Palestinian children look out the window of a United Nations school in the Gaza Strip. Hundreds of Palestinian families from across Gaza have taken refuge in UN facilities after fleeing their homes. (Mohamed Al-Zanon, Maan Images)

We have visited Palestine multiple times, most particularly eight times since 2003, and have been able to witness close up the vast changes that Zionism is constantly bringing to the land and to the people, none for the better. Palestinians are undergoing ever increasing levels of persecution and mistreatment from a right-wing Israeli regime that is being enabled and emboldened by the Obama administration's abject failure to exert any real pressure. (See Jonathan Cook, “How Israel Buried the UN’s War Crime Probe,” CounterPunch, October 6, 2009.)

You cannot possibly come away from even a single trip around the West Bank without realizing that Zionism is no mere abstract political philosophy but is an aggressive, exclusivist movement of Jewish redemption intended from the beginning to sweep everything non-Jewish from its path. On each trip we have made since 2003, things have grown worse for Palestinians. You can actually see this Jewish implantation across the land - the whole land of Palestine - in concrete form, actually see that Zionism has no room in its thinking, and Israeli leaders have no room in their policies, to accommodate any non-Jews at all, any Palestinians, living in Palestine in freedom and equality.

Shortly after Israel unilaterally halted Operation Cast Lead, its brutal early 2009 assault on Gaza, Obama was inaugurated promising substantial change in U.S. foreign policies and in the sensibility and tone of U.S. relations with the world and particularly the Muslim world. Obama's policy decisions so far on Palestine-Israel, however, appear to demonstrate clearly that on this issue there will be little if any change.

The conjunction of the Gaza slaughter and the election of an extremely rightwing government in Israel with the beginning of Obama's presidency has essentially placed the Palestinian-Israeli conflict at a standstill. Obama's half-hearted call for a halt to further Israeli settlement expansion and his failure to press Israel on this issue simply confirm the impasse.

This article is based heavily on a section of a new book recently published by Counterpunch contributors Kathleen and Bill Christison. Their book, entitled Palestine in Pieces: Graphic Perspectives on the Israeli Occupation, is published by Pluto Press. The book is a comprehensive description of all aspects of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.

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