In photos: After Gaza, Israeli war machine sets sights on the once lush, green Southern Lebanon

In the 1980s, I worked as a press officer at the United Nations Secretariat in New York, and on occasion was assigned to work on the Question of Palestine. I prepared the information booklet on the Question of Palestine of the Secretariat, which was vetted by a gentleman of Chinese origin at the Secretary-General’s office on the 38th Floor, who was the UN’s expert and final arbiter on Israel-Palestine material.

The booklet I prepared became a public information document of the UN on the Question of Palestine for some years. There was one protest note about it from the Permanent Representative of Israel to the Secretary-General’s office, as I recall. The other informational material on the Question of Palestine that came out of the UN was mostly from the Special Committee on Palestinian Rights, which some delegations considered “political” and biased.

As a Press Officer assigned to the Question of Palestine, I was also part of a team that visited the Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan and Syria and came close enough to look at the Golan Heights from the town of Quneitra, totally destroyed in the 1962 war.

There are around nine million displaced Palestinians worldwide, and about six million in refugee camps in three...

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