The Middle East needs Peace

The middle east does not need extremisms, does not need Bush, does not need religions, does not need Blair, does not need unilateralism, does not need US neo-con imported and ready-made democracies and policies, does not need missionaries, does not need terrorism, does not need non sense, does not need suicide bombings, does not need zionism, does not need USrael and their neocolonialism, does not need killings, bombings, torture, dehumanising and military might.

The middle east needs hope, peace and economic development. Can any western democracy hear this plight ? Can anybody hear the plight of the meditterranean suffocated by tons of oil released by Isareli might ? Can anybody hear the plight of the Palestinians who elected a parliament imprisoned now by Israel ? Can anybody hear the plight of the Lebanese routinely put twenty years back by the state of Israel ? Can anybody hear the plight of the children who died in Qana, Gaza and south Beyrouth under the bombs of the Israeli army ? I am calling the world, the 'civilised', 'democratic' and 'moral' world. Is anybody hearing ?

''The chances of achieving a region-wide peace in the Middle East are slim to non existent right now, because the key non-Arab players are focusing on the wrong issues. They are trying to manage or eliminate the symptoms of our region's tensions instead of addressing the root causes. Hizbullah and Iran are among the best examples of this.

Israel and the US are obsessed with disarming Hizbullah and confronting Iran. But a quarter of a century ago neither of these issues existed. How Hizbullah and Iran became so problematic is worth recalling. Until 1979 Iran under the Shah was a close ally and friend of the US and Israel, and Hizbullah was not even born. What happened in the three decades from the mid-70s to today? Many things. The most consistent one was that we all allowed the Arab-Israeli conflict to fester unresolved. Its bitterness kept seeping out from its Palestine-Israel core to corrode many other dimensions of the region.

The constant clashes between Israel and Lebanon since the late 1960s derived heavily from the unresolved Palestinian-Israeli conflict that started with the 1948 war. Since Iran's 1979 revolution Islamist revolutionary zeal has found effective expression in its close association with Hizbullah, which Iranian revolutionary guards were instrumental in establishing and training. Tehran's assistance to Hamas today follows a similar pattern. A non-Arab power such as Iran exploits the resentment against Israel and the US throughout the Arab world to make political inroads into Arab regions. If the Arab-Israeli conflict had been resolved decades ago, Iran would not have this opportunity.''