Israel's almost daily brutal military actions on a defenceless people are a crying shame. Its excuse always is retaliation against "terrorist" attacks. The alleged "terrorists" also claim their often suicide bombing to be in retaliation against Israeli atrocities. Cant this cycle of retaliations be broken?

Israelis have kept Palestinians confined to certain areas without any rights and when they protest they are labeled terrorists and punished in supposed retaliation. The ballyhoo on the arrest of an Israeli corporal and this invasion is also for retaliation. No one mentions the wanton killing of six innocent civilians on the beach earlier on which Hamas ended ceasefire and retaliated.

Israeli stress on Palestinians being mindless terrorists is mendacious. Who can forget that a militarily defeated and under Israeli occupation side has the right to resist. In resisting Israeli colonialism, the resister will use what armament and opportunities he has. Can the western mind not see the Palestine Resistance's limited options? Terrorism is the weapon of the weak the world over. Weren't major Israeli leaders and generals terrorists until 1948, criminals in law?

The strangest thing is that there is supposed to be a whole 'civilised' world out there, with thinkers, poets and diplomats. Can nobody see through the historic swindle of foisting Zionists on innocent people of Palestine? And if Israelis had been given a piece of land -- the 1948 UN given boundaries -- the civilised world should have prevented Israel from further aggrandisement. Irrespective of what Arab states did in 1948, what justification was there for Suez War? With 1967 war preemptive aggression Israel proceeded to virtually annex all Palestine areas and enslave all Palestinians, not to mention ethnic cleansing and making millions refugees in 1948. How moral and lawful that was?

This cycle of retaliations is juvenile and foolish. Secondly, for a supposedly democratic state to resort to targeted killings, mass raids on its own occupied population and destroying its infrastructure brings it down to the level of brigands and murderers. Palestinian violence would end the day Israel gives Palestinians the opportunity to protest and make demands in a democratic manner.

The US diplomacy is the second instrument through which Israel not only gets away with murder and terrorising the entire Arab world. Israelis have deliberately destroyed the power generating station and water distribution system. For how many days can the population survive without water? Whoever may try to find a way to restore water, the remarkable thing is that no Arab potentate has uttered a word of condemnation; there is loud silence and demonstration of utter impotence.

Factually US wants to undo the Hamas victory in a free election. For six months Israel and America have prevented Hamas government from functioning. Why? because it does not recognise Israel or agreements that Yasser Arafat or Abbas had entered into. Doubtless Hamas is a radical pro-independence party; its charter has been liberation of Palestine. How can it disown its charter after being elected on that basis?

Why is this insistence on recognition? Israel is a hard military fact; every Palestinian lives under its jackboots. Everyone has to seek Israel's permission for doing this, that or the other thing; Palestine's revenues are collected by Israel and it doles them out to the Palestinian Authority which it has withheld since Hamas formed its government. Which Palestinian does not extend his de facto recognition on a daily basis? What's in a de jure recognition? Can that not be withdrawn, if conditions change?

Secondly, Hamas has given clear hints that it will recognise Israel by signing a ceasefire; it has always wanted negotiations with it. Was that not recognition? It says it will accept a two-state solution. Israel and US are not being honest and candid: they are after destroying not merely Hamas government but also PA itself -- as a preparation for Israel's further unilateral solutions. Until recently one thought that world's humanitarian resources are enough to force even the Israeli-American combine to stop short of total elimination of possible self rule by Palestinians. One is no longer sure. What is the point in discussing the merits of one or two state solutions; Israel is determined to impose its will.

Israel remains a conspiracy of Zionists with the British imperialists and the two imposed a colonial enterprise on backward and weak Palestinians, with US help. US and UK forced the UN to give its approval. The rationale was that the Jews had been badly oppressed over centuries in Europe -- and America. Therefore they needed help.

Fine. Europeans and the Americans, who oppressed the Jews for centuries, should have been forced to provide restitution. What the victorious British and American did in 1948 was to make the innocent Palestinian Arabs to compensate the European Jews through the Israeli state. The Palestinians see no reason why they should pay for the sins and oppression of the Europeans. Israel's suppression aims at ending Palestinian Resistance. This oppression has lasted 39 years, nay since 1948. Israelis robbing and occupying Palestinian homes, lands and driving them out of Palestine is unforeseeable naked colonialism. For US, UK and Israel the norm of self-determination does not apply to Palestinians.

Apparently nobody can do anything. Israel is militarily superior to all Arab states put together; Arab potentates are behaving like scalded cats. Most Arab states have actually betrayed the Palestinians and love dealing with the US and Israel in the name of prudence and self-interest. There is precious little that one can do except to raise one's voice against inhuman treatment of an unarmed people by a super-armed fanatical state. The question is: is world opinion asleep or comatose? One especially wants to know what the fair-minded people in the rest of the west (outside US) think of what is going on in what was Palestine. Do they feel any moral repugnance to what the Israeli colonialists are doing?

Why is Israel doing it? Because US wants it to do so. The US designs include a Middle East that is virtually run by Israel on its behalf. The Israelis have been nurtured as a proxy for the Americans. The responsibility for what the Israelis do belongs to Americans. It is not true that the Israeli tail is wagging the American dog; the nationalist Israeli lobby manipulates America and the poor dears are manipulated. This is nonsense. The clear American thinking has been adequately articulated by neocons, some of them Jews. The Twentyfirst Century Project is an American design, not Jewish. Look at the US democrats. Have they any new ideas? Do they reject the Twentyfirst Century Project? Americans apparently know of no other design for their country. If Democrats win, the script would stay the same. Insofar as the Israelis are concerned, the Democrats' support is as firm as, if not firmer than, that of Republicans.

The latest evidence is that the European Union is jerkily being brought back into a policy framework that harmonises with US designs. It looks as if the NATO commitments are more important for Europeans than what EU might come up with. The Europeans may have seen the limits of their power and the futility of diverging from American wishes. But the question is: does it foreclose the free thinking of individual citizens in the European continent?

MB Naqvi is a leading columist in Pakistan.