By Rashid Carim

In light of the massacre witnessed by billions of television viewers on the people of the Gaza strip it is now imperative that the Arabs as a nation looks to develop a strategy that will both secure peace and security to its people and ensure that massacre like this remains part of history and never to be repeated again.

The ineffectiveness of the United Nations and Zionist support of the USA makes it more important that the Arab Leaders seek to find a solution of their own rather than rely on any other party to do so. The Arab leaders have for the past 60 years sought to resolve this problem without any success. Currently, the biggest setback to the Arabs is not the creation of the state of Israel but the division that they have allowed to develop amongst themselves by their so called allies.

This massacre has exposed this division and it should be seen as a call back to Arab Unity if any such occurrence should be avoided and confined to history.

The Arab league has a major role to play and should undertake a strategic study of how the Arab nation should be defended and how best to progress in unity learning from the mistakes of the past 60 years and develop an ideology which places the peace and security of the Arab land and its people at the forefront of any initiative in dealing with Israel and its allies.

The creation of an Arab coalition army whose task and military objective would be to defend the security and sovereignty of the Arab land at all cost will go a long way to achieve this. This army should sits with the Arab league and be finance by all the Arab government. The Arab countries will remain responsible for securing their borders and maintains their sovereignty within the wider league. The collective pooling of resources for a single defensive army would have the potential of developing a military force that can match any in the world and responsible for developing their own weaponry with its own military research and development facilities/department. Nuclear weapon should definitely form part of its arsenal along with defence shield capabilities.

Alongside all this, sufficient resources should be deployed to make sure that the Middle East region develops itself in a micro economy unit that is self sufficient and meet the needs of a modern developed country for its people. Reliance on outside powers should be limited and on terms favourable to the Arab nation at large. The development of nuclear power should become a reality rather than a goal since the oil resources will expire at some point in the future.

The Arab should wake up and realise that for so long they have neglected their own people at the expense of pleasing their allies and the west.

Time for change beckons and they cannot neglect their responsibilities to their people. We live in a time where a state ability to defend itself is ever more important. The message is here for all to see.

Ziad Khalil Abu Zayyad

A Palestinian-Arab living in East Jerusalem, Ziad graduated from College Des Freres in Jerusalem in 2003. Ziad finished his major in International Relations and English Literature from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Ziad is a former President of the Watan student movement at the university. He is interested in Middle Eastern political issues and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Founder of the Middle East Post and MEL (Middle East Future Leadership Network), he represents Palestinian youth at several international conferences.

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