Rebels claim regularly to seize towns wholesale feather hair extensions that Tripoli says are firmly in its control. The government accuses NATO of choking off food and power supplies; NATO says Gaddafi is denying his people basic rights. It is often difficult for reporters to verify claims on either side.
The credibility of the rebels' leadership meanwhile has been hit by the mysterious assassination of its military chief.
The scene at the crowded, claustrophobic hospital morgue on Tuesday afternoon was another reminder of the toll the current conflict has taken as Libya drifts back into greater isolation and the body count rises on both sides.
In a nearby hospital room, Majar resident Ali Muftah Hamid Gafez stood by the bed of his wife, Fattiya, whose left leg had apparently been severed the night before.
"I was sitting with my friends in the house, when we suddenly feathers in hair extensions heard the bomb. Then I blacked out," she whimpered, appearing frightened of the crowd of reporters assembled at the foot of her bed.
She pulled the covers up over her head, and waited for the foreigners to leave.
“We always said, ‘If you want to liberate Palestine, you need to liberate yourselves,’ ” said Gamal Eid, founder of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, in Cairo.
In Tunisia, activists have insisted on an article in the Constitution banning normalization with Israel and making support for Palestinians state policy. Through a vibrant social media network, Lebanese and Palestinian youths have organized marches and sought ways to have a greater say in decisions of the Palestinian leadership. Protesters in Egypt have urged officials to let boats sail from Egyptian ports to break the partial blockade against Gaza; one boat docked in Alexandria last month before the Israeli military boarded and cheap feather hair extensions seized it.
“Even if the revolutions fail to achieve full and thorough regime change, there is no Arab government that can ignore its people now,” said Rashid Khalidi, a professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University. “All the rulers — the kings of Morocco and Jordan, all the dictators and all the autocrats — they’re scared blind of their own people.”
All across the region, popular uprisings have most insistently looked inward, at issues of democracy, social justice and dignity. But for many, dignity is a notion defined both individually and collectively. And even in the most idealistic moments of the Arab revolts, the weakness of their own governments was often a focus of protesters’ ire. In Tahrir Square in Cairo, anger at America and Israel was less pronounced than resentment of the subservience of Egyptian leaders to their policies, namely the blockade of feather extensions for hair Gaza.
The Foreign Ministry in Egypt now calls the Gaza blockade “shameful.” The reconciliation agreement signed in May in Cairo between bitterly opposed Palestinian factions was a direct consequence of the fall of President Hosni Mubarak. Even at the United Nations, bracing for a debate in September over whether to admit a Palestinian state as a full member, advocates evoked the Arab revolts as the appropriate context for an end to an Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands that has lasted 44 years.
“We hope that Mr. Netanyahu can listen to the wisdom of the voices of the leaders who are now moderate,” said Mohamed Bassiouni, a former Egyptian ambassador to Israel and one of the loudest voices here for warmer ties, referring to Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister. “Don’t miss this golden chance because you don’t know what will come if there is democracy, because democracy means listening to the people.”
The Palestinian cause has long served as an arena for manipulation by Arab governments, and popular reverence for the issue is rarely mirrored in the treatment of Palestinians in Arab countries, particularly in Lebanon, where refugees lack basic civil rights. But this issue retains an emotional pull across the region, heightened by a new sense of Arab identity inspired by the revolts.
