Re: Israel-Palestine Conflict: Two-State Solution or Unending War By Prof MK Othman As a peace-loving man, I hate to see blood spilling, no matter whose blood. In the last two weeks, I have had to close my sensitive organs against the news of Israel’s war on Gaza to avoid developing high blood pressure. The World is watching a calamitous pogrom against the defenseless Gaza people in the name of fishing or wiping out Hamas, and nothing much is done to arrest the situation. Israel is applying the law of disproportionate revenge against the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, thereby jettisoning the enshrined principle of proportional justice in the Holy Book phrase “An eye for an eye.” 1,400 Israelites were the estimated victims of Hamas’s October 7th attack, but as of last week, Gaza’s Ministry of Health estimated the death of over 11,000 Palestinians with more than 27,000 injured people in Gaza, and the counting continues. Most of the victims of the Israeli deadly missile attacks are women, children, and older people. Daily, the number of deaths and injured has become a mere input to graphical, tabular or numerical statistical expressions. Of course, disproportionate revenge law application is not peculiar to Israel; its closest ally, the USA, is similarly guilty because of 9/11. On September 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists launched attacks in New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, resulting in the deaths of 2,977 people. USA and allies went on the revenge mission in Iraq and Afghanistan, where more than 300,000 military, police, and civilians paid supreme prices. Is the revenge mission the answer against future attacks? Is coordinated and abrupt attacks on innocent people a solution to injustice and inequity being perpetrated by the powerful to the weak? Attacks from both sides are inimical to peaceful coexistence with heavy prices while subjecting innocent souls to the trauma of injuries, deaths, and displacements. World leaders must take decisive action on these burning issues for peace to prevail otherwise we may end up in soup. My article on the above subject attracted many reactions for and against. I am presenting a few of such reactions as reflections of people’s opinions. Happy reading: May God reward Prof Othman for concern over this seemingly “unending” war. The war is part of the destiny of human beings on Earth, but it has an end very soon. God in his wisdom has created man. In the metaphysical World, before coming to this physical World, God gave all creatures a choice between granting some free will or pure subservience to Divine ordains. All creatures rejected freewill but man. So, man is guided in two ways: Obedience versus disobedience. There is a day of accountability in the metaphysical World. In His mercy, the Almighty sent Prophets to remind humanity of His covenant with his Lord. God made lots of favors to Banu Israel (Children of Jacob). There were many Prophets among them. However, they turned ungrateful. The curse of the Almighty and some of their Prophets befell them. They were given the last chance when the seal of the Prophets came. Yet they transgressed. They had a peace covenant with this last PROPHET, but they breached it. That was why they were driven out of the environs of Medina. At this juncture, let me point to the fact that these Zionists will never allow a peaceful two-state solution. Even if they pretend to accept any truce initially, they would breach it the soonest. So, the issue is that these people have maintained their hard-heartedness and transgression in addition to the curse of Allah, which has been affecting them. They became alien human beings throughout contemporary history. They would never possess a land of their own. Check the history of their expulsion from individual European countries. Check their somewhat exaggerated holocaust by Hitler of Germany. They exaggerated it to attract sympathy when they wanted to occupy Palestinian land. They used terrorism and banked on the support of Britain and the hypocritical stance of the League of Nations to occupy Palestine. And this was by design. Of course, they have been living and terrorizing Palestinians for almost 75 years now; they know now more than ever before that Israel’s apartheid state will crumble. The trend now is that not only Hamas, Qassam brigades, etc, but the whole axis of Resistance against American cum Western European hegemony is at war with Israel. The tug of war will continue. It may subside for some time when there comes a ceasefire agreement. But only to be kindled again. All parameters on the ground indicate this carcinogenic state’s final destruction. It will crumble with its supporters, the USA and the West. The World will then see justice and harmony after it has been filled with injustice, insecurity, tyranny, and transgression. This change is around the corner, God willing. Dr. D. Nalado Dangora Greetings Prof M. K. Othman I read your back page article on National Dailies Blueprint titled; *ISRAEL-PALESTINE CONFLICT: TWO STATE SOLUTION OR UNENDING WAR? * You seek to make your readers believe that the problems originated in 1948 when Palestine land was divided and used to create the Jewish State of Israel. You did not recognize that the Jewish state of Israel had ever existed in human history until the 1948 declaration of a new Israel as a state recognized by the United Nations after 400 years of Ottoman destruction and occupation of Jewish and Israeli territory as the Arab Islamic Empire. As your name implies, if I am not mistaken, you maybe by name an affiliate of Ottoman Islamic rulers, The Turks of the Ottoman Empire, that annihilated and conquered the Jewish State of Israel and ruled the area as the Islamic Arab Empire of Palestine for about 400 years before their fall in the World War I and the possible creation of New Israel State after the Holocaust by Hitler and Nazi against the Jewish People in World War II. The new and enduring Israel and Jewish State today was created by British mandate in 1948, which was rejected by all Arab nations and Palestine. You also failed to let your readers know that all the Arab nations and Palestine rejected the two-state solution as proposed by the United Nations Assembly in 1948, and they fought Israel together in 1949 and were defeated. From 1948 till date, Israel and Arabs, including Jordan, have fought about seven wars, and the agenda is to destroy the newly created Israel Jewish State and declare all Arab territory. They seem to be returning to a two-state solution because they could not win the wars as intended. Your proposed 2-state solution and possible division of Jerusalem into east and west Jerusalem, one for Arab Palestine and the other for Jewish Israel, as a room for peace in the Middle East, is just lip service as such, cannot bring peace until, the Jihadist Islamic Agenda of achieving No Jewish State of Israel and declaring all the land an Arab controlled Islamic area is concluded perhaps in the next World of illusions. What I see in the Middle East is a human blood sacrifice where the Islamist terrorists use civilians as human shields to advance their extreme religious objectives instead of protecting the Palestine people with their weapons in every conventional war. Yet, they blame Israel for any death of any civilian and get donations around the World by playing the victims card against Israel as if Israel does not have the right to self-defense when attacked as a nation and people. The level of peace achieved presently between Israel and Palestine in getting an independent state of Palestine has gone a long way but now drastically reversed by the present Hamas Attack on October 7 on Israel, killing about 1400 Israelis and kidnapping more than 200 civilians and children to get human shield in their Hamas bunkers. You are a Prof and student of history. Still, at times, sentiments of religion or tribe or political affiliation may affect even scholars in their sense of judgment as they seem to take sides in a conflict by bringing a narrative to support their prejudice and win the audience to themselves, especially in their political correctness fueled by hypocrisy. *CNC* Thanks, Sir, for the insightful analysis. However, this adds to several other perspectives highlighting that violence will never beget peace. It is there written in the books of history. Blood will only continue to flow; cold-hearted Palestinians will continue to harden as more are flattened. It is a cycle. The American foreign policy, and by implication the Western policy, regarding the Middle East will likely stay the same for a while. We do not need to be taught that in a classroom. Meaning blood will continue to flow with no end in sight. Events that preceded the previous WWs point to a similar trajectory we currently witness. As events unfold, with each day yielding different tunes since October 7, we must keep praying that, as we believe in miracles, one day, to our dismay, a miracle that brings lasting peace will eventually come down to Mother Earth. Dr Mohammed Makeri