Middle East Terrorism

The atrocious hanging of Higgins has substantiated the comment of President Bush on the kidnaping of Obeid, emphasizing that acts of violence do not help the process of peace in the Mideast. This is also true of a military retaliatory action igniting more violence and spreading more terror in the area.

Wisely enough, President Bush is sparing no diplomatic effort to save the lives of the hostages, and to bring about their release. In doing so, he is avoiding a vicious and infernal circle of acts of violence and counter-violence, which would give the upper hand to the extremists in the Middle East, in Israel, and in the United States.

While the President and his assistants are obviously concentrating on the fate of American hostages, it may not be inappropriate to remind all concerned that kidnaping and hanging of hostages are only symptoms of a Middle Eastern crisis which has begotten other tragedies, such as the 15-year war in Lebanon with 200,000 victims, and the two-year revolution of the stone-throwing children in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, bringing the shadow of death into every Palestinian and Israeli home.

The victims of all these events and of other tragic events call for the acceleration of the process of peace in the Middle East, not for the inflammation of the fires of retaliation. They should help to persuade U.S. policy-makers to give up their reluctance to holding a U.N. Middle East peace conference. A new order of peace for all should emerge from such a conference. The prevailing sense of injustice breeding violence will give way to a sense of fairness directing the people of the Middle East to self-reconstruction instead of self-destruction.

HASSAN SAAL

Long Beach