Bravo to Rajan Rishyakaran's ' UN partition plan on Israel-Palestine not binding ' in reminding us that the Israeli-Palestinian issue is not as black and white as the pro-Palestinian (or rather anti-Israel and anti-West) advocates would have us believe.

It was not the simple story of evil Zionists flooding into the country forcibly expelling hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes. This happened in some cases but we must acknowledge Arab responsibility for many of the refugees when they threatened invasion and punishment as traitors to all Palestinians who remained.

In the years after World War II, there were millions of refugees around the world. All of them found second homes or returned to their original homes and today, nearly 60 years later, only the Palestinians remain refugees. Why? This is largely due to the fact that they were not welcome in the countries of their Arab brethren and instead have been used as pawns in the ongoing war of politics between the Arab (now the entire Muslim world) and Israel.

As for the Palestinians, they cannot settle in the places where they found themselves. To do that means they would have to give up their refugee status and the political leverage that comes with that designation. Many of the larger camps are now located inside the lands controlled by the Palestinian Authority. They remain refugees as the Muslim world insists that they return to their original homes in Israel. Yet what was a few hundred thousand now number in the millions. The return of millions of anti-Israel Palestinians to Israel would be the first step in the ultimate Arab goal: the elimination of Israel and all who live within it. That is why it will never happen.

The resolution concerning Israeli children which mirrored a similar one forwarded by the Palestinians - and mentioned by Rishyakaran - is the reason why the United Nations is unable to be an unbiased party to the solution of this problem. The UN General Assembly and many of the committees have been hijacked by Islamic nations in their ongoing war on Israel. This was only the second resolution initiated by Israel in 30 years as they know that the Muslim block would defeat or sabotage any resolution they put forward.

This is why there are so many resolutions against Israel and why the US steps in when it can to veto the more damaging resolutions. Nasser Al-Kidwa, the Palestinian observer at the UN, when he was asked why the Palestinian Authority could not allow the resolution on Israeli children to go through, said, "We have a specific job to do to promote certain political ends." He added that "it was clear from the beginning that (the resolution) would not succeed."

I am no apologist for Israel as it has been guilty of many terrible things and deserves to be condemned for them. I just find it frustrating when a disproportionate number of fingers are pointed at Israel and too few seemed to point at Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Yasser Arafat and others - both at the state and individual level - who view Israeli occupation not in terms of the 1947 partition but as the entire state of Israel.

Ariel Sharon may have sparked the Intifada but it is the Intifada that keeps Sharon in as PM. Mindsets on all sides of the conflict must change if a lasting solution is to be found. The larger conflict is between the Muslim world and Israel (with American support). The average Palestinian is the one caught in the middle who is neither served by the larger Muslim world nor by their own leadership and the terror groups in their midst.