RAMALLAH — I am struck by the construction boom across the city as I visit Ramallah, the legislative and political centre of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
Just about everywhere, high towers of office and apartment complexes rise above the squalor of old houses, refugee camps, crowded markets and narrow streets of what was once a small town some 10 km north of Jerusalem.
I spent the better part of a day walking the streets of Ramallah; had a surprising encounter with the mayor, a Palestinian-Christian woman of much dignity and warmth; made the required visit to Yasser Arafat’s tomb; and enjoyed the hospitality of simple folks.
There is money here, plenty of it, and those who have it are not hesitant to flaunt it.
New cars, beautiful residences, fancy stores and restaurants will startle any outsider arriving here with his head filled by the mainstream media in the West about the misery of the West Bank occupation by Israelis.
There is also poverty, Israeli checkpoints, the fence or wall separating Palestinian territories from Israel and the Israeli settlements.
And there’s the politics of resentment that spill over any conversation with ordinary Palestinians fed on a diet of half-truths and endless lies by their leaders.
But visiting with Palestinians is also an invitation to hear their bitterness about Arab leaders, and of their experience with discrimination and violence in places such as Lebanon and Kuwait.
They speak of how the Palestinian leadership resembles Ali Baba and his 40 thieves robbing the people of the money that has poured in as aid from the West.
The term limit of the president and the legislative assembly has expired, and no new elections are scheduled to provide Palestinians with any say on how they are being governed.
In effect those in authority have no mandate, and their fear that Hamas will likely win an election whenever held underscores the contempt of ordinary Palestinians for Mahmoud Abbas — the president of the Palestinian Authority – and the men around him.
There is irony in the fact that there are two Palestinian entities between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean.
If it were not for Israel in the middle, the war of words between these two Palestinian entities, or putative states, would become a ghastly shootout between the Iranian proxy in Gaza and mafia dons receiving protection money from the West and its Arab allies in the West Bank.
I have lived among, travelled and spoken with countless number of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims and have learned to be cautious about the disconnect between their words, their thinking, the reality around them and the record of their history.
As I sit among Palestinians in Ramallah, or visit with them in Bethlehem or Hebron, I listen to them patiently while avoiding disagreements by not offering my thoughts.
But when they insist on hearing my views I remind them gently of the verse from the Qur’an that God does not change the condition of people unless they change what is in their hearts.
Then there is silence and the distress of not knowing how to unpack half-truths and lies — in part of their own making — to become a responsible, free and independent nation.
He is a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Islamic Pluralism based in Washington, D.C., a Senior Fellow with the Canadian Coalition for Democracies, and an academic-consultant with the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. He has been a consultant with CIDA on development issues and has published widely in academic journals on foreign policy matters and area studies of the Middle East and South Asia.
Mansur is featured on the documentary Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West produced by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He also unsuccessfully ran for the Canadian Alliance party in 2000.
Mansur has been accused by Canadian Islamic Congress of using "provocative, self-serving rhetoric", and for "promoting an anti-Arab and anti-Muslim agenda".
He is an Ismaili Muslim.
At a press conference on October 2, 2008, Mansur stated that "Islam is my private life, my conscience...[but] my faith does not take precedence over my duties...to Canada and its constitution, which I embrace freely;" "I am first and most importantly a Canadian;" "only in a free society will you find Islam as a faith and not a political religion." Mansur also criticized New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton, whom Mansur said "has gone to bed with Islamists", because he is running candidates in Ontario and Quebec who are closely identified with the push for Sharia law.
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