The sensible visit paid by the former president of the USA, Jimmy Carter, to the Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal is highlighting the dead end at which US foreign policy in the region has found itself in and has created an honest and pragmatic atmosphere for peace in the Middle East, whereas, Secretary of State Condelezza Rice thinks that making a few alterations to the straitjacket of racism will make all the difference to Palestinians. At the same time as Rice persuading the Israeli Occupying Forces to remove about a dozen of the 500 pointless checkpoints in the West Bank, the Israeli's have stopped fuel from entering into Gaza, blockaded the 1.5 million inhabitants of the area, given the go-ahead to illegal settlement projects in the West Bank and attacked Gaza with the use of F-16 fighter jets killing men, women and children. Unfortunately, this is "everyday life" for Palestinians.
The attacks last week against the Nahal Oz fuel depot did not surprise Western media critics. The Palestinians are fighting an all out war which is aimed at keeping our people stateless, carried out by a state which uses all the means available to its army with the latest technology, suffocating economical supremacy, a false national history and a justice system that legitimises racism. Resistance is the only choice left to us.
Sixty five years ago, the brave Jews of Warsaw's ghettos put up a resistance to defend themselves against the enemy. We, the people of Gaza, who live in the World's biggest open air prison, cannot afford to do less than this.
The Israel-US alliance has been trying to find ways to deny the results of the January 2006 election in which the Palestine people freely elected our party. Hundreds of independent observers, of which Jimmy Carter was one, have declared that to date, this election has been the most democratic election ever held in the Arab Middle East countries. But, since the election, new efforts are being made to destabilise our democratic experience with a new factionist partition with Fatah, the continuation of the war against Gaza's people and an American coup triggering their isolation.
Now, at last, we have Jimmy Carter's attitude which has reached the same conclusion that any independent and honourable thinker would arrive at. The conclusion being that no "peace plan", "road map" or "inherent rights" can be successful without us being present at the peace table, with no preconditions.
The escalating violence that Israel has been carrying out since the Annapolis "Peace Conference" held in November till now, is in accordance with its illegal, mostly deadly, collective punishment policy, breaching all international conventions. Following the unhesitating approval of the White House, Israel's air strikes on Gaza have killed hundreds of Palestinians. Compared to the period between 2000 and 2005, in 2007 alone, the ratio between the deaths of Israelis and the deaths of Palestinians has risen from 1 in 4 to 1 in 40.

Three months ago I buried my son Husam who was studying Finance in college and dreaming of becoming an accountant. He was killed in an Israeli air attack. In 2003, I buried my eldest child Halid after an Israeli F-16 attack which was targeted at me but succeeded in injuring my wife and daughter and killed many of our neighbours, demolishing the apartment building we lived in. Last year my son-in-law was killed.
My son Husam was 21 years old but, like so many young people in Gaza, he had to grow up quickly. When I was his age - we were refugees during that time, in the 1960's - I wanted to become a surgeon but there was no degrading blockade then.
But now, after decades of arrests, killings, living stateless and in deteriorating conditions, our first question is, what kind of peace can be obtained if there is no dignity? And where does dignity come from if not from Justice?
Our movement continues to fight because we cannot allow the institutional crimes at the heart of the Jewish state - being viciously expelled from our lands and villages and turned into refugees - to be wiped from the world's consciousness, to be forgotten and to move our suffering to the backs of people's minds. Jews having contributed so much to the World's culture of humanity with its law makers of antiquity and its "repairers of the modern world" (Tikkun Olam), has now become degenerate by turning to Zionism, nationalism and racism.
Any attempts at "peace talks" with the Palestinians will not yield any success if Israel does not return to its borders of 1967, remove all its settlements, withdraw all of its forces from Gaza and the West Bank, give up the illegal annexation of Jerusalem, release all prisoners and permanently end the blockade of our national borders, coasts and airspace. These are the conditions which can create a starting point and the groundwork for millions of refugees to return back to their country. When you consider all that we have lost, this is just the foundation from which we can become whole again.
I'll be forever proud of my children and miss them everyday. I think of them everywhere, even in Israel as fathers with their innocent children, as curious students, as young men having limitless potential. But for this moment of history, it is better for them to be a part of the Palestinian struggle than to celebrate their statelessness and become witness to our subjugation in ‘peace'. History shows us that everything in the world changes. Our struggle to end the very real crimes of 1948 has just started and in the process has taught us patience. As for the State of Israel and its Spartan culture of non-stop fighting, it is demographically running out of time, tired and in trouble. The state of Israel is of concern to us, our children and the children of the future.

*Mahmoud Zahar; is a surgeon and one of the founders of HAMAS. He is the Foreign Secretary of Prime Minister İsmail Haniye's cabinet elected January 2006.