MILLIYET- Columnist Fikret Bila writes on the war continuing in the Middle East. A summary of his column is as follows:
The process led in the late ‘90s by former US President Clinton, then Israeli Prime minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat covered great distance on the way towards peace. However, ultimately they were unable to complete this process and Palestinian leader Arafat’s tactical mistakes played an important part in the failure to reach a solution. President Bush then succeeded President Clinton, and in Israel Sharon succeeded Barak. Following these changes, the peace process between Israel and Palestine soon degenerated into a war process. Suicide bombings by the Palestinians increased resulting in over 100 innocent Israeli civilians losing their lives. Israel retaliated by invading Palestine with a bloody military operation. The Israeli Chief of General Staff Command gave the official number of Palestinian dead at around 200. It is not hard to guess that this number will increase. The cost of the operation is not only limited to 300 dead. Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Abdullah’s peace proposal, which was supported by many countries including Turkey, to fulfill its promise failed. Prince Abdullah had suggested that Arab countries would recognize Israel in return for its withdrawal from the territories it occupied after 1967. However, the current operations by Israel, Sharon and Bush’s efforts to bypass Arafat politically if not kill him, dashed all hopes of peace. It will be hard to revive the Saudi plan after this stage. Furthermore, it can be said that the radical terrorist organizations which cannot be controlled by Arafat will try to continue their campaign. In the end Sharon showed his people that he would take revenge. However, it is hard to say that the Sharon administration’s acting in line with ‘eye for an eye’ principle has either brought peace to the Israelis or managed to eradicate terrorism. But we can say this: he has buried hopes for peace for a very long time.
SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION