Home »

[Odler]

Time, four wars, and countless violent uprisings have demonstrated that there is no military solution to the Middle East perennial crisis. Is there a solution at all? The answer is yes.

The formula has been accepted for years now, at least since Oslo: Land for Peace. Israel is to withdraw behind the borders it held in 1967 when, during the Six Day War, it occupied not only the West Bank, but also Sinai and the Gaza strip.

East Jerusalem will have to go under Palestinian jurisdiction. The Jewish settlements on Palestinian land will have to fold. And the question of the Palestinian refugees (expelled by the Jews) will have to be settled either by granting them right of return to their old homes, or by monetary compensation.

This new order will be watched over by an international peacekeeping force.

But beyond and above these, Israel and its partners must adopt a more respectful attitude toward the Palestinian Authority. Only treating Arafat, or his successor, as a peer will guarantee his cooperation in the prevention and the crackdown on extremist acts, the goal of which will be to erase Israel from the map.

In the short term, Ariel Sharon needs to withdraw his troops from Ramallah, as he has been asked for weeks by the leaders of the European Union and by George Bush.

??????..

A question regularly debated is whether or not Palestinian resistance organizations, like Hamas, have to be regarded as terrorist networks. The answer is yes. Yes, since killing unarmed civilians is terrorism, no matter how one puts it.

But one is to look at the alternative left to the Palestinian people to make its voice heard. There is none.

Therefore, in our new nomenclature on international terrorism, we will have to agree to the coding of justified and unjustified terrorism.

When you leave your home in Saudi Arabia, where you are not the least threatened, and fly a plane into the World Trade Center, this is an act of unjustified terrorism. Plain and simple. America, the victim, is to respond in earnest.

But when a 17-year-old girl blows herself up in an Israeli restaurant, this may be her only vehicle to attract the world?s attention on the plight of her siblings, whose house has been destroyed, and who are dying of hunger in a homeless shelter, by the will of the Israeli government. Is this terrorism, or is it self-defense?

Let us not forget that Boukman, Spartacus, Mandela and Castro were terrorists. In today?s world, the IRA, Irish bomb-planting organization, is financed by American interests. We need to understand that what is described in the West as terrorism is hailed on Al Jazeera television as a fight for freedom, a sacrifice in martyrdom. In Europe, Israel is widely seen as a terrorist state. So the very concept of terrorism is embedded in relativism.

For the Palestinian terrorist, ?Sometimes living is impossible, if to live one is not ready to die?? Understanding this axiom is the first step toward a lasting peace in the Middle East.

(OdlerRobert Jeanlouie, Saturday, April 20, 2002)

http://www.jeanlouie.com/