Paulson pinpoints Palestine's panacea

Can the international community continue to stand by and take the risk that this will not happen - possibly as early as within the next six months?

As we have seen in the past couple of weeks, events can take a very sudden turn for the worse after a slow period of gestation - which in hindsight probably justified action being taken far earlier, with less fallout and at possibly much less cost than had to be found this week to ensure the world's economic survival.

President Bush's Road Map was a sincere and well intended attempt to resolve the Arab-Jewish conflict. Its failure to get to first base after six years of trying has proved it to be totally ineffective as a cure. The writing has been on the wall for at least four years but the international community has closed its eyes, allowed the conflict to deteriorate and the rhetoric to increase.

It is abundantly clear that a huge amount of money needs to be strategically targeted and urgently spent to make a real difference by getting at the heart of the problem before it once again suddenly degenerates into outright war with possible nuclear as well as economic consequences world wide as its legacies.

The Security Council of the United Nations needs to unanimously resolve taking the following steps to resolve the conflict as a matter of grave urgency:

1. set up an international claims tribunal with sufficient funds to process and pay all claims made by:
   (a) Arabs from Palestine and Jews from Arab countries who became refugees as a result of the Arab - Israeli War in 1948 - and their descendants; and
   (b) current host countries in resettling and rehabilitating those refugees now living within their national boundaries and closing down and demolishing any existing refugee camps;
2. declare that any claimed right of return by any refugee or his descendants to his original country of origin is deemed abandoned on settlement of his claim;
3. immediately dissolve UNWRA and transferring its budget and responsibilities to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR); and
4. establish an International Boundaries Commission to redraw the international boundaries between Jordan, Israel and Egypt with the participation and joint consent and approval of all three countries to such new boundaries.

The old saying, "when life gives you lemons - make lemonade", is surely one that the international community should heed at this point of time. It is going to be a very expensive drink indeed but its cost pales into insignificance compared to the medicine that awaits us if we don't.