To date, we have seen the Quartet as only a formal body with little influence, apparently largely under the control of the USA.

Europe needs to speak out more loudly than ever. A strong position from the EU is an example of the possibility of the rise of a European power which could have greater influence in the conflict.
The US Chief Justice Earl Warren once said that humans will never live in peace until they have the opportunity to obtain justice under law. Warren's words are important to remember in the light of Palestinian history. Those meeting at Annapolis need to remember that all the proposals about solving the conflict over Palestine have failed for the simple fact that justice under law have been the ultimate victim of all these meetings and conferences.


- Dr. Salim Nazzal is a Palestinian-Norwegian historian in the Middle East, who has written extensively on social and political issues in the region. He can be contacted at: [email protected]

Today, after more than 60 years of Zionist rule in Palestine, Palestinians have become accustomed to theatrical displays of offers and conferences which took Palestine from Palestinians in the past and which give no indication whatsoever that they would give them anything in the future.

No one expect that the peacemakers will suddenly turn out to be angels on earth; politics is, after all, a game of self-interest. But peace needs a change of heart. It needs brave voices who will press Israel to respect international will. It needs more Jews to raise their voices against the destructive role of Zionism. The American policy of supporting the Israeli occupation must end, for the sake of America itself, for the sake of Palestinians and for the sake of the existing Jewish community in Palestine. If this policy continues, 100 Al-Hurra TV stations will not be able to beatify the ugly face which supports the Zionist policy of murder. Europe which is linked with Arabs by many common factors in terms of history, neighborhood, interests and historical responsibility needs to play a more effective role in the solution.

Putting the problem in its rightful place, therefore, explains why all the efforts to broker peace have failed in the Middle East.

An acknowledgement that the problem belongs to the Zionist European Jews in the first place would help us in finding solutions for the Jewish immigrants to Palestine, since the policy of replacing the native Palestinians has proven from the start to bring only war. The policy of creating a small Palestinian state will be only a truce because the war will be resumed with Israel sooner or later. The conflict between Palestinians and Israelis is over all Palestine, not only on the 1967 occupied land. In other words, it is the primary problem, the events of1948 and their results, which must be dealt with rather than the side-effects. This raises the question of where to start from in solving the problem, because only putting the chariot of peace in front of the horses of justice would be the right approach to find a fair solution in the region. This should reopen the debate over a democratic state for all because all other alternatives would, at best, produce a truce before again resuming the conflict.

No state in the world has thrived by the effects of an agent's role; countries thrive because they are in natural harmony with their surroundings .while the Zionists demand the impossible, wishing to occupy and to murder and at the same time wanting Palestinians to accept this, a policy which has proved futile. Israel is the only state in the world which talk 24 hours a day about security while its very existence, and its daily policy is based on terror and on threatening the security of Palestinians and the whole region. In the policy of twisting facts Israel has succeeded in portraying itself as a stable state threatened by Palestinians who are the aggressors while the simple historical fact demonstrate that the reality is the polar opposite; it is the Palestinians' security which has been threatened since the beginning by the Zionist invaders and thus the creation of the Zionist state in the region has been the cause of all the troubles ever since.

Whether Zionist Jews failed in integrating themselves in their mother countries in Europe or whether European societies failed to integrate them in their societies, the problem from the first still lies with Zionist Jews.
History has demonstrated beyond doubt that moving the people of the Jewish ghettoes in Warsaw and elsewhere in Europe to the Palestinians' land did not solve their problem; on the contrary, it has, since the beginning, created conflicts and wars that nobody can predict any end to.

At that time European Jews had two choices, either to fight for democracy and equality in their home countries alongside others, or to emigrate peacefully from Europe to live on equal terms with Palestinians and Arabs. Neither one was chosen; instead they opted for the most destructive solution, allying themselves with the imperial powers and invading Palestine in the hope that the agent's role would be their insurance. After 60 years, the agent's role has proven to be wholly destructive.

The second lesson is that Palestine cannot be a racist state, no matter what Zionists have done in the past and will do in the future and even if they win 100 more battles they will still have to prepare again for war the next day.

Towards the end of the apartheid era, white South Africans had to face the choice between being an oppressive foreign entity in the heart of Africa and being ordinary citizens like the rest of the population. For many years, they chose the first option, but in the end, knowing that this choice was taking them into a dark tunnel from which no light would ever come, they had to make a major shift in their thinking. When they faced the reality bravely, a bright future for themselves and for the rest of the citizens was opened. Today the Western world deal with the Palestinian question from a fixed standpoint; that Israel is there and that the issue, therefore, is how to satisfy Palestinians with some solution, while in reality, historically, the problem is that of the immigrant European Jews and not of Palestinians.

In such critical times, wise politicians with vision are desperately needed. Though politicians cannot change the past, they definitely can change attitudes and though they cannot reverse time, they can reverse views - but if there are no changes in attitudes, the problem will simply be passed down to later generations.

The first lesson which Zionists and their supporters in the West must contemplate is that, in the 100 years of conflict to date, the transplanting of a Zionist state was not the happy ending to a story, but the beginning of a long conflict that will not end unless the Palestinians' long journey of pain and suffering is ended, and that this can only be achieved by promoting justice according to international law.

Today, when Miss Rice says that the problem is that there is no trust between Palestinians and Israelis, she is presenting only half of the problem.

Abbas obviously does not wish to tell the unpleasant truth known by every Palestinian, that the West, headed by he USA, has not taken one genuine step towards addressing the roots of the problem; on the contrary, the policy of solving a problem while creating another has proven its short-sightedness beyond any doubt. The policy of ignoring and depriving the Palestinian people of their rights has amassed a vast well of anger and feelings of intense bitterness throughout the Middle East and has helped to breed generations of anti-Western Arabs, which has led to the poisoning of the relationship between Arabs and the West. The American and European policy of arming Israel with nuclear, biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction has been a fatal mistake, opening the Middle East to the possibility of an arms race which has led in the past to traditional wars and will likely lead in the future to ballistic war.

The wiping of Palestine from the map, under the British and western powers' auspices and with their full overt and covert support, has resulted in the subsequent creation of endless wars, with the West only recently realizing just how dangerous the effect of this could be on international peace. One must also bear in mind the effective antagonistic role of Zionist thinkers such as Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington in inflaming a conflict between the Islamic East and the West. It is an ironic paradox that Zionists, who use and have used every terrorist act found in the dictionary of oppression, are yet again exaggerating the danger to the Zionist state, as if this state was established by an act of Santa Claus-style philanthropy towards Palestinians.

Revisiting this chapter of Palestinian history is required in order to highlight the roots of the mistrust of Palestinians and Arabs towards the West, with the aim of restating the facts and hopefully in moving forward through confronting the past.

In other words, the British offer was between giving Palestinians the choice to legally give (through their representatives) their consent to a future Zionist state in their ancestral home country or to accept the imposed fact. This policy was clearly a major assault on the concept of democracy and on the commitment of the mandate guidelines as stated by the League of Nations' resolutions. In addition, it was in contradiction with the British propaganda discourse itself, which claimed that they had come to liberate Palestinians from Turkish tyranny.

Naturally, the Palestinian leadership of the time had no choice but to reject the British offer because no leadership in the world would accept such an offer, the results of which appeared 30 years later when Palestine disappeared entirely from the map.