While I cannot discount this, I do know that the taking of Ramallah was done so almost without any real fighting or an extended battle. Without consulting a detailed history, this type of throwaway line is by me suspect, added for dramatic flair.I wonder, did her editor ask for clarification or proof?And by the way, Jerusalem was shelled, heavily, causing damage to property and loss of civilian life. Did Ms. Ashrawi seek simpoly to offset that uncomfortable fact, a shelling that was completely unprovoked?The second comment is to this claim:Resistance comes at a high price. Nonviolent and peaceful protests are met with violent responses and punished by excessive prison sentences. In the five decades of occupation, many hundreds of Palestinian civilians have been killed, even children, when they stand up to soldiers with guns.Somehow, "resistance" which actually is armed terror ("Article 9: Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine." - PLO Covenant) is turned into a 1960's US college campus demonstration. It is made 'parve'. And troops or border police in almost all cases are only responding to rock-throwing, etc. if they do use means of forceful dispersal.And I'll add one more:
Today, Palestinians are left in control of barely 18 percent of the occupied territory — which means just 18 percent of that 22 percent of historic Palestine
This an old Arab propaganda trick.Until July 1922, Transjordan was included in the territory that within which a Jewish national homeland was to be reconstituted. Its separation originally was but a postponing of the full application of the Mandate terms. In other words, it is Israel which is in sovereign control of barely 17% of the territory it was to consider its homeland.Moreover, Arabs who refer to themselves as 'Palestinians' never really were in control ever of the land mass. Ashrawi's friends never really protested Jordanian illegal occupation to any real extent except, perhaps, if they were involved in the assassination of King Abdallah I.The NYTimes has done away with its Public Editor and so we are left with commenting in blogs and social media.^