Opinion

NEW YORK (AP) -- Your next credit card statement is going to contain an ugly truth: how much that card really costs to use.

Now, thanks to a long-awaited law that goes into effect Monday, you'll know that if you pay the minimum on a $3,000 balance with a 14 percent interest rate, it could take you 10 years to pay off.

"Jaws will drop," said David Robertson, publisher of The Nilson Report, a newsletter that tracks the industry. "I don't doubt for a nanosecond that it's going to give a lot of people a sinking feeling in their stomachs."

That's not all that will make them queasy.

During the past nine months, credit card companies jacked up interest rates, created new fees and cut credit lines. They also closed down millions of accounts. So a law hailed as the most sweeping piece of consumer legislation in decades has helped make it more difficult for millions of Americans to get credit, and made that credit more expensive.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. The law that President Barack Obama signed last May shields card users from sudden interest rate hikes, excessive fees and other gimmicks that card companies have used to drive up profits. Consumers will save at least $10 billion a year from curbs on interest rate increases alone, according to the Pew Charitable Trust, which tracks credit card issues.

But there was a catch. Card companies had nine months to prepare while certain rules were clarified by the Federal Reserve. They used that time to take actions that ended up hurting the same customers who were supposed to be helped.

This astonishing, and disturbingly bloodless, look at international espionage comes courtesy of Dubai’s security services, who are trying to piece together exactly how the military commander of Hamas, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, was assassinated in room 230 of the Al Bustan Rotana hotel on Jan. 20. But the identity of the murderers (and how they managed to get out of the room with the inside latch hooked up) is not the overrriding mystery here. Rather, there are three pertinent questions raging in the blogosphere: Did the killers (and most bloggers and news accounts assume they were Mossad agents) “botch” the job by being caught on surveillance cameras? If Israel is proved responsible, was the intelligence coup worth the diplomatic price it seems about to pay because some of the killers used falsified United Kingdom passports (with the names of living British citizens) to enter and leave Dubai? And, as we step back and remember that a human life was ended just off-camera, what is the morality of these sorts of targeted murders? (This question is all the more relevant to an American audience given the fact that, as I discussed two weeks ago, the Obama administration claims the right to assassinate Americans suspected of involvement in terrorist plots.)

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In my decades as a public servant, I have strongly promoted the Arab-Israeli peace process. During recent months, I argued that the peace plan proposed by Saudi Arabia could be implemented under an Obama administration if the Israelis and Palestinians both accepted difficult compromises. I told my audiences this was worth the energies of the incoming administration for, as the late Indian diplomat Vijaya Lakshmi Nehru Pandit said: "The more we sweat in peace, the less we bleed in war."

But after Israel launched its bloody attack on Gaza, these pleas for optimism and co-operation now seem a distant memory. In the past weeks, not only have the Israeli Defence Forces murdered more than 1,200 Palestinians, but they have come close to killing the prospect of peace itself. Unless the new US administration takes forceful steps to prevent any further suffering and slaughter of Palestinians, the peace process, the US-Saudi relationship and the stability of the region are at risk.

Prince Saud Al Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, told the UN Security Council that if there was no just settlement, "we will turn our backs on you". King Abdullah spoke for the entire Arab and Muslim world when he said at the Arab summit in Kuwait that although the Arab peace initiative was on the table, it would not remain there for long. Much of the world shares these sentiments and any Arab government that negotiated with the Israelis today would be rightly condemned by its citizens. Two of the four Arab countries that have formal ties to Israel - Qatar and Mauritania - have suspended all relations and Jordan has recalled its ambassador.

America is not innocent in this calamity. Not only has the Bush administration left a sickening legacy in the region - from the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to the humiliation and torture at Abu Ghraib - but it has also, through an arrogant attitude about the butchery in Gaza, contributed to the slaughter of innocents. If the US wants to continue playing a leadership role in the Middle East and keep its strategic alliances intact - especially its "special relationship" with Saudi Arabia - it will have to drastically revise its policies vis a vis Israel and Palestine.

The incoming US administration will be inheriting a "basket full of snakes" in the region, but there are things that can be done to help calm them down. First, President Barack Obama must address the disaster in Gaza and its causes. Inevitably, he will condemn Hamas's firing of rockets at Israel.

When he does that, he should also condemn Israel's atrocities against the Palestinians and support a UN resolution to that effect; forcefully condemn the Israeli actions that led to this conflict, from colony building in the West Bank to the blockade of Gaza and the targeted killings and arbitrary arrests of Palestinians; declare America's intention to work for a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction, with a security umbrella for countries that sign up and sanctions for those that do not; call for an immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from Sheba' Farms in Lebanon; encourage Israeli-Syrian negotiations for peace; and support a UN resolution guaranteeing Iraq's territorial integrity.

Obama should strongly promote the Abdullah peace initiative, which calls on Israel to pursue the course laid out in various international resolutions and laws: to withdraw completely from the lands occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem, returning to the lines of June 4 1967; to accept a mutually agreed just solution to the refugee problem according to the General Assembly resolution 194; and to recognise the independent state of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital. In return, there would be an end to hostilities between Israel and all the Arab countries, and Israel would get full diplomatic and normal relations.

Recently, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran wrote a letter to King Abdullah, explicitly recognising Saudi Arabia as the leader of the Arab and Muslim worlds and calling on him to take a more confrontational role over "this obvious atrocity and killing of your own children" in Gaza. The communiqué is significant because the de facto recognition of the kingdom's primacy from one of its most ardent foes reveals the extent that the war has united an entire region, both Shiite and Sunni. Further, Ahmadinejad's call for Saudi Arabia to lead a jihad against Israel would, if pursued, create unprecedented chaos and bloodshed in the region.

So far, the kingdom has resisted these calls, but every day this restraint becomes more difficult to maintain. When Israel deliberately kills Palestinians, appropriates their lands, destroys their homes, uproots their farms and imposes an inhuman blockade on them; and as the world laments once again the suffering of the Palestinians, people of conscience from every corner of the world are clamouring for action. Eventually, the kingdom will not be able to prevent its citizens from joining the worldwide revolt against Israel.

Today, every Saudi is a Gazan, and we remember well the words of our late King Faisal: "I hope you will forgive my outpouring of emotions, but when I think that our Holy Mosque in Occupied Jerusalem is being invaded and desecrated, I ask God that if I am unable to undertake Holy Jihad, then I should not live a moment more."

Let us all pray that Obama possesses the foresight, fairness, and resolve to rein in the murderous Israeli regime and open a new chapter in this most intractable of conflicts.

 Enshrined in the Israeli narrative is the "terrorist" designation of its enemies. For most ordinary people "terrorist" is a highly emotive label and when it's prefixed with "Islamist", it evokes images of hooded, anti-Western extremists lopping off heads or planting bombs in five-star hotels to fulfil the demands of a warped ideology masquerading as religion.

For Israel, the 'war on terror' has been a gift to its propaganda merchants. After all, what reasonable person can blame a country under 'terrorist attack' for extending its power to protect its citizens from crazed evil-doers? Sadly, public perception isn't generally nuanced enough to take account of a crucial fundamental: Israel is the occupier and the Palestinians its victims.

Conversely, genuine resistance groups struggling against the yoke of occupation have been hobbled by George W. Bush's black-and-white rhetoric, as they have been tarred with the same brush as Al Qaida and its franchises. Britain's Foreign Secretary David Miliband slammed the 'war on terror' during a recent visit to Mumbai, calling it a "misleading and mistaken" doctrine inviting "invidious comparisons" between diverse organisations.

It just so happens that all resistance groups in the Arab world have been grouped under the umbrella of terrorism, which devalues their just causes. As far as the US and Britain were concerned, Iraqis who objected to their country being bombed, invaded and occupied and who took up arms were all "terrorists".

Those Iraqi patriots who fought against the illegal invasion in the same way that the French resistance fought against the Nazis and their Vichy regime during the Second World War, should never have been called "terrorists". Similarly, the Shiite Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah, which was founded during 1982 in response to Israel's invasion of Lebanon, is officially deemed "terrorist" as is Hamas, the Sunni Palestinian faction which Israel initially welcomed as opposition to the "terrorist" Palestine Liberation Organisation.

Notwithstanding, both Hezbollah and Hamas are political organisations with massive popular support among their own people. Both are credited for implementing welfare programmes, including assisting the needy, constructing schools and maintaining hospitals. Both have military wings dedicated to pursuing freedom from occupation.

It seems, therefore, that any Arab who uses violent means to oust American, British or Israeli troops from his land is automatically labelled as "a terrorist". How convenient! When wielded effectively, the term gets the aggressor off the hook and slanders the victim.

As the President of the UN General Assembly Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann recently pointed out, during a special emergency meeting last week, the UN Charter encompasses the right of all peoples to self-determination. Moreover, the Nuremberg Tribunal established in 1945 set a precedent for the right of resistance under International Law as it confirmed that the anti-Nazi underground acted legitimately.

There is, however, no law that sanctions attacks on civilians. Furthermore, collective punishment is illegal under the Geneva Conventions. So it is undeniable that Hamas, for instance, has acted outside the law by launching rockets unable to discriminate between civilian and military targets. But here it gets murky because if we are to call Hamas "terrorist" then following the same logic, so is Israel.

For over three weeks, Israel has bombarded the most densely populated part of the world with a diverse arsenal. Israeli spokespeople invariably say Israel does not target civilians and uses surgical precision when striking just as it maintained in 2006 when Israel murdered 1,200 Lebanese civilians.

This would be laughable if the results weren't so tragic. In Gaza, homes, schools, universities, hospitals, ambulances, a media centre and a UN warehouse, housing desperately needed food and medicines, have all been incinerated. More than 1,300 slaughtered; over 5,000 wounded. Almost half are women and children.

How can anyone in their right mind believe this massive death toll was accidental? This is as heinous as the actions of those who strap themselves with bombs before blowing themselves up in a crowded marketplace. Israel's Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai, who warned last year that Gaza faces an Israeli-inflicted shoah (holocaust) stuck to his word.

Terrorism, which robs innocents of their lives, is an abomination but so is the death and devastation wrought by states that misuse their military prowess. Television anchors may talk about the war in Gaza but this is a misnomer. It's a massacre perpetrated to restore the myth of Israeli deterrence, cynically timed prior to an election. If Israel truly wants a war it should allow Hamas to be supplied with F16s, Apache helicopters, missiles and tanks& then go for it!

During the last throes of the Bush presidency, Israel and the US have signed a joint Memorandum of Understanding designed to strip Hamas and other resistance groups of their rearmament capability. Just as they wanted to destroy Hezbollah so they want to terminate Hamas; not because they are Islamist but because they resist their diktats and thwart their goal of cracking this region under their booted heel. In short, the enemies of the US and Israel are all "terrorists".

Without the unswerving determination of Palestinians to resist over the past six decades there would be no cohesive Palestinian nation; only scattered refugees with no land, no national identity and no hope. And if Hezbollah had never existed, today, Lebanon would form part of a Greater Israel. Justice is the only weapon that can truly kill resistance. The international community should try it.