On September 11
Article asked for by The Times on the 12th of September 2001 and then decided not to publish it

Consistent with my frequently expressed revulsion at the "selective indignation " in certain circles regularly demonstrated when tragedies occur depending on the nature of the victims or the identity of the perpetrators, I wish to voice my total and unequivocal condemnation of the horror that took place yesterday in the United States.

As a Palestinian, who for twelve endless month witnessed the continuous daily bombing of Palestinian cities, villages and refugee camps, my sympathy today goes entirely to the victims of yesterday's despicable undertaking. Having watched a cascade of daily funerals in Mandatory Palestine, I understand and share the pain of their families and friends.

Having joined the unheeded call for international protection and the deployment of international observers, and having advocated an imposed solution by the international community since the local parties were incapable of reaching an acceptable settlement on the basis of international law, I sincerely wish that international law, and only that, will guide American decision makers in the aftermath of this revolting act.

At a moment when globalisation has become an undeniable international reality, now more than ever before, universal principles and the highest possible standards should be set and equally observed by everybody all over our " planetary village."

Is this the case? Unfortunately not. In those tragic days we will hear more of revenge, retaliation, the clash of civilisations, rather than a rational debate over why such atrocities find volunteers to accomplish them and what are the political lessons one should draw. Alas, the discourse of politicians and commentators will appeal more to the instincts rather than the intelligence of listeners, to their hatred rather than their humanity.

I have often explained that the way the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the status of Jerusalem are addressed handled or mishandled, will affect relations not only on a local level, but also on a global one. It could either initiate a positive dialogue of religions, cultures and civilisations, or trigger a clash of civilisations on a global level.

Whether there is one mankind or different kinds of men and women is not a rhetorical or a polemical question. Since the inception of the Palestinian tragedy, the Arab and Muslim world had the impression of total Western insensitivity to their ordeal as though Palestinian victims were fatherless, motherless, childless, nameless, faceless…worthless.

The "exploits" that led to the dispossession and the dispersion of the Palestinian people were welcomed in mainstream Western public opinion with admiration and sometimes even as "miraculous". I personally tended to believe in the innocence of God even though the Zionist project was presented as "a divine mission for a chosen people on a Promised Land."

We were inundated with massive propaganda about the desert turning green, but nobody bothered to answer the moral questions: in the name of what and since when does the planting of a tree justify the uprooting of a human being? Since when does planting a forest justify the uprooting of an entire people?

Israel was supposed to be an answer to what was called " the Jewish question". As a result, the Palestinians are today a question- The question of Palestine at the UN- awaiting still a convenient, equitable and satisfactory answer. The fact that we were the victims of the victims of European history deprives us of our legitimate share of sympathy, solidarity and support.

The Palestinian refugee issue is addressed by Israel UN the most dismissive manner. Their possible return is seen as a threat to the Jewish nature of the sate. But no one in a senior capacity will take this argument to its logical conclusion that the Palestinian refugees were initially driven out of their homeland with that purpose in mind. From the very beginning there were successful attempts to trivialise and banalise the Palestinian tragedy. The Israeli political establishment inflicted on the Palestinian people four types of denials. First came the denial of our very existence. The followed the denial of our rights. All this was accompanied by the denial of our sufferings and the denial of their moral and historical responsibility for this suffering. I have never "likened" the Naqba to the Holocaust. My conviction has always been that there is no need for comparisons and historical analogies. No one people have a monopoly on human suffering and every ethnic tragedy stands on its own. If I were a Jew or a Gypsy, Nazi barbarity would be the most atrocious event in history. If I were a Black African, it would be slavery and apartheid. If I were a Native American, it would be the discovery of the New World by European explorers and settlers that resulted in the near-total extermination. If I were an Armenian, it would be the Ottoman massacres.

If I were a Palestinian it would be the Naqba catastrophe of 1948. Humanity should consider all the above repugnant I do not consider it advisable to debate hierarchies of suffering. I do not know how to quantify pain or measure suffering. I do know that we are not children of a lesser God.

In the United States there will be a debate on whether yesterday's event will result in isolationism, unilateralism, multilateralism or interventionism. American foreign policy in the Middle East has been most intriguing. It is the only remaining superpower in the international system yet in our part of the world it seemed as though it had abdicated this role in favour of its regional ally, Israel, which it unconditionally shielded in the UN and elsewhere. The U.S.A. is committed to Israel's security, a message everybody had already understood since decades. Does it need also to endorse the territorial appetite, the expansionist inclinations of its regional protégé? America is a fascinating society. It is a nation of nations. In today's monopolar international system, nonalignment in regional conflict should be what characterizes American foreign policy, because alignment on the preferences of one belligerent actor results in antaginizing one component of its domestic national fabric and also regional actors who genuinely aspire to be America's friends.

In his Memoirs "Present at the creation", former American Secretary of State Dean Acheson writes that the UN Charter was a condensed version of American political philosophy. All I can hope for is that America will reconcile tomorrow its power with its principles.