Dear Editor,

I believe that this latest conflict must be the last one between Israel and the Palestinian people.

I believe that this is the time for the United Nations and the whole international community to declare a Palestinian State based on the 1948 demarcation lines defining Israel from Palestine.

Let any fight now be with the international community and the UN. Let Israel face off with them. I believe that Israel will find it much more difficult to be willing to use a hammer to kill a fly, because what it will be looking at is another hammer and a bigger hammer than what it has; namely, the international community and the UN.

This slackness has gone on long enough and must be stopped right now. Israel must be made to realise that it just doesn’t get free passes to murder people at will, especially people whose land they occupied. There comes a time for one to understand that these kinds of things will not go on forever, and I believe this is the time for the UN and the international community to end it.

So I say to the UN and the international community, it’s time right now to stop talking and passing resolutions, and simply declare a Palestinian State, and just make it crystal clear what it means that Israel must do with immediate effect — start its withdrawal from all the occupied Palestinian territories, because they are now a country, and if Israel want its Jewish citizens to still live in those enclaves, it will fall under the governance of the Palestinian Government, just as how some Palestinians are now governed under an Israeli Government because they are still living in Israel, which was their homes before Israel was created.

It puzzled me as to why this situation was allowed to drag on for so long, which now makes Israel look more like the kind of evil that was perpetrated on them by the Nazi. What Israel is doing with this Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies towards the Palestinian people seem to amount to a kind of Nazism, but this time with aeroplanes, tanks, and bombs.

We as the world community must stand up for justice. We should not make anyone use money to influence our resolve for peace; everyone wants to live in peace, share happy times with their families, and enjoy what they work for without having to live under constant threat from one side or the other. This must now come to an end.

The Palestinian people have suffered enough and so too the people in Israel, who have to keep running for shelter and bearing the brunt of the suffering. The world must look at this and realise that there could be no reason for this to continue.

The Palestinians have no army, they have no tanks, they have no war planes, or artillery pieces, or war ships to have a fair fight. This has always been a lopsided fight, and the Palestinians are the ones suffering. This time, however, I say this must come to an end.

Declare a Palestinian State without hesitation!

Robert Clarke

rclarke88@hotmail.com