Issue of the week

The good news from Islam's holiest city, Makkah, must have brought a big sigh of relief to millions of Palestinians. For months, the peace loving people of the world had been sad and helpless when gunmen belonging to Hamas and Fatah engaged in outrageous fratricide. The oppressed, colonized and victimized people of Palestine need justice and their struggle for justice has been recognized as legitimate by right-minded people across the world although European bigots, an influential section of American rightwing evangelists and their cronies elsewhere see them as terrorists who want to wipe out Israel from the face of the earth. These Westerners and their lackeys cannot understand the pain of a people who are colonized and who are oppressed, largely because they have not experienced the trauma of going through the humiliation of being colonized or oppressed. Their history is one of aggression and colonial aggrandisement and very little has changed in their attitude and behaviour even today.

The Palestinians, rightly so, were given the status of a state in the Non-aligned Movement, because the developing countries, which had undergone the shame and stigma of being a colony of European powers, empathized with the Palestinians.

The Palestinians are, unfortunately, yet to win the sympathy of the majority of the people in the West, especially in America. The Palestinians have become the target of their insidious design which seeks to destroy them or dump them into the dustbin of history.

It is to prevent the Palestinians from being gobbled up by such schemers that all those who are battling against all odds to establish a just global order are siding with them. Naturally, they were stricken with sadness when the Palestinians started killing each other. And now they are happy that the two sides have struck a historic deal to end their feud and form a unity government, although some contentious issues are yet to be ironed out.

Under the new power-sharing deal, the popular Islamic resistance group Hamas, would head a new coalition government that would "respect" past peace agreements with Israel.

But as expected, Israel and its chief patron, the United States, were not really happy. As usual, they pushed the goal post back once again when the Palestinians have reached the goal area.

Israel and the US have demanded the new unity government to explicitly renounce violence, recognize Israel and agree to uphold past peace accords. One of the significant features of the Thursday night Makkah accord was Hamas' willingness to "respect" past deals between the Palestinians and Israel. It was indeed a path-breaking compromise which in a sense recognizes the de jure existence of Israel. But for the United States and Israel the accord was vague and did not go far enough, although Washington patted the back of Saudi Arabia, its staunchest Arab ally in West Asia.

Since Hamas's implicit recognition of Israel by agreeing to respect all the past deals with the Jewish state has not made the Israelis and the Americans happy, the Islamic resistance group should go the extra mile for the sake of peace and the welfare of the Palestinian people and recognize Israel explicitly. However, it should be cautious in doing so as it may give legality to the illegal expansion of Israel since 1967. Therefore, it should add a qualifying line to that all-important statement. The rider should be: "the Palestinian people recognize the state of Israel within the 1967 borders and they also consider all expansions after 1967 as illegal annexations…"

Such a statement will put the ball in the US-Israeli court - or in tennis terms, Hamas will be serving an ace.

The Makkah accord has evoked some kind of positive response from European Union member states. The oppressed Palestinians, who are reeling under the blow of crippling financial sanctions imposed by the West and Israel, expect the West to lift the restrictions. Their elation over the Makkah deal underscores their expectations that the future will be one of hope.

Saudi Arabia, which played the role of honest broker, proved once again that it is, perhaps, the only Arab power in the region that has the financial might and political clout to solve at least some of the burning problems of West Asia. Years ago, it was Saudi Arabian-led moves that brought Lebanon's warring factions to the peace table in Taif, Saudi Arabia. The accord struck at Taif brought political stability to Lebanon after more than 15 years of civil war and helped that war-torn nation to rise again.

If only the Saudi initiative had come weeks earlier, more than 30 Palestinians would not have lost their lives in the inter-Palestinians clashes which broke out after a dispute involving Hamas' security unit and the Palestinian security forces.

The Saudis also have the power to influence Washington to force Israel to withdraw from Palestinian territories and help Palestinians achieve statehood. Didn't the Saudis recently threaten the Tony Blair government with severing of diplomatic relations if London did not stop its investigation into alleged kickbacks by British Aerospace to some members of the Saudi royal family? It is largely the failure of countries like Saudi Arabia to play their leadership role in the fight against global injustice that creates a vacuum for extremists such as al-Qaeda to step in and win support in the Arab and Islamic world.