Usamah “Sam” Husseini

Come election day, millions may vote for George W. Bush and Al Gore while not believing in them. Doubtlessly, some will vote for one of these two enthusiastically, but sometimes it seems neither of these candidates has inspired many beyond their immediate family and those on their campaign payroll. Many unimpassioned voters would consider backing a third party candidate, like consumer advocate Ralph Nader - or Pat Buchanan or the Libertarian or Natural Law candidates. But voters are scared.

Many are frightened that Gore will win - so they plan to vote for Bush; many others are afraid that Bush will win - so they're looking at voting for Gore. Are we becoming a nation that votes its fears rather than its hopes and convictions? A vote should be a statement of what someone believes - and indeed millions will do that come November 7. However, many feel sidelined, their heart tells them to vote for a third party candidate, but their head tells them to go for the "lesser of two evils."

Even with these shackles there are solutions - if people really do think it through. One answer is suggested by the group Citizens for Strategic Voting, which is taking out ads in newspapers urging people in states in which Gore or Bush does not have a chance of winning to vote for Ralph Nader. People could thus vote for Green Party candidate Nader without feeling they are helping whichever of the major party candidates they want to keep out of the White House. This is of course because the president is elected by winning a majority of the electoral college and the candidate who wins a given state gets all the electoral votes from that state. And if Nader gets 5 percent of the popular vote, as Ross Perot did in 1996, the Green Party gets federal money in 2004.

Good enough. But what if you live in one of those "swing states," (like Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, New Mexico, Ohio, Tennessee, Michigan, Oregon, Washington) or if you don't believe the polls?

Here's a sure-fire solution - if you are close to (and trust) someone who is on the other side of the two party divide in your state.

Say a husband plans to vote for Gore since he thinks Bush is dim. His wife plans to vote for Bush because she thinks Gore is deceitful. If they both - in the their hearts would like to vote for some third party candidate - they can do so, by trusting each other and both voting for the third party candidate.

If they had just gone along with the husband voting for Gore and the wife voting for Bush, in effect they would cancel out each other's vote. But if they both vote for a third party candidate, they can magnify their votes. For example, if instead of one for Gore and the other for Bush they both voted for Nader, they would not change the balance between Gore and Bush, but they would give Nader two votes. Instead of "wasting" their votes (by canceling out each other), they would double their vote by giving both to the candidate they truly want. They would vote their conviction without helping whichever politician they least want. Of course, people can do this with any third party candidate, and indeed, with any two third party candidates (a husband can vote for one third party candidate, the wife for a different one). This would send a strong signal that people are not satisfied with the major parties.

A would-be Republican voting for Nader is not as unlikely as it might seem to some. Nader's attraction comes largely from his intelligence and integrity. In his address at the Green Party convention, he welcomed "authentic conservatives" - as opposed to "corporatists." He stands for community, for family, for accountability - as well as for social justice, the environment and peace. He stands against abusive power, whether by corporations - or the government.

This "vote swap" option is exercised by politicians all the time. One congressman votes for another's dam project in return for a vote for his military base. Maybe it's about time that the public used such tactics.

So there are solutions. People don't need to feel bound by the "lesser of two evil argument." Step one: vote your convictions; Step two: figure out what's happening in your state and vote with your head; Step three: find a friend, relative or co-worker who was planning on voting for the other "less of two evils," make a pact and double your heart instead of canceling out each other on election day.

[originally published on Common Dreams on Oct. 29, 2000; posted on posthaven Dec. 17, 2015]

President Clinton said he wants to break the "cycle of violence" between the Israelis and Palestinians, but his refusal to do justice actually plants the seeds of oppression and violence.

Shortly after the Israeli military began killing scores of Palestinians, the United Nations Security Council voted 14 to 0 — including Britain, Canada and the Netherlands — for a resolution condemning Israel's "excessive use of force against Palestinians." But the U.S. government abstained, making clear that it is outside world consensus.

And when the U.N. tried to follow up on that resolution, the Clinton administration moved to block it, insisting instead on the Sharm el Sheik "peace summit," where the administration calls the shots.

Clinton now says that we shouldn't assign blame for "the violence." But it was Clinton who blamed Yasser Arafat for not signing the Camp David agreement Clinton was trying to force this summer. And talking about "the violence" is a way of trying to hide the fact that about 100 Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli occupation soldiers, while a few of those soldiers have perished.

When Palestinians protest against the Israeli military Goliath, they are saying "give me liberty or give me death." Instead of getting help from the U.S. government, they are shot at by helicopter gunships paid for by our tax dollars.

Why are the Palestinians so fed up? While the Israeli government has been talking peace for the past six years, Palestinians have seen 50,000 more Jewish settlers illegally put into the West Bank and Gaza; Israel has demolished nearly 1,000 Palestinian homes; there has been a threefold increase in Palestinian unemployment; the Israelis have arrested 13,000 Palestinians, and they have restricted Palestinians' freedom of movement, keeping them on little Swiss cheese patches of land on the West Bank.

Israel refuses to comply with international law, which mandates that it withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza (including East Jerusalem) and that it allow the Palestinian refugees living in squalid refugee camps to go back to their rightful homes, from which they were driven by Israeli forces.

Only by addressing these serious issues — not by photo ops — can a lasting peace for Israelis and Palestinians be achieved.

[originally published on Common Dreams on Oct. 18, 2000; posted on posthaven Dec. 17, 2015]

While the United States and Israel boast of their democratic values, they continue to wreak havoc on Palestinian self-determination, as the Palestinian Authority is pressured, cajoled and offered inducements to accept agreements that most Palestinians clearly do not want.

This is not to say that most Palestinians don't want an agreement--just that they want a fair one. But the current discussions are based on massive disparities of power: Israel is a major military force; the Palestinians don't even control their own borders. True, they have international law, Geneva conventions and human rights on their side, but that doesn't speak nearly as loudly as Israel's military machine (including an estimated 200 nuclear weapons) and its multifaceted U.S. backing.

The Palestinians are also hampered by a leadership that seems more interested in preserving its status and lining its pockets than in achieving the rights of the people. It's a disquieting paradigm: The powers collude and the people get shafted.

The Israel strategy seems to be to take something by force and then give back a small portion of it, labeling it a "concession" and expecting to be thanked. International law calls for the return of all Palestinian refugees forced from their homes in 1948, along with compensation for them. It calls for Jerusalem to be an international city shared between a Jewish and Palestinian state, and for the Palestinians to have a state larger than what they are currently striving for on the West Bank and Gaza. International law would call for the removal of all Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza; they have been placed there while the land is under occupation, and ethnic transfers under occupation are illegal.

It would not have been much of a "concession" for Saddam Hussein to give back part of Kuwait. Would Clinton have negotiated with Milosevic to let some of the ethnic Albanians back into Kosovo? What Israel has done to the Palestinians is no more legitimate.

Having only recently waged war on Yugoslavia because of its "ethnic cleansing," Clinton now puts his political muscle into trying to get the Palestinians--the world's largest refugee population--to give up hope of returning to their rightful homes. An opportunity to do justice was once again missed. Instead, the politics of illusion seem to have come to the Mideast with a vengeance. It appears the Palestinians have been offered a "Jerusalem" that is not Jerusalem; the right of return for only a nominal number of the Palestinian refugees; a "state" without control over water, borders or real sovereignty; "territory" that is not contiguous; and symbols of nationhood that would become more signs of shame than of pride for an injured people.

On Jerusalem, the trick was to expand the city to include a village named Abu Dis and claim "That's Jerusalem." It's as though another country conquered Washington, D.C., and Takoma Park, expanded the boundaries of Washington to include Takoma Park and then said that it was going to give back that "part of Washington" as part of a fair "compromise."

The cruel twists of fate against the Palestinians cannot be overcome by such sleight of hand. True peace will come as a consequence of doing the hard work of justice, not through ambiguous agreements worked out in secret. The ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians must be acknowledged in a forthright fashion.

Palestinian refugees must be allowed back to their homes, and not just enough to provide pretty pictures for the cameras. There are about 4 million displaced Palestinians. In effect, Israel says it will not allow significant numbers to return because that would shift its demographic balance. But that attitude is morally and legally illegitimate.

Talk of the Palestinians getting 90 percent of the West Bank masks the reality that that is only 22 percent of historic Palestine, that Israel seems to be insisting on leases, the dubious promise of future pullbacks and the fragmented nature of Palestinian-"controlled" territories, as well as the lack of actual Palestinian control over travel, imports, exports and water resources.

This was in a sense the opposite of the original Camp David accords, which were fundamentally based on international law: full Israeli withdrawal and removal of the illegal settlements. Similarly, in South Africa, the final state--the end of apartheid and creation of a multiethnic democracy with one person, one vote--was the explicitly stated end point. The Palestinians, if the Oslo process continues, seem doomed to having bantustans and permanent subjugation.

Such a situation should not be appealing to Israelis. Do they want a genuine peace that gives them real security or a feeling of perpetual guilt over knowing that their neighbors feel righteous resentment over what they have done to them? Genuine peace would mean real acceptance of the people of Israel as equal partners in the Mideast, neither military-economic conquerors nor an outcast, outlaw nation.

[originally published on Common Dreams on July 27, 2000; posted on posthaven Dec. 17, 2015]