Editor,

After the historic and unprecedented political earthquake on 25th January 2006 in Palestinian parliamentary elections, which saw the Hamas Islamist movement step into power after a stunning victory over its rival Fatah group, the secular movement that have dominated Palestinian politics since its formation half a century ago, there was great disappointment among western political moguls, mostly anti-Hamas and pro-Fatah groups.

Subsequently, the elements from within the Euro-American opposition camp saw the need for counter-political strategies and maneuovers to plaque and destroy the movement. This move was squarely implicit in the statement released earlier by both the US and the EU prior to the elections that they would neither financially support nor recognize a Hamas government if they won the election; as long as they refuse to accept Israel as a state.

This obsessive psychosomatic fixation of both the US and the EU to get rid of Hamas at all cost have since continued to maim every effort in the search to forge a sustainable and lasting peaceful solution between the two camps. The recent Israeli attacks and arrogant extermination of over one thousand Palestinians, mostly civilians, among them women, children and elderly people, could have been avoided if the US and the EU had duly recognized and endorsed the Hamas victory earlier, which was in every respect democratically and constitutionally legitimate. The entire electoral process was supervised, conducted and monitored by an international observer group of which both the EU and US constituted an integral part.

Why the long wait by the US and the EU for Israel to attack and kill so many innocent people before coming on board with a 4.5 billion dollar reconstruction aid package? Apart from being hypocritical, essentially this reaction of the US and EU is indeed an insult to the fundamental principles that regulate humanity, universal civilization and culture.

Indisputably, Israel should be condemned and taken to task for human right abuses and contempt of international law and decorum. It is axiomatic that peace will only come to Gaza and the Palestinian people when the US and the EU decide to assume their responsible positions as the world’s political powers.