Listen — everyone talks about what the government should do for Gaza, as if our government has any room to move. But the real shame, the one that keeps me awake, is that we had the chance in 1967, in 1973, in the years after Oslo when Arab capitals still had weight, and we chose instead to manage the problem, to take the aid money, to make deals that looked good in newspapers. The Israelis did what they do — they are a state, they protect themselves, that is what states do. But we were supposed to be something different. We failed our own people worse than any occupation could, because we had the choice and we looked away. Now young people in Amman speak about Palestine like it is news they discovered on their phone, and they want to lecture their government, but their government is me, is us, is what we built when we stopped believing we could do anything. That is the conversation nobody wants to have.
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