the widest range of political organisations in all the camps. A journey through this largely forgotten camp provides the deepest of insights into the Palestinian experience in Lebanon. It is also a lesson in how proper institutional arrangements are the key to promoting deeper political and social cohesion inside the country's refugee camps.

By Ben White

On this year's Land Day, tens of thousands of Palestinian citizens of Israel marched in Sakhnin, an Israeli city in the Lower Galilee, to protest against past and present systematic discrimination. But with the focus on Israel's policies of land confiscation, there was significance in a second protest that day.

In the Negev (referred to as al-Naqab by Palestinian Bedouins), over 3,000 attended a rally at al-Araqib, an 'unrecognised' Palestinian Bedouin village whose lands are being targeted by the familiar partnership of the Israeli state and the Jewish National Fund.

The historical context for the crisis facing Palestinian Bedouins today is important, as the Israeli government and Zionist groups try to propagate the idea that the problems, so far as they exist, are 'humanitarian' or 'cultural'.

Even the category of 'Bedouin' is historically and politically loaded, with many disputing what they see as an Israeli 'divide and rule' strategy towards the Palestinians.

Palestinian Bedouins are protesting against discrimination by the Israeli government