Is This Holmes Another Sherlock?

[Published February 2008]


Sir John (just call me “John") Holmes - the Under-Secretary -General for Humanitarian Affairs and United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator - is on a five day visit to Gaza and Israel.

Not unsurprisingly he has found that life in Gaza is “grim and miserable”’ as Israel progressively closes down Gaza - a declared “enemy entity” - in response to never ending rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli civilian population centres using weaponry and materiel smuggled into Gaza through Egypt.

As Mr Holmes acknowledged himself at his press conference on 18 January 2008 - 150 Qassam rockets had been launched into Israel from Gaza between 16 and 18 January 2008 following another 150 or more that had been fired off during December. Scores more have followed since - provoking responses from Israel targeting those in Gaza who continue to perpetrate their cowardly attacks from within Gazan population centres.

Mr Holmes said that the United Nations understood Israel’s security problems and the need to respond to them. However he said collective punishment of the people of Gaza was not the appropriate way to do so. Closing the borders had been caused by the rocket attacks but it was not justified.

In the best traditions of United Nations’ diplomacy, Mr Holmes was strong on criticism but could furnish no advice to Israel in January on what its proper response should be to this assault on its sovereignty and the collective punishment being visited on the people of Israel from a neighbouring territory ruled by a Government whose avowed aim is to totally destroy Israel.

Visiting the region just four weeks later Mr Holmes sounds a little more concerned and relatively proactive as the prospect strengthens for a ground invasion of Gaza by Israel.

“You can’t justify the firing of these rockets and mortars from Gaza into Israel,” Mr Holmes said on his arrival in Gaza.

Mr Holmes said he wanted to see if he could find new ways to ease the lives of civilians on both sides, but noted he does not have the authority to make changes.

“Obviously we don’t have the power to enforce solutions, but we can make suggestions,” he said.

Coming up with the right suggestions will not be easy.

Until the Hamas Government takes effective action to end the incessant mortar and rocket barrage emanating from its territory, the situation in Gaza is only going to worsen.

Until the Gazans indicate their disagreement with what is happening in Gaza, the situation will continue to deteriorate. Whilst Gazans openly applaud terrorist attacks in Israel and hand out sweets to beaming citizens celebrating the news, the situation will continue to deteriorate.

Whilst the funerals of terrorist leaders are attended by tens of thousands of hysterical followers shouting “death to Israel” and firing guns in the air, the situation will continue to run out of control.

Gazans are not innocent citizens held hostage by a terrorist regime. They elected Hamas to power and what is now happening is the direct consequence of their collective decision to do so. If they don’t like what is happening then demonstrate, get on the internet, voice their disapproval wherever and whenever they can. Has Mr Holmes seen the slightest signs of any public disapproval or heard the whiff of a protest whilst walking the streets of Gaza?

Have Gazans protested at the perversion of the education system with its anti-Jew curriculum? Have they stopped their children watching Disney like characters on television spewing out hatred and venom of Jews? Have they tried to wipe off the graffiti daubed on houses and public places throughout Gaza glorifying the death and martyrdom of their own children?

Gazans need to expose the underground tunnels through which the weapons are smuggled, the factories being used to manufacture and assemble the rockets and mortars, the owners of motor vehicles being used to transport and launch rockets, the secret hiding places where these weapons are cached, those who leave their homes at night to launch the rockets on their deadly trajectory.

Those who have suffered enough privation need to agitate for the border between Egypt and Gaza to be reopened to enable food and supplies to be transported into Gaza. They need to demand the right to emigrate through Egypt to one of the 57 Moslem countries around the World to escape the hardship they are presently enduring. Innocent Gazans need to be offered a haven where they can live free of the trauma currently being engendered by their fellow citizens who seem hell bent on destroying Gaza and everything and everyone living there as they try to destroy Israel.

Gazans may be too weak, too frightened, too scared to speak out. Hopefully Mr Holmes will do so for them.

One thing is certain - Mr Holmes needs to come up with his suggestions and speak out very soon.

Those suggestions will be awaited with bated breath. Hopefully he will surprise us all and come up with the right answers just as Sherlock Holmes was always able to do.

Gaza cries out for the interference by this modern day Holmes which has “the unquestionable effect of preventing a serious international complication.” - to use the words of Dr Watson in “The Final Problem”.

If he fails then the consequences for the region will be disastrous and make the current humanitarian situation pale into insignificance compared to what awaits Gaza and the Gazans.

Gazans Get Gazumped Again

[Published February 2008]

The Moslem world has blown yet another opportunity to offer the 1.5 million Gazan Arabs hope for a better life and future by once again showing its total disregard for their welfare - preferring to play the political rather than the humanitarian game with potentially disastrous consequences for the Gazans.

This follows the absence of any attempt by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to keep the border between Egypt and Gaza open after it had been demolished by Hamas. This had taken place using the pretext of ending what the Arab League had called “a humanitarian crisis” - the refusal of Israel to supply fuel to Gaza in retaliation for the continued barrage of rockets and mortars being fired into Israel’s civilian population centers.

Whilst the border’s demolition was intended to - and did - allow freedom of movement by terrorists and armaments into and out of Egypt - and possibly from there to Israel - it also had allowed Gaza’s 1.5 million residents freedom of movement as well. Approximately 750000 Gazans took advantage of that opportunity during the 11 days the border had remained opened and unsupervised by the Egyptians.

The border has now been hermetically sealed by Egypt without a whimper from the 57 member States of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) - which includes the 22 member States of the Arab League.

The OIC was founded in 1969. According to its Charter its foundation members declared that it was established because they were:

“ CONVINCED that their common belief constitutes a strong factor for rapprochement and solidarity among Islamic people" and that they were “RESOLVED to preserve Islamic spiritual, ethical, social and economic values, which will remain one of the important factors of achieving progress for mankind”

On Sunday 3 February, the Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki told an Expanded Extraordinary Session of the Executive Committee of OIC Foreign Ministers, being held at the headquarters of the OIC in Jeddah:

“These days a real slaughter is underway in the 1.5 million Gaza Prison and an oppressed nation is being subjected to massacre by repeated bombardments, helicopter and tank attacks and a simultaneous cut off of water electricity and foodstuff”

Not one Foreign Minister present appeared to take issue with this hyperbolic statement - but that might have been due to no-one believing whatever Iran says these days.

This is not to ignore the considerable hardship being suffered by Gazans whose suffering has greatly increased since Gaza was taken over by Hamas in June 2007 following a bitter internecine struggle with the Palestine Liberation Organisation for control of this tiny area.

Yet remarkably the only affirmative OIC response at Sunday’s meeting was to:

1. Task the Islamic Group at the UN to pursue necessary measures to secure an adequate action by the United Nations and

2. Urge the Member States, the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), and private financial institutions to endeavour to provide urgent humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people in order to alleviate their suffering

Isn’t this a cop out? What humanitarian assistance should -and can - the Member States provide - not merely “endeavour to provide”?

What “Islamic spiritual, ethical, social and economic values” are being demonstrated by the decision to lock up the Gazans in their prison again?

Egypt is a member of the OIC. Surely the humanitarian message of the open border was clear - many Gazans relished the opportunity to escape - briefly or permanently - from what is no doubt a disastrous and oppressive environment.

Whilst hundreds of millions of Moslems in OIC member States enjoy the right to migrate, Gazans have now apparently been denied the same right by their own Moslem brethren

UNICEF states that 56 percent of Gazans are under the age of 18 years and that they are bearing the brunt of restrictions in the territory. How can the IOC actively countenance the continuation of this disgraceful situation and not seek to promote the opportunity for Gazans to choose a better life - either by resettlement in any of their 57 member states or elsewhere of their choosing?

Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak also took the opportunity to bluntly declare that Gaza will never be part of Egypt. Why not?

Apart from the fact that it was administered by Egypt from 1948-1967, what encouragement does the President’s spineless reaction give to Hamas in relation to its claim to continue to rule a strip of land just 25 miles long and 6 miles wide for the avowed purpose of destroying the State of Israel?

Does the OIC consider it an Islamic value to see 1.5 million Moslems subjected to continuous suffering because of the use of armed force and terror from Gaza against the Jewish State? Should the OIC not be pressing for those who are suffering to be given the opportunity of migrating to find a more peaceful and prosperous future for themselves and their children? Isn’t this inflicting collective punishment on these people by denying them the right to emigrate through Egypt?

The OIC emergency meeting was only attended by a few of its members suggesting little desire among Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies to do anything about this shocking situation. Moslems surely have a religious and moral obligation to alleviate the humanitarian suffering of other Moslems - unreservedly and without regard to the political situation in which those suffering Moslems find themselves.

Allowing those 1.5 million Gazans to live out their lives as they presently do, does not represent “rapprochement and solidarity” among Islamic people but rather “conflict and disunity” - a gross betrayal of everything the OIC is supposed to represent.

It is time for the OIC to give priority to humanitarian values over political goals.

The Gazans - for the umpteenth time in their wretched history over the past 60 years - have been once again gazumped by their Moslem and Arab brothers. Will anything or anyone ever be able to save them?

Solving the "Palestinian Problem"

Renowned International Analyst Daniel Pipes has now joined former US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton this week in advocating a Jordanian - Egypt solution to the West Bank and Gaza in this article in the Jerusalem Post on January 6, 2009.

In essence the so called "Palestinian problem" is insoluble because the Arab League conditions for its resolution are unattainable by any negotiating process as a result of the following two unyielding non-negotiable demands that Israel is not prepared to accept:

1. The removal of all Jews living in the territory captured by Israel from Jordan and Egypt in the Six Days War in 1967 now numbering 500000 in the West Bank

2. The right of return to Israel being granted to millions of Arabs (and their descendants) made homeless at that time by the Arab-Israel War in 1948

Negotiating processes instituted pursuant to the Oslo Accords 1993, the Bush Road Map 2003 and proposed under the Saudi Peace Initiative 2002 have no answers to resolving these two demands.

The international community has posited many solutions for the last 90 years to the conflict between Jews and Arabs to the territory once called "Palestine" - all of which have been refused by the Arabs resulting in trauma,suffering and misery for both Jews and Arabs.

Division of sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza determined in trilateral negotiations between Israel,Jordan and Egypt (possibly under United Nations chairmanship)therefore remains the only way to manage - if not finally resolve - the conflict.

Successful conclusion of such negotiations will:

1. Offer the Arab residents of the West Bank and Gaza - presently stateless - Jordanian or Egyptian citizenship

2. End the current humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the West Bank

3. Allow every Arab or Jewish resident to stay in his current home

4. End any Israeli control over Gazan or West Bank Arabs.

5. Resolve sovereignty in the 6% of Palestine that still remains unallocated between Jews and Arabs since the Mandate for Palestine was promulgated by the League of Nations in 1922.

It will not answer the above two Arab demands but it will go a long way to creating a political climate that might be conducive in future to achieving or modifying these demands and allow a peaceful resolution of those demands at a later date.

Both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have been given enough time to achieve some positive advance towards a peaceful resolution of the conflict. They have both proved themselves unequal to the task. They must now both be replaced as negotiating parties by Jordan and Egypt.

Refusal of Israel,Egypt and Jordan to sit down and attempt to negotiate the division of the West Bank and Gaza on this basis - with the backing of promised financial aid, military and diplomatic assistance from the international community - will herald an end to any peaceful efforts to settle the conflicting Jewish and Arab claims.

The international community must not accept a straight out refusal by Israel,Egypt or Jordan to sit down and negotiate. It should make clear that to do so will result in all further diplomatic and financial assistance to the refusing parties being withheld. It should also make clear that it will in future devote its considerable time and effort in resolving "the Palestinian problem" to resolving other conflicts around the world.

President elect Obama will be searching for a way out of the current impasse caused by the failure of the Roadmap negotiations and the current invasion of Gaza by Israel. No doubt he will be made fully aware of the views of John Bolton and Daniel Pipes. Hopefully he sees the merits of their proposals and urges Israel, Egypt and Jordan to enter into negotiations to achieve the objectives proposed by Bolton and Pipes.

The Three State Option

John Bolton - former US ambassador to the United Nations - has injected the possibility of Jordan coming back into the West Bank and Egypt returning to Gaza as occurred between 1948-1967.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/04/AR2009010401434.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

He has posited this solution to end the plight of the Arab populations in the West Bank and Gaza following the disastrous occupation of Gaza by Hamas for the last eighteen months and the virtual end of the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority that have gone nowhere for the last 15 years.

International pressure can make this solution a real possibility.

Such a solution represents the best - and last - chance of peacefully settling Jewish and Arab claims to the former territory of Palestine.

Arab League refusal to consider this proposal must be forcefully resisted at all levels by the international community.

Arab rejections of proposals by the Peel Commission in 1937 and the United Nations in 1947, failing to create an independent State in the West Bank and Gaza between 1948-1967,rejecting any dialogue with Israel between 1967-1993, continuing to make demands since 1993 inconsistent with Security Council Resolution 242 and the Roadmap proposed by President Bush have led to the present crisis enveloping Gaza.

Surely - after 70 years of Arab rejectionism and total intransigence - it is time for the international community to call it a day. If the Arabs want to press on regardless then the rest of the world should make it quite clear that existing diplomatic support and financial assistance to the Palestinian Arabs will be ended.

Gaza Explodes, Arab League Implodes

[Published January 2008]

750000 Gazan Arabs have vented their spleen - not against Israel - but against the policies of the Arab League which once again left them high and dry this week - as it has done for the last 60 years - after describing Israel’s refusal to supply oil to Gaza as a “humanitarian crisis.”

Israel’s action may have been drastic and ultimately proved to be temporary - for the moment at least.

It had come as the final response by a country that was no longer prepared to supply fuel to Gaza whilst Israel’s civilian population centers were subjected to a continuous barrage of rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza and whilst Gaza was controlled by Hamas - an organisation whose declared goal is the destruction of Israel.

The Arab League’s pathetic response to Israel’s action resulted in the Gazan breakout into Egypt by half of its total population .

Instead of despatching oil and food supplies to Gaza through Egypt to meet the population’s demands, the Arab League preferred to run off to the United Nations Security Council seeking the political condemnation of Israel for having the temerity to defend its citizens.

In scenes reminiscent of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, Gazan Arabs rebuffed the Arab League’s weak-kneed and inhumane policy and blew holes in the border fence separating Gaza from Egypt. Gazan Arabs were reunited with their Egyptian Arab brethren as they bought food and fuel in Egypt, which could easily have been transported into Gaza thus avoiding the chaotic scenes that followed the border’s demolition.

The Arab League in claiming Israel was solely responsible for the Gazan breakout still fails to recognise its own responsibility for what has occurred in Gaza during the last 60 years.

Gaza would not be the basket case it is today if the Arab League had pulled down the refugee camps and resettled and rehabilitated Gaza’s residents between 1948-1967 when the League’s most powerful and influential member - Egypt - exercised full control in Gaza with Arab League approval.

Those refugee camps still exist today. They were deliberately maintained as a festering sore breeding hatred and enmity and ruining the lives of countless generations of Gazan Arabs since.

Israel’s attempts to build housing and progressively close down the camps after assuming control in 1967 were met with fierce resistance by the Arab League.

The Arab attitude to such proposals is summed up by Norma Masriyeh in her article “Refugee resettlement: the Gaza Strip Experience” (Palestine-Israel Journal Volume 2 No. 4 1995) where she states:

“Israeli measures to resettle Gaza Strip refugees, which started in the early 1970s, do not conform with their humanitarian claims to improve the living conditions of refugees. Israeli measures can instead be seen as an integral part of modern counter-insurgency doctrines promoted by security considerations in response to revolutionary guerrilla warfare or Insurgency.”

Even where Israel is not involved - as in Lebanon - the refugees are housed in refugee camps as mendicants relying on UNWRA handouts, denied citizenship or any equality of human rights with the Lebanese Arabs in whose midst they reside - again with the intention of breeding hatred towards Jews and dreaming of revenge against Israel.

“Let the refugees rot in order that revolutionary guerilla warfare continue” has become the catchcry of Arab League policy and so it was employed again in Gaza during the past week - but the Gazans for the first time indicated they would not continue to be willing accomplices to this inhumane policy.

The Gaza breakout has given some indication that the residents of Gaza are sick and tired of being used as pawns and have sent a strong message to the Arab League that playing politics with their lives is no longer acceptable.

With this warning ringing firmly in its ears, the Arab League needs to review its 2002 Peace Initiative which professes to seek peace with Israel whilst imposing conditions that are impossible to accept and which have already been said to be unrealistic by President Bush - such as the right of return and the withdrawal by Israel to the 1967 armistice lines.

The Gazan Arabs have shown in the past week that political posturing and attempted points scoring is no substitute for giving them and future generations of Gazans real hope that their despair and suffering needs to be ended.

The Arab League needs to act with urgency to embrace policies of resettlement and rehabilitation - whether it be in Gaza, any host country in which Palestinian Arabs currently live or any other member State of the Arab League.

It is time for these refugees - trapped in a 60 year time warp - to direct their anger away from Israel and face their captors - the Arab League - and demand it undertake such programs within and with the support of the 22 member Arab States who purportedly have their interests at heart - but who in reality could not care if they remain in their state of misery and suffering forever.

The Arab League rejection of the United Nations Partition Resolution in 1947 and the subsequent invasion of Palestine in 1948 were the principal factors in creating the refugee situation that still continues in the Arab world today.

It is time the League started to make practical - not political - amends for those disastrous decisions.

The Arab League cannot continue acting as some disinterested bystander and turn its back on those who need its help and practical support in being given the opportunity to lead normal lives no different to other Arabs.

The time for political grandstanding by the Arab League is over.

Gaza - Stateless,Leaderless,Mindless and Powerless

[Published January 2008]

“A humanitarian crisis” is how the Arab League described Gaza as it was plunged into darkness when its only power plant was shut down three days after Israel ceased the delivery of fuel supplies to the trouble-plagued territory. Fuel supplies have now been resumed but continued supply is certain to be disrupted.

The fuel stoppage - which represents about 70% of Gaza’s oil supplies - came after Gaza had caused “a humanitarian crisis” in Israel by permitting the indiscriminate firing of 230 rockets and mortars into Israeli civilian population centers during the previous four days.

Such a heavy and incessant barrage - following years of similar action that has seen thousands of such rockets and mortars fired at and landing in Israel - was the final straw as Israel began what will inevitably become the total severing all contact with Gaza - already declared to be a hostile entity by Israel.

Fair warning of such action had been served over the past six months but was ignored by a mindless leadership and terrorist sub-culture that dominates everything that has been occurring in Gaza - not only in regard to Israel but also as concerns the Arab population of Gaza.

This has divided Gaza into two bitterly opposing camps with each trying to inflict the maximum damage on the other in a deathly power struggle that unfortunately cannot be as easily resolved as cutting off the fuel supplies.

Gaza is one big mess. Supposedly now ruled by the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas - it displays anything but “strength and bravery” - its English translation.

When Israel totally withdrew its army and evacuated all 8000 Israeli civilians living in Gaza in August 2005, hopes were high that Gaza would take responsible and reasoned steps in showing the world that its solely Arab population was capable and ready to assume the responsibilities of statehood and to live in peace with a Jewish Israel.

Events since then have seen Gaza slide into an abyss of hopelessness from which there seems no way out.

The opportunity afforded by Israel’s evacuation has now been thrown to the wind - blown away along with the countless opportunities that have arisen in the last 60 years that could have seen Gaza develop and emerge as part of a new Arab State between 1948-1967 by a simple declaration of statehood.

The Hamas Covenant adopted on 18 August 1988 tells why it cannot happen now or in the future if the present chaotic situation persists.

The preamble to the Covenant explicitly states:

“Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious…The Movement [Hamas] is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah’s victory is realised.”

One such squadron - the 22 member Arab League - is indeed offering its support but in doing so is contributing to the continued destabilisation occurring in the region.

Instead of immediately sending fuel and food supplies by the truckload through Egypt to Gaza to relieve the crisis it claims was being suffered by its Arab brethren, the Arab League was apparently happy for that crisis to continue to worsen as it chose to play the political game - running off to the United Nations calling for it “to hold international investigations into the Israeli crimes.”

Resolutions or pious self serving declarations cannot end a humanitarian crisis. They will not turn on the lights or put food in the belly.

The Arab League should be counselling Hamas to show “strength and bravery” by abandoning its insane policy of trying to get rid of the Jews. This is a policy still shared with its rival seeking control in Gaza - the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

It is this policy which has and will continue to sow the seeds of suffering and despair for the ordinary Arab on the street who is powerless to do anything to end this mindless hatred of Jews.

That ordinary Arab must now be ruing the day he voted Hamas to power - even though the corrupt PLO alternative was little different in its attitude to Israel. He has helped create the political environment that now threatens his daily existence. He is not just an “innocent citizen” and totally without blame - as claimed by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

The Arab League needs to wash its hands of Hamas and to show its complete repudiation of what Hamas supports and stands for. In failing to do so it has become an accessory to endorsing the Hamas Covenant and has aligned itself with a movement that declares in Article 13 of the Covenant:

“There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavours.”

Supporting this policy makes a mockery of Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa’s current call on the countries that took part in the Annapolis conference to shoulder their responsibilities for Gaza and that the United States should be directly responsible for what was happening in Gaza.

The Arab League cannot have it both ways. It needs to choose between peaceful resolution or Jihad.

Intractability, duplicity and double dealing has marked the Arab League’s policies since its futile invasion of Palestine in 1948.

In dealing with Gaza it is displaying the same ineptitude that has marked its attitude and approach towards Israel at every critical stage over the last 60 years - when real opportunities for a negotiated settlement presented themselves only to be rejected each time by the Arab League imposing conditions that it knew could never be accepted by Israel.

The current support given to Hamas must end if there is ever to be any chance of Gaza emerging from the quicksand that is rapidly threatening to swallow it up.

One solution is to return Gaza to Egyptian control - a situation that existed between 1948-1967 - to end the rocket and mortar barrage and restore order and stability. Arab League support for such action could make it happen. Given its past performance the Arab League will do nothing -as usual.

Unless the Jew-hatred endemic in Gaza’s Government and its population is ended, Gaza is in for a tough time - and the Arab League will have to share the major responsibility for allowing a deteriorating situation to become far worse.

President Bush Leaves Lasting Legacy For Arab League

[Published January 2008]

President George Bush delivered a severe rebuff to the Arab League in remarks made by him at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on 10 January 2008 (“the King David Declaration”).

The President had already made it clear in April 2004 that the Arab League needed to abandon its long standing demand that millions of Arabs be allowed to go and live in Israel when he stated :

“It seems clear that an agreed, just, fair and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.”

The Arab League has failed to embrace this suggestion as the solution to the refugee issue.

The King David Declaration has now raised the diplomatic bar even higher with the President stating :

“I believe we need to look to the establishment of a Palestinian state and new international mechanisms, including compensation, to resolve the refugee issue.”

These well chosen and carefully crafted words make it clear that President Bush is proposing additional “international mechanisms” to solve the refugee issue - other than resettlement in the proposed new Arab State. One of those “international mechanisms” will be “compensation” - and Israel won’t be the only country asked to pay it.

The President has thereby tacitly acknowledged that Israel cannot be held solely responsible for what befell the Arab residents who left Palestine in the wake of the Arab-Jewish conflict in 1947-1948.

Other countries - including members of the Arab League who have perpetuated the refugee issue for the last 60 years - will also be expected to contribute generously to an internationally administered and funded compensation package.

Any other “new international mechanisms” contemplated by the President were unidentified by him. The possibilities however are ominous and they do not bode well for the Arab League.

One could involve a demand that the refugees be given the option of being granted full rights of citizenship and equality in the Arab states where they have been kept stateless and in refugee camps for the last 60 years - dependent for survival on hand outs by the United Nations Works and Relief Agency (UNWRA) running into hundreds of billions of dollars.

Generations of dysfunctional human beings have been the end result of this inhumane policy - resulting in bitterness, hatred and despair as persons of all ages turn themselves into human bombs - choosing to kill Jews and achieve martyrdom as their way out of this pitiless existence.

The denial of citizenship and equality by their own Arab brethren has been buried in Foreign Office and State Department filing cabinets as nations have bent over backwards in their desire to maintain good relations with despotic Arab oil suppliers and cashed up Arab buyers for military equipment - tangible benefits flowing to these nations for their continuing silence or just looking the other way.

Now with oil hitting US$100 a barrel, the US economy facing recession and the Arab League having done nothing to endorse the President’s 2004 proposal for solving the refugee issue, President Bush has been forced to rethink this earlier policy - which had left the Arab States relatively free of any responsibility for solving the refugee issue.

That problem had been caused initially by the Arab League decision to refuse to accept partition of Western Palestine between Arabs and Jews pursuant to United Nations Partition Resolution 181 on 29 November 1947 followed by the subsequent Arab League decision to invade Palestine on 15 May 1948.

The grounds for that invasion - as contained in the declaration issued by the Arab League on the actual day of the invasion - still remain dominant in Arab League thinking today and have acted as the major cause for the refugee problem remaining unresolved 60 years later :

“The Governments of the Arab States emphasise, on this occasion, what they have already declared before the London Conference and the United Nations, that the only solution of the Palestine problem is the establishment of a unitary Palestinian State, in accordance with democratic principles, whereby its inhabitants will enjoy complete equality before the law, minorities will be assured of all the guarantees recognised in democratic constitutional countries, and the holy places will be preserved and the right of access thereto guaranteed.”

The King David Declaration reiterated once more for the benefit of the Arab League that the President’s Roadmap envisioned not one but two States - Israel and Palestine - living side by side in peace and security and that there will be no withdrawal by Israel to the pre -1967 armistice lines.

This message - and warning - was conveyed to the Arab League by President Bush from the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on 10 January:

1. Wake up to reality and abandon the idea of a unitary state - unequivocally and without reservation - and get the PLO to explicitly excise this objective from its Charter.

2. End the conflict by agreeing to the creation of an Arab state between Israel and Jordan in that part of the West Bank which leaves Israel with secure, recognised and defensible borders.

3. Accept resettlement of the refugees in this new State or alternatively receive compensation from an internationally sponsored and supported fund if they are not willing to emigrate there.

4. If you fail to endorse this solution over the next twelve months then you can say goodbye to a new 23rd member State called Palestine joining the Arab League. My successor will certainly not want to be publicly humiliated by the Arab League as has happened to me over the last 5 years.

5. Expect that it will then become your obligation to solve the refugee issue and the ongoing conflict without any further diplomatic or financial support from the United States.

6. Don’t be surprised if the United States then calls on you to resolve the refugee issue by demanding that you grant citizenship and equal rights to all refugees living within the borders of your member States and that you pay for their rehabilitation out of your own oil-bloated revenues.

This is the legacy President Bush has bequeathed to the Arab League for 2008 - and beyond.