As I watch the television and see Gaza being pulverised, I am informed that the apartment building I had lived in for two years in Gaza, between 1996-98, was bombed and brought down two weeks earlier. It was one of the taller buildings and I knew it did not stand a chance anyway. I keep wondering what has happened to my friends in Gaza, especially my landlord, Abu Zakary, and his lovely family and children, who made my life so much easier in a non-family posting. Are they still alive?
What Hamas did to Israel on October 7, 2023, was unacceptable. It was a brutal terror act. When I chaired the Counterterrorism Committee in the United Nations Security Council in 2022, one thing we all agreed on is that there can be no justification for terror. So, nothing should justify October 7 as well.
But does this make the Palestinian cause or the Palestinian fight against occupation by Israel for several decades any less justified? No, it does not. The UN Security Council’s resolutions 242 and 338 embodied the principle of “Land For Peace”. Israel should have ideally withdrawn from occupied land in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem in return for peace, which is security, recognition, normalcy and peace for the peoples of the two States of Israel and Palestine. Interestingly, the revised 2017 Charter of Hamas too accepted a two-State solution based on the 1967 borders. Let us face it. The two-State solution alone can bring peace. A one State solution is a no-State non-solution.
