Will the Palestinian-Israeli conflict continue to exist as a low intensity conflict with sporadic, very violent outbursts like the current Israeli military intervention in Gaza? The answer is no.

…Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. And at last, the failure of war. The sleeping children in Gaza who will not grow up and kill. The fate of a millennium-old nation fighting with God; a State, Israel, that is fighting for peace. And at last, peace. Not a single euro, dollar or murder more. Peace…

Palestinian citizens of Israel have a vested interest in a peace agreement between their people and their state. They want to be regarded as full citizens of Israel, but at the same time do not want to give up their ability to impact the country’s policy towards the Palestinian people. They need to help bring back the Arab peace plan, and in the meantime will lick the Gazans’ open wounds, says the author.

Why can’t the hundreds of millions of moderate Muslims in the world organize a protest against Al Qaeda, against Osama Bin Laden, against what is today in India being falsely carried out in the name of Islam?

It is worth asking ourselves whether the international presence in Afghanistan would be more effective with a more political formula, backed up by military actions, in the same vein as the one applied in Chad in 2004. Perhaps this is the model to support: assistance from the rear, leaving the leadership of the most arduous combat tasks to the country’s regular troops.

• Who is counting the dead in Afghanistan? Another war lost
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The twenty first century has brought with it an outlook very different from the one of happy optimism present in the 1990s; we are looking at a new phase of power redistribution, in which there are already points of possible conflict among the hegemonic powers.

The author contends that the Bush Administration’s approach to the war on terror has relied too heavily on force, and that a deeper understanding of the true nature of Islamic radicalism indicates a mushroom phenomenon in the making. He proposes a realistic, multifaceted strategy, in which political and socio-economic approaches predominate, and force is only employed as a last resort.

By and large the war in Afghanistan has been met with a chronic state of ambivalence by the international media after the onset of the war in Iraq. The situation grows direr every day and the author questions whether the objectives set forth by the U.S government are working or could have ever worked.

Muslims are the biggest ethnic group in the Philippines, and more than half of the population of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao is poor, and the area is thus a breeding ground for civil unrest. The author wonders whether the government can (and should) negotiate with a decentralized terrorist group like the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, and denounces President Arroyo’s brokering of deals in secrecy. He maintains that the lives of the Muslims must be improved, since economic and social development on Mindanao is necessary to achieve peace.