That anyone should decide the fate of the Palestinians but the Palestinians themselves is an issue of the gravest concern. Since September, violence in the Occupied Territories has escalated, not because the Palestinians chose to make trouble for the Israeli authorities, but because they are fighting for their freedom. That they are fighting for their freedom is a fact that the world tends to deny in order to satisfy Zionist propaganda. When a small child wields a stone in defense of his country against a heavily armored Israeli tank and is called a terrorist or part of an armed Palestinian militia, then it becomes obvious that Western media is no longer fair or objective and that it distorts the truth in order to placate Zionist demands.

In 1922 the Jews in Palestine constituted only 11% of the population but due to an enormous increase in immigration, by 1947, they constituted 31%. These invading Jews were supplied with weapons and through their terrorist gangs such as the Irgun and Stern, massacred whole villages of civilian Palestinians. Such massacres created a mass exodus of nearly a million refugees. Today that number has increased to as much as 6 million. Official Zionist history describes which methods of terrorism were to be used to attack the Palestinians. The objective was to inflict physical harm or liquidate them. Plan Dalet was such a plan to occupy and destroy Palestinian villages and either massacre or drive out, the indigenous inhabitants.

UN Resolution 194 provides that the refugee problem be resolved so that those Palestinians in the Diaspora will be free to return to their homes and live in peace with their neighbors. UN Resolution 242 requires the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied during the 1967 conflict, a just settlement of the Palestinian refugee problem, and the guarantee of the territorial inviolability and political independence of every State in the area.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and American President Bill Clinton want to make a deal before Clinton leaves office so that Barak's career as prime minister will be saved and Clinton's reputation as peacemaker will be salvaged. This proposed peace would give the Palestinians a small piece of Jerusalem, will safeguard Jewish settlements, and deny the Palestinians living in the Diaspora the right of return. Instead, there is talk of compensating these refugees for land and homes that they have lost.

Though Barak and Arafat did try to bargain what little there is left of Palestine at the expense of the Palestinian people, it is very unlikely that at this time, the Palestinians living within the Occupied Territories will be receptive at all to any compromise that leaves them with less land and freedom than ever before, especially now that so many hundreds have died as martyrs and so many more thousands have been injured.

Americans always pride themselves as the staunch defenders of freedom and justice, yet they make sure that there is no freedom and no justice for the Palestinian people. The forefathers who fought and died so bravely for American independence against tyranny and injustice would be grieved to see that the principles they struggled so valiantly for have given sway to Israeli selfishness and greed at the expense of the suffering, agony and despair of the Palestinians. There will never be a true peace in the Middle East until there is a comprehensive justice for all and until tyranny has been eradicated.