Looking around the Ha’aretz and Jerusalem Post Web sites this morning - and realizing we will formally ‘celebrate’ the 60th Anniversary of Israel and simultaneously commemorate the 60 years since the ongoing Nakba (Catastrophe) of the Palestinian people today - I frankly found too few signs of hope and progress.

Bush is about - and reinforcing his commitment to Israel, the Israeli Housing Minister has promised to build 600 new homes in West Bank Settlements, and there’s even a plan announced yesterday to put a new synagogue smack in the middle of Palestinian East Jerusalem.

As we heard from Bush this week, there is still a flickering hope of a Palestinian State by the end of the year. Or at least, he believes that. An astute piece by Daniel Levy entitled ‘Roadmap to Nowhere‘ in yesterday’s International Herald Tribune succinctly sums this up as a ‘make believe’ peace process. None of the players involved with the debacle that was Annapolis feel there is any prospect of a ‘Roadmap’ solution in the near future - much less the next 6 months.

So why the false hope, the deception, the blind optimism in something that is simply no longer possible given the current facts on the ground. I struggle with that today more than ever as on a day that commemorates an event as pivotal as the dispossession of an entire people from their native land, all many of us on the sidelines can do is hope. Hope that more people learn the truth. The truth of the real situation beyond the media - beyond the 90-second sound bites of Bush pledging a 2-State solution or chipper photographs of Abbas and Olmert shaking hands. The truth is not pleasant. It does not fit well within politics or media or our collective view of the way the modern world should work.

Here are a few of those truths:

Before 1948 there were 475 Palestinian towns and villages in the area known as British Mandate Palestine. Since 1948, the year of the founding of Israel, 385 of those towns and villages have completely disappeared from the map (in most cases having been bulldozed out of existence).

Since 1967, Israel has detained and imprisoned over 700,000 Palestinians, the vast majority of whom as political prisoners (PLO NAD, Palestinian Prisoners, June 2007).

It is estimated that over 50% of the total area of the West Bank is currently restricted area and that Palestinians are restricted from some 41 sections of roads in the West Bank (approx. 700 km).

Since 1987, Israeli forces have “administratively” demolished (i.e., for lacking building permits) over 3,300 Palestinian houses in the West Bank (incl. East Jerusalem), and hundreds of other structures, rendering thousands of Palestinians homeless. In addition, as ‘punishment’ 1,061 homes were completely and 64 partially destroyed as well as 299 completely and 118 partially sealed (B’Tselem).

It really goes on and on.

So on this day of of the Nakba, the catastrophe, all this site can ask and ‘hope’ to encourage is the ongoing search for the truth. Hope more people can wade through the politics and media that filter what we all need to know; what we all must confront. Everyone must find that for themselves.

Read other Web sites - beyond Fox, CNN, BBC, and Reuters. Forget about the 30 minute news updates - and instead piece together 30 minutes of real news from other sources every day.

Read the facts. Find more facts. Find more truth.