Actors In The Tragedy: The U.S., Israel, Hamas

BY TUFAN TURENC
HURRIYET- Every act of slaughter, even it doesn't touch you, harms people's state of mind. Photos of hundreds of corpses make me regret being a journalist.

Isn't it an ironic that political scientist Samuel Huntington, who predicted that the days to come will bring conflicts among civilizations and great human suffering, died on the same day as Israel's attack on the Palestinians?

For years, Palestinians have been born into this insufferable grief, grow up, and then die. And these people suffer during their short lives. The Palestinians came into this world as human beings, but were never given the right to live that way. With their homeland and freedom taken away, they have been forced to live at the mercy of Israel and the US on their own land.

This isn't just, and no peace can be built on this injustice. If the Palestinians aren't allowed to get out of this hell, the conflicts and bloodshed in the region will never end. Death becomes an everyday occurrence, as it is now. The world doesn't want to see this reality. Mediation efforts for peace have been nothing but a show.

The world cannot ensure peace in the region without first solving the Palestinian-Israeli issue.

Hamas is one of the actors responsible for the tragedy in the region and the slaughter of innocents.

Israel has lost its common sense and turned into a merciless death machine. When will it see that it will never know peace without agreeing to justly share the region's land with the Palestinians? Otherwise, though perhaps not as much as the Palestinians, it also will continue to suffer.

The US, as far as I'm concerned, is the sole state responsible for the ongoing bloodshed. It still refuses to condemn the slaughter and stop Israel. As long as this US stance continues, the Palestinian-Israeli hostility will never end.

It's astonishing that even the Sept. 11 attacks, which took thousands of lives, weren't enough for the US to see the facts.

Washington has never understood that people who have lost their land and are being forced to live as parasites on their own land have no choice but to die.

For the sake of world peace, the US must ensure the settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli issue.

And the sole way for this to happen is to give the Palestinian people back their homeland.

Because homeland is everything!