. . . published the Road Map to Peace. The premise of this plan, as the Palestinian historians Samih Farsoun and Naseer Aruri point out, "is that the nearly forty-year-old impasse is not caused by an abnormal and illegal occupation but by the Palestinian resistance to that occupation. Progress was thus linked to ending the intifada and all acts of resistance rather than ending the occupation or reversing decades of colonial impoverishment of land, resource, and institutions.

What draws me to Palestine, then, is neither nationalism not patriotism, but my sense of justice, my refusal to remain silent in the face of injustice, my unwillingness to just go on living my life -- and enjoying the privileges of a tenured university professor – while trying to block out and ignore what Wordsworth once called the still, sad music of humanity.

Israel maintains its pressure on the Palestinian population not simply for its own security, then, but because such pressure has for four decades enabled it to maintain control over the territories- and, quite simply, because it encourages Palestinians to leave.

But the main thing I learned from the war was that war is unjust, no matter who is pulling the trigger, and that, as my parents taught me, we owe it to each other as human beings to speak out against injustice.

We would do well to remember that the success of any struggle depends on the determination of its leaders and the clarity of its purpose, not the doubts of naysayers.