We do have serious reservations, however, at how the UN was administered under your predecessors, and the outright bias it showed towards both Israel and the United States. We will never forgive--or forget--the UN for standing by and watching the US invade Iraq in 2003. Washington did not receive clearance from the UN but went on with the war, caring little for the family of nations that assembled in San Francisco in 1945 to make the world "safer for democracy." Mr. Kofi Anan was both unable--and unwilling--to say no to the Americans. And by no means has the world become "safer for democracy" after the fiasco in Iraq.

Allow me to quote an open letter, written to your predecessor the late Dag Hammarskjöld when he visited Damascus in 1956. It was published in a bygone Damascus periodical, called "al-Hadara" (Civilization) and written by Dr. George Jabbour, a scholar, presidential advisor, and current parliamentarian, who at the time, was a university student in Damascus. Addressing Hammarskjöld he said: "When you descend from the airplane with a smile on your face, forgive us if no similar smile is drawn on our faces." After all, we had welcomed the first UN secretary-general Trygve Lie to Damascus and our late President Hashim al-Atasi had decorated him with the Syrian Medal of Honor, Excellence Class.

The man betrayed us and gave unconditional support for Israel. As early as 1956, Jabbour wrote that the Arabs in general no longer have faith in solutions that are imposed on them from an outside power. He wrapped up saying: "When you leave, it is not a problem if you forget our wounds and sorrows because we no longer believe in medications that are not made out of our own hands." Fifty-one years later, Jabbour's words are still alarmingly true, although five secretary-generals have rotated at the UN since 1956, including an Arab, Mr. Boutros Boutros Ghali. One-by-one we welcomed them to the Middle East, and spilled out our worries and agitations. And one-by-one we watched them leave, forgetting both our "wounds and sorrows." We want you to be different Mr. Moon.

Mr. Secretary-General, there is great injustice in the Middle East. You started the year 2007 with a new job in New York. We started it with a massive Israeli raid in Ramallah. Why is it that out of the 65 UN resolutions passed against Israel, not one has been implemented since 1948? The first was UN Resolution 106 "condemning" Israel for its raid into Gaza in 1955. The second was UN Resolution 111 "condemning" Israel for a raid on Syria that "killed 56-people." Must we remind the world that not a single resolution was ever passed against the Palestinians. Allow me to make another historical parallel and refer to an open letter sent by the late Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. from his prison cell in Birmingham, Alabama on April 16, 1963. It was in response to a statement made by eight white clergymen from Alabama who argued that although injustices were taking place against African-Americans, they should be solved in the courts not on the streets of the United States. I do not see any difference between the plight of Africa-Americans in the 1950s and 1960s, and that of the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. I will quote passages from King's letter, and allow you to play the mental exercise of replacing the word "Negro" with the word "Palestinian." You will find the similarities dangerously alarming.

King addressed the clergymen saying: "You warmly commended the Birmingham police for keeping "order" and "preventing violence." I doubt that you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negros. I doubt you would so quickly commend the policemen if you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negros here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls." That, Mr. Moon, is what happens every day in Palestine at checkpoints, in jails, and at border-crossings. King adds:

For years now, I have heard the word 'Wait!' It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This 'Wait' has almost always meant 'Never!' We must come to see...that justice too long delayed is justice denied. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

That is why the civil rights movement started, he explains, "we had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and national community." That is also the case with the Palestinians. Of course their demonstrations are violent--very violent--unlike the case with King, who was inspired by Ghandi.

The question remains: have the Palestinians achieved anything for their cause, seven years into the intifada? The answer is no. The first intifada of the 1980s was by far more successful because it was nonviolent indeed, symbolized only by small boys throwing stones at tanks and troops from the IDF. That is why it attracted the world's attention--and sympathy, and led to Oslo. But these people are desperate Mr. Moon. What else except despair would let someone like Wafa Idris, a 28-year old paramedic with the Palestinian Red Crescent, blow herself up in Jerusalem on January 28, 2002. She was the first "woman martyr" of the intifada and inspired another young woman, Ayat al-Akhras, an 18-year old girl, to kill herself by denoting a bomb at a supermarket in Jerusalem on March 29, 2002. She killed two Israelis, one being a 17-year old Israeli girl. She had been a straight A student, who was going to college to study journalism. She was engaged to be married in June 2002. When a 18-year old Palestinian girl kills a 17-year Israeli girl--a conflict that both teens are not responsible for, then the future itself is dying in the Middle East.

The world says that negotiations are the only solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. That is true. The Palestinians will be unable to destroy Israel. That is a fact. But they can create a situation, and here again I use the words of King, "that is crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation."

He adds, "We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." The most beautiful part of King's great letter is the section I will quote at length, which is filled with parallels to the plight of the Palestinians. He says:

Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, 'Wait.' But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in a airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and she her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness towards white people, when you have concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you are humiliated day and night by signs reading "white" and "colored," when your first name becomes "nigger" [in this case 'Palestinian'], your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are)...and your wife and mother are never given the respected title of "Mrs;" when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued by inner fears and outer resentments...then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. I hope sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

Mr. Moon, over the past couple of years, the UN's image has been severely damaged in the Arab World. It has been perverted, distorted, and tarnished --perhaps beyond repair -- in the eyes of millions of Arabs. The reasons can be found in Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine. Very recently, over 1,000 Lebanese were killed in the summer war of 2006, and the UN was unable to protect them. Nearly 60,000 Iraqis have died since 2003. Over 4,300 Palestinians have been killed since 2000, and the UN stands in similar paralysis. Also, 31,168 have been seriously wounded while 4,170 homes have been demolished in the Occupied Territories. The Occupied Territories currently suffer from 30-40% unemployment, and in Gaza alone it is over 50%. When the intifada broke out in 2000, the poverty rate was 21%, and by December 2002 it had increased to 60%. In Gaza, poverty today is estimated at 80%. Due to terrible conditions, food consumption in the Occupied Territories has dropped by 25%, and half of the population currently lives off United Nations aid. Malnutrition among infants is 22%, the highest in the region, matched only in the Sahara Desert. Since September 29, 2000, a total of 869 Palestinian children have been killed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). As many as 20,000 Palestinian children were injured. Over 1,500 suffered life-long disabilities.

Killing is reciprocal, of course, and the number of Israelis killed by Palestinians during the same period is a total of 1,084 (840 soldiers, settlers and civilians), including about 123 Israeli children. Nearly 2,500 Israelis children were injured. Their life and safety are -- or should -- be dear to all of us, because they bear no responsibility for this bloody Middle East conflict. Israeli officials, however, continue to deny that the IDF targets Palestinian children. Amira Dotan, a spokeswoman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, once told the Doha-based al-Jazeera TV: "This sort of thing just doesn't happen in Israel." When asked to explain the death of Palestinian children killed by the IDF since the outbreak of the uprising in 2000, she said the deaths were "accidental, collateral but not deliberate. Yes, we knew there were children, but we had to kill the terrorists." The Israeli journalist Amira Hass once interviewed an Israeli soldier who confessed that the IDF gives orders to kill Palestinian boys and girls aged 12 and above. He told her: "Twelve and up, you are allowed to shoot. That's what they tell us."

This is the sad Middle East that you will inherit from Kofi Annan, Mr. Moon. Every single secretary-general since Mr. Lie failed at bringing law and order to this part of the world, due to our conflict with Israel. We want you to be different; we need you to be different. My generation, the third in the Arab-Israeli Conflict, is tired of bloodshed. Although still in our 30s, we have seen many wars in our life, starting with Lebanon in 1982, and ending with Lebanon in 2006. We want justice for the Lebanese, freedom for Iraq, and peace in the Holy Land. Our cause is just because for too many years we were wronged by everybody: the Great Powers, Israel, and the United Nations.

Our cause is paralleled only by two other great injustices in the 20th century. One is that of the Armenian genocide under the Ottoman Empire. The other is that of the Jews in the Holocaust. Both have been compensated for their misery with states of their own. Left alone are the Palestinians. The road to peace in the Middle East runs through Jerusalem first, not Baghdad. Mixed feelings exist in the Arab world toward Iraq. Some are in favor of the post-Saddam order and American schemes, while others are overwhelmingly opposed. On the issue of Palestine, there is more of a consensus among the 200 million Arabs. The real problem of the Middle East, which the international community fails to understand is not terrorism, or Osama Bin Laden, or even Yasser Arafat, who for long was blamed for obstructing peace with Israel. The real problem has to do with land and freedom for the Palestinians. Sadly as I write these words the Palestinians are behaving in a foolish and ignorant manner, killing each other off in petty rivalries over power.

I beg you to forgive me for such a long and tedious letter. It certainly has taken up much of your time. I am writing it, however, while watching the news in Ramallah. And in wrapping up, I will again quote Dr King, addressing the white clergymen in Alabama: "Never before have I written so long a letter. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?"

Like Reverend King, the Palestinians have had long thoughts, and long prayers indeed.

Wishing you a successful tenure at the UN.

Faithfully,

Sami Moubayed