Talking lesson of peace lecture

Israeli tank patrol - JACK GUEZ/AFP/Getty Images

An Israeli tank patrols along the Israeli border with the Gaza Strip

The path to peace in the Middle East will come through talks not the thunder of warfare, an audience in Londonderry has been told.

The comments came from journalist and Middle East analyst Robert Fisk, who delivered the first of the Tip O'Neill Peace Lectures at the Magee campus.

Mr Fisk said justice must be "the kernel of any lasting peace, not the vested interests of super powers, their satellite allies or fundamentalist enemies".

"What has got to happen is that we have to deal with the issue of justice," he said.

"Unless we deal with the issue of justice for everybody in the Middle East, there will not be a peace. And as long as we go on thinking that we can solve Iraq and solve Afghanistan by sending in more and more soldiers, we will lose."

Mr Fisk was invited to deliver the lecture by Professor John Hume, Nobel Laureate and holder of the university's Tip O'Neill Chair in Peace Studies.

Tip O'Neill was Speaker of the US House of Representatives during 1977-1987 and an enthusiastic supporter of peace efforts in Northern Ireland. The Chair is funded by the Ireland Funds.

Rocket trail fired from Gaza MOHAMMED ABED/AFP/Getty Images

A Palestinian rocket launched from the Gaza Strip into Israel

Welcoming Mr Fisk to the campus, Vice-Chancellor Professor Richard Barnett, said the journalist blended the sure-footed confidence of a veteran foreign correspondent "with the scholarship of one who understands the history of the region and its peoples".

"His commentaries on the policies and actions of political powers and armed groups are given without fear or favour to any side," he said.

"His willingness to state often controversial truths, and always to give an unvarnished picture of the sufferings of peoples, make him one of most authoritative, distinguished and independent voices of our times."

Mr Fisk, who is based in Beirut, the Lebanese capital, is Middle East correspondent for the London daily, The Independent.

Israel has sent ground forces into the Gaza strip in an offensive against Palestinian militant groups in Gaza saying it is targeting those firing rockets into Israel.

The award-winning journalist said the course of action was a mistake.

"The lesson Israel thinks it is teaching - come to heel or we will crush you - is not the lesson Hamas is learning," he said.

"Hamas needs violence to emphasise the oppression of the Palestinians and relies on Israel to provide it. And so the cycle continues - rockets are fired into Israel, and Israel obliges."

Conflict could be resolved only when protagonists talk to each other openly, not through megaphone politics, intermediaries or threat of force, and when they acknowledge each other's just rights, he said.