FAISALABAD:
The prospects of peace for Palestine seems bleak. In a recent flare-up with Israel, Tel Aviv pounded the Gaza Strip with aerial and artillery missiles that razed the city to the ground. Among the 44 civilian casualties, 15 were children including a 5-year-old innocent girl and a 27-year-old woman.
The century-old territorial dispute has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Against this backdrop, Arab leaders had passed the Khartoum Resolution with the formulation of the three famous No’s: No peace with Israel, no talks with Israel, and no recognition of Israel. However, in the 1979 Camp David Accords brokered by the then US President Jimmy Carter, Egypt became the first Arab state to formally recognise Israel, followed by Jordan in 1994, thereby weakening the Palestinian cause. Again in 2002, the Arab Peace Initiative, a brainchild of Saudi Arabia, called on the Arab premiers to recognise Israel only if it reverted to the pre-1967 border conditions. Nevertheless, the 2020 Trump-mediated Abraham Accords, which led to the recognition of Israel by the UAE and Bahrain, have now rendered the initiative meaningless. Furthermore, the shifting of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by Trump in 2017 is in violation of the UNSC resolutions.
In the wake of these developments, Israel has been wreaking havoc on Palestinians without compunction and enjoying full impunity. The international community’s callous response and the media’s biased reportage compared to the Russo-Ukraine crisis have further added to the grief-stricken Palestinian’s woes. Unless the illegal claims of Tel Aviv over the holy land are resolved through a two-state solution, the people of Palestine will continue to suffer.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 15th, 2022.
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