Anyone wishing to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict needs to come to terms with the grim historical reminders of the Deir Yassin massacre and how the state of Israel came into existence.

Unlike the white settlers of South Africa or Algeria, Israeli Jews are victims of a long history of Western anti-Semitism that culminated in the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust. Therefore, one can understand why Western liberals who openly espoused the anti-apartheid movement or the cause of the victims of Serbian aggression in the Balkans or that of East Timor seemed gripped by a moral paralysis when confronted with the Palestinian struggle for liberation and self-determination. And I guess the religious faith of the vast majority of Palestinians has a role to play as well.

With the Oslo accords, Arafat prematurely forgave the Zionist movement of its past misdeeds  the massacres, the forced expulsions, the annexation of East Jerusalem, the devastation of 30 years of military occupation and the presence of settlements on expropriated Palestinian land.

Unless Israel is made to face its dark past, acknowledge its wrongdoings, institute reparations to its victims and bring war criminals to justice, there will never be genuine peace. After all, the Zionists will not let the world for a moment forget their sufferings; they received large reparations from Germany and continue to hunt ageing Nazis from South America to Australia.

But is this atonement really possible, given Israels intransigence and with the knowledge that it has the backing of the worlds only superpower, it can do anything it wants in blatant disregard of international law and conventions, as well as the world public opinion, as todays wanton aggression in West Bank towns show? But on the other hand, is military option the only way out for Palestinians?

Palestinians stand alone

This has always been the uncompromising, non-negotiable position of Islamists all over the world down the decades, that Israel is an illegitimate state founded on the massacre and expulsion of Palestinians, hence, the only way to reclaim their rights and redeem their honour and dignity is by annihilating her.

It certainly appeals to the logic of Muslims who have, for more than half a century, been watching their Muslim brethren in the land of the prophets endure tremendous suffering, with the world only expressing token sympathy.

But looking at it rationally, the power equations of todays world just make such a dream impossible and neither is it morally sanctionable, given the nature of Israeli society today.

Israel happened to be a welcome solution to a massive European problem at the end of World War II, that is, the holocaust victims who had no homes to return to, and secondly the Zionist objective of a Jewish state in Palestine happened to converge with that of American geopolitical strategy of having virtually a satellite state in the middle east.

Israel could not have survived without massive American economic aid annually and unalloyed diplomatic support internationally; its defence forces armed to the teeth with high precision, super-efficient killing machines paid for by American taxpayers.

In contrast, the Muslim and Arab world are weak and fragmented, the surrounding Arab regimes have been cowed into submission to accept peace at any cost with Israel and will certainly not allow their territories to be landing points for volunteer fighters from the Muslim world.

Unlike 1967, there will be no Syrian or Egyptian armies this time on behalf of the Palestinians.

Harmful inflamed rhetoric

With every Israeli aggression, there would be inflamed rhetoric from Islamists calling for jihad to annihilate Israel, but because of these realities, nothing ever happened, except Israels hardening resolve in destroying the Palestinian people.

The Afghan war against the Soviets in the 1980s was no comparison, where western powers provided billions worth of arms and training to Muslim volunteers from all over the world through friendly Pakistan. In the end, it is always the Palestinians who fought and died alone, their plight getting more desperate with each cycle of hostility.

Such empty inflammatory rhetoric actually does more damage to the Palestinian cause.

But even if Muslims were to entertain that such a military objective is a possibility, there is the moral dimension which did not exist before the holocaust victims came to populate abandoned Arab towns and villages at the end of World War II or by Jews who migrated later from Russia.

Today, it is not really possible to speak of expelling Israeli Jews to Poland, Russia or Germany. Besides, among second-generation Israelis today are those with a new sense of nationalism that genuinely seeks peace and reconciliation with Palestinians, are sympathetic to their plight, who are ready to acknowledge the Zionist misdeeds in the creation of Israel, and oppose present Zionist policies.

Confining the Israel-Palestine conflict along purely religious lines, one result of which is the blanket condemnation and blind hatred of all Jews, has been the least helpful of Islamist political rhetoric in the cause of Palestinian liberation and self determination.

Obviously they constitute a small minority in Israeli society and one may be forgiven for cynically thinking that they provide the perfect window dressing for Israeli democracy to the outside world. But it is this constituency that the Muslim world needs to connect with and support to help the Palestinian struggle.

Of course the utmost priority today is to stop the slaughter of Palestinians in the present cycle of aggression. It is hard to see how this can be achieved without the intervention of the international community as the United States is not morally qualified to be a neutral mediator.

Democratic forces

But as a long-term strategy, Muslims desire of crushing Israel militarily and effacing it off the map of the world is a misplaced, unrealistic ambition given the realities of the balance of power or the lack of it in todays world.

Something that Muslims and Islamists have always neglected in favour of inflammatory rhetoric and crude anti-Semitism is aligning with democratic and moral forces all over the world and inside Israel to influence public opinion and continually remind the world of the circumstances of Israels birth, the modern history of the two peoples that Israel would like us to forget, its Original Sin.

Israel needs to be made to come to terms with its past, which too many people are ignorant of and continue to support the murderous Zionist policies through their tax-dollars. I am not of the opinion that the Palestinians stand a chance with a purely military option.

Their struggle has focused principally upon armed conflict for understandable reasons, but the myth of the heroic freedom fighter was allowed to stand alone, hence it was easy for Israeli propaganda to turn Palestinians into terrorists, voiding their claims for justice and reparations.

Let bygones be bygones  certainly that phrase is too painful for any Palestinian to hear, and in the context of todays aggression, it is completely inappropriate.

Need we be reminded that Arafat was arm-twisted into accepting that at Oslo 10 years ago? But as a long-term objective, if there is that faint hope that the worlds public opinion may be sufficiently swayed to make Israel acknowledge it past wrongs, institute reparations and bring to justice perpetrators of crimes against humanity as Nazi Germany was, no matter how painful it is to Muslims like me, that would seem a surer way of assuring the survival and restitution of the Palestinians rights and dignity as a people.

That the commemorations of the Holocaust and the Deir Yassin massacre fell on the same day this year may be more than mere coincidence but most urgently, is the solution to the present cycle of aggression and slaughter.

Part I

Note : The main reference for this piece is Edward Saids The end of the Peace Process  Oslo and after (Vintage books, New York, 2001, 389 pp), a collection of articles published in major middle eastern and western newspapers between May 1995 and October 2000.

Dr MAZENI ALWI is a medical practitioner who takes care of sick children.