And to the end I shall fight
If you blow out all the candles in my eyes
If you fill my anguish
Forge my coin
Uproot the smile from my children's faces
If you raise a thousand walls
And nail my eyes to humiliation
Enemy of man
I shall not compromise

-- Palestinian poet Samih Al Qassim

So defiant is the mood of Palestinians. With each body blow inflicted on them this defiance only stiffened. Eversince Britain and France withdrew from their mandated territories in the Middle East and Israel emerged on the scene in May 1948 under a UN plan which partitioned Palestine, more than 600,000 Arabs were driven out of their home. To make things worse in June 1967 in a sharp swift war Israel also seized Gaza, West Bank and Jerusalem dislocating more Arab Palestinians and causing more miseries for their swelling numbers. It took more than two decades for them to be galvanised as Palestinian nation which at long last rose in revolt in what came to be known as Intifada to resist the occupation. The resistance movement spearheaded by the stone throwing Palestinian children however petered out with the coming of Oslo peace process. The Oslo trap broke the momentum of the resistance but could not destroy its soul. After an inconsequential series of Oslo efforts. The resistance grew with far greater intensity. The second Intifada radicalised by the Hamas' suicide bombing is now in progress.

The extraordinary power of this deadly resistance is what worries Israel and her patrons in the West, particularly the US. Indeed, Palestinians have always been the problem for both Zionist scheme of greater Israel as well as the West's attempts for a Middle East settlement on Tel-Aviv's term. It is therefore only axiomatic that both would want to deal with Palestinian resistance rather brutally with a heavy hand.

Pursuant of that hardline policy in a renewed wave of repression early this month Israel raided two refugee camps in the Gaza Strip leaving 14 Palestinians dead. The raids were carried out after an attempted suicide attack on a check post in Northern Gaza in which seven Palestinians and no Israeli were killed. The barbaric raid once again showed the extent of brutality Ariel Sharon could resort to against the Palestinians who, ironical as it is, are condemned to living in refugee camps in their own territory. This, while illegal Jewish settlements in occupied territory continue to expand at an alarming rate despite the fact that the 'road map' unveiled by President Bush last April called for a halt to all settlement activity.

Sharon has been emboldened to perpetrate the atrocity because he knows that the US is least likely to restrain him in the election year. But this does not explain the silence adopted by the EU and Russia, the two other members of the Quartet whose road map Sharon is openly confounding. Ironically, the EU with Britain's Foreign Secretary as its spokesman, has actively campaigned against ICJ (International Court of Justice) hearing the fence case calling it a bilateral dispute to be resolved by the Palestinians and Israelis. Enjoying such a patronisation in his diabolic activities it is only obvious that in the run up of the raids initiated early this month Sharon ordered the killing of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas' wheel chair bound spiritual leader as the latter was leaving the mosque after morning prayer.

Israel made little secret of its intention to eliminate the leadership of Hamas in the aftermath of twin suicide bombings in the port of Ashdod recently. Sheikh Yassin is the first victim of that Israeli scheme but it has only prompted the radical Islamist movement he founded to declare allout war on the Jewish state in revenge. Hamas' political leader in the Gaza Strip, Abdel Aziz Rantissi made a declaration of war in the aftermath of Israeli strike killing the Hamas' supreme leader. Rantissi told that the "war henceforth is open with these (Israeli) murderers, these criminals and these terrorists. By all appearance the conflict has only escalated belying the Israeli expectation that the death of Yassin will put an end to Palestinian resistance.

Both Israel and her patrons are wrong in their expectation. They still fail to understand that the Palestinians have refused to capitulate or surrender even under the collective punishment meted out to them by the combined might of Israel and the United States. They are yet to understand gravity and density of the living history of the Palestinian people as the national community and merely as a collection of deprived refugees. Under the worst possible circumstances Palestinian society has neither been defeated, nor has it crumbled completely. Kids still go to school. Doctors and nurses still take care of their patients. Men and women go to work. Organisations have their meetings and people continue to live. That's what is the predicament of Sharon and other extremists who want the Palestinians to simply wither away. Instead their (Palestinians) strength and resilience to repeatedly bounce back to life are what baffle the Israeli hawks.

The military solution that the Israelis have so far tried hasn't worked at all and never will work. If anything, that has only compounded the problem and increased the Israelis' insecurity. None of Sharon's expansionist measures and his provocative utterances -- the fence being constructed around the West Bank and Al-Quds being but only one example -- has given the Israelis the security they want. The desperate responses by the Palestinian militants in the form of suicide attacks continued to make life for the Israelis a high risk reality. Why is that so hard for Israelis and Americans to see?

So much is heard recently about the 'road map' and prospects for peace that they have indeed obfuscated the realities prevailing in Palestine. According to Late Professor Edward Said, it is the Palestinian resistance and refusal to surrender which is the reason for the existence of a 'road map' and all the numerous so called peace plans before them and not at all because the United States and Israel or the international community have been convinced for humanitarian reasons that the Palestinians should be dispensed with justice. The road map says nothing about justice or about the historical punishment meted out to the Palestinian people for too many decades to count.

Given this backdrop and continuing skullduggery of Israel and her patrons the cowardly killing of a renowned divine will only reignite the passion for martyrdom -- considered too little a price by the Palestinians to achieve their goal. It has aptly been condemned world-wide and inflamed anger in Arab world. Palestine, it seems will continue to burn engulfing entire Middle East in its flame.

Brig ( retd) Hafiz is former DG of BIISS.