Clearly it is in the interest of world peace and the diminishment of terrorism to bring peace to Palestine. And it must be a just peace based on international law that applies to both parties. For this to happen, the international community must engage itself in Palestine; it must visit the West Bank and Gaza, it must view whatever natural resources belong to those areas; it must resolve the complications inherent in the right of return; it must establish security within the areas to prevent further violence through the use of UN Peace Keeping Forces, and it must assume full responsibility for integrating the respective governments into the community of nations in the UN.

Should the UN take the Palestinian peace initiatives seriously, it will have the means to bring resolution to the issues brought forth by Israel and adopted by the US and the EU for not meeting with Hamas or the PLO. Palestine will recognize Israel as it is defined by the resolution that created it in 1947, 181 of the UNGA in its 55% (for Israel) 45% (for Palestine) or it will determine the borders based on resolution 242, in 1967, that provides for Palestine to retain the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem. Negotiations on right of return might encompass land exchanges so that fewer refugees return to Israeli controlled land, but right of return cannot be denied since it is constitutionally guaranteed by the UN General Assembly Partition Plan for Palestine, a document that gives validity to Israel just as it does to Palestine: “There is no question that under the stipulations of the said Plan all the 1948 Palestinian Arab refugees and their descendants, by now some four million people defined under Israeli law as ‘absentees’, are constitutionally entitled without qualification to Israeli citizenship.” (see 1947 UN Partition Plan, C Declaration Chapter [3] [1] as referenced in Apartheid Israel, Uri Davis, p.68f). “…denial of Israeli citizenship to this Palestinian constituency is an act of mass nullification of citizenship (denationalization), and a blatant violation of the UN Charter and international law, let alone Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.: 1) Everyone has a right to a nationality; 2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.” (Uri Davis 68).  

Needless to say, Olmert opted to immediately reject Mahmoud Abbas’ proposal; so much for Kadima Party’s desire for peace. “Our way or no way” serves as the motto of this child of Sharon. Ismail Haniyeh made these observations in the UK Guardian following the elections that brought Hamas to power in Palestine: “…Ehud Olmert’s Kadima Party, whose Likud forebears frustrated every effort by the PLO to negotiate a peace settlement, campaigned on a programme that defies UN security council resolutions. His unilateralism is a violation of international law … Olmert’s unilateralism is a recipe for conflict. … The problem is not with any particular Palestinian group but with the denial of our basic rights by Israel. We in Hamas are for peace and want to put an end to bloodshed.” (Guardian Unlimited, “A Just Peace or No Peace,” 3/31/2006).  

Mahmoud Abbas and the Hamas leadership have proffered to the international community an olive branch that embodies a desire for peace, an expression of hope, a rejection of injustice and despair. It represents a calm, deliberative response to justice, a justice for Israel as much as for the Palestinians. It makes no demands that have not been accepted by the world body and reiterated by that same institution year after year. Should the Saudi Peace Plan be adopted or the international community accept the UN resolutions, the existence of Israel is assured as is the right of Palestine to exist as a nation state. It rejects unilateral action by either side preferring instead mutual respect through international deliberation and determination. Both Hamas representing the Palestinian people and Kadima representing the Israeli people would have to renounce violence toward each other and accept the demands incorporated in the resolutions passed by the UN as they impose actions on the respective states. International law would become the basis for this peace not the fanaticism that drives self-interest groups.  

The nations of the world must take command, wrest power from the United States and its delusional President, and from Israel that has under Sharon forced its will upon the world in full defiance of the united voice of the nations speaking through the General Assembly. The ineluctable drive of destiny to the calamitous clash of cultures moves forward like some laver flow enveloping the dunes and hills of Palestine, the towns and villages nestled in the valleys, and the cities that rise unnaturally from the barren earth. Yet in this desolate and God forsaken land the future of our world plays out as maniacs imbued with beliefs encrusted with the detritus of ages propel civilized humankind into acts more barbarous than those that gave birth to the Dark Ages.

We must confront the inevitable consequence of not acting, abandon justice due the Palestinians and that due the Jews in Israel and around the world who are appalled by the fanaticism that drives the Israeli government or witness the slow and agonizing genocide that is happening in Palestine to an imprisoned people abandoned by the world till now – justice or genocide. At this moment we sit patiently, awaiting the decision that will unleash nuclear weapons at installations in Iran as we watch in silence the completion of the Wall of Terror that Israel constructs around the hapless Palestinians, acts that could result in indiscriminate devastation and absolute chaos. The people of the world are left with an unstated ultimatum, act now to stop the forces that propel the world toward this unwanted Armageddon or accept the inevitable consequences that drive fanatics to inflict their will.

=================
 
William Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California and author of Tracking Depception: Bush's Mideast Policy

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