Mr. Speaker, the horrific terrorist outrage yesterday in Northern Israel, the blowing up of a city bus, murdering 16 and wounding at least 50, is the latest outrage by one or another terrorist group, in this instance Islamic Jihad, that not only obscenely takes credit for this slaughter of innocents but proudly and publicly asserts its objective as being the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews wherever they may be, while the Hezbollah TV station Al-Manar extols the martyrs of yet another genocidal bombing. Yet both, along with Hamas, have yet to be named to Canada's list of terrorist entities.
This latest terrorist assault is confirmation again that the root cause of this tragic existential conflict, and the suffering on both sides, remains for the most part the unwillingness of many in the Arab and Palestinian leadership to accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state within any borders, and that the historical pattern from 1947 to the present has been one of double rejectionism, of Arabs forgoing the establishment even of a Palestinian state if it means countenancing the existence of a Jewish state. This was a sentiment reflected in the remarks of the President of Lebanon who, two days ago at the Francophonie conference, referred to the creation of Israel as one of history's great injustices, words inimical to the peaceful co-existence of two states for two peoples--