The Middle East seems to be caught up in a process where every step forward in the peace negotiations is followed by two steps backwards.

Israelis and Palestinians have again started an endless spiral of violence. Despite all the agreements signed, Israel quietly continues its colonization: new settlers are continuously establishing new illegal settlements on the West Bank, where they uproot orchards and olive trees; Palestinian children throw stones, Israeli soldiers respond with live ammunition; a Palestinian kills a settler, Israel takes collective punishment measures while IDF [Israel Defence Forces] tanks shell the civilian population. The death toll says a lot about the asymmetry of power between the two sides. The Palestinians are counting hundreds of casualties, the Israelis a few dozens. The roles of David the Jew and Goliath the Philistine have been reversed, and the Israeli side is increasingly resorting to greater violence through the use of its military might. On 21 May [2001] the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, even decided to use F-16 fighter jets to bomb defenceless towns and villages. "Apocalypse Now" is just around the corner.

Where did all this violence originate?

Two different peoples are fighting for the land of Palestine. Palestine is Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza strip. For both sides Palestine is the territorial frame of reference. Israel wants military and sovereign borders from the Mediterranean to the Jordan river. It is willing to allow some autonomy in the areas around the big Palestinian cities, but its control over the borders and the expansion of Jewish settlements within these borders remains essential to it. The Palestinians are still dreaming of a multinational state between Jaffa and the Jordan river. The Palestinians know that, on their journey to freedom, in order to turn their dreams into reality they will encounter some practical obstacles, foremost of which is the state of Israel, recognized by international law within its 1967 borders. That is why they have opted for negotiations by entering a peace process. The negotiations have not given them much of their land back: they now have autonomy ­ not sovereignty ­ over 2.3 per cent of Mandated Palestine. Here, they have to establish a national authority for 8 million Palestinians (half of whom are living as refugees outside Palestine). Today, five million Israeli Jews control 97 per cent of Mandated Palestine.

The essence of the problem is obvious; the solution, however, is less clear. In order to decrease the violence on the Palestinian side, there is only one solution: giving them back more land and a genuine Palestinian sovereignty over this area. To decrease the violence on the Israeli side would come down to calling a halt to the hard-line policy that seeks to solve the problem militarily. In the past, Israel has had several die-hard Zionist leaders and now Israel has Sharon. But he is not alone. Even "the apostle of freedom", [Foreign Minister] Shimon Peres, defends the deployment of F-16 fighter planes against towns and villages and he defends Sharon in the Sabra and Shatila case.

When we look back upon Ariel Sharon's career, we see clearly that his actions have always been more radical than those of the average Israeli. Ariel Sharon - his original name was Scheinermann, as he is, like almost all Israeli leaders, of East European origin ­ first made the headlines in the international press during the 1953-54 period. He was then in command of two special army units operating in plain clothes behind the scenes. During these two years his troops attacked dozens of Palestinian villages located across the Israeli border. At that time, there was still no Palestinian armed struggle. However, some refugees tried to return to their home towns in Israel overnight. In order to prevent this, the army terrorized all villages in the border region. The most notorious attack of Sharon's at that time took place against the village of Qibiya, where 66 civilians were killed. Forty-five houses were dynamited, their owners still inside. Even Israeli public opinion thought Sharon overdid it. However, these killings did not harm his military career.

After the Six-Day War in 1967, in which Israel captured the rest of Palestine [the West Bank and the Gaza strip], Sharon showed the world that he is also a hard-line colonist. In 1972 he was in command of the armed force that drove away 10,000 farmers from their homes in the Gaza strip, bulldozing their crops and olive fields and filling up their wells with concrete. These Palestinians had to make way for six kibbutzim, nine other colonies and the city-settlement of Yamit. Again, many Israelis thought Sharon used excessive force. But his military career continued. Sharon became minister of defence, a position which gave him full control over the occupied territories. For the Palestinians, this period will be remembered as the cruellest years of the occupation they had witnessed up until that time. Sharon then used to address the press in the following manner: "I hope we can expel all Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza to Jordan." (New York Times, 17 May 1982) or "A good Arab is a dead Arab" (Ha'aretz, 25 February 1983).

Sabra and Shatila

As minister of defence, Sharon directed the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. His aim: to liquidate the PLO. [Palestine Liberation Organization] Against all the agreements within the cabinet, he invaded Beirut. An international committee of inquiry made up of five Americans, among whom was Sean McBride, declared that the Israeli occupation of Lebanon was in violation of international law and against the Geneva conventions. During the invasion, Sharon organized, together with the Lebanese fascists of the Phalangist Party, a mass murder in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. After the PLO militants had withdrawn from the camps and had left Lebanon by sea, the Israeli army under Sharon gave 200 Lebanese Phalangists carte blanche in Sabra and Shatila. According to the Lebanese authorities, they murdered 1,962 unarmed civilians. According to Sharon, there were "only" some 700 deaths. That is at least what he told the Israeli committee of inquiry headed by Yitzhak Kahan, chairman of the Israeli Supreme Court, which investigated the massacre. The Kahan committee declared Sharon "personally responsible" for the mass slaughter.

Will he overreact this time as well? His deployment of F-16 planes should prepare us for the worst.

Stop the impunity

The mass murder of Sabra and Shatila has become generally accepted as one of the worst postwar crimes against humanity. This crime was called by the UN "an act of genocide". However, no inquiry has been made into this crime, not in Lebanon, Israel, nor by an international authority. In such a case of impunity Belgium should, now more than ever, take its responsibility and start an investigation based on the universal jurisdiction of crimes against humanity. This is in accordance with the philosophy that laid the foundation of the law of 16 June 1993 concerning punishment for serious violations of international humanitarian law. This law has been approved by the Belgian parliament with a large majority and is a result of our international obligations.

The principle of "universal jurisdiction" operated by this law is not just an ethical impulse. Nor is it a luxury article in the juridical shop of the Belgian government. Only to name one example: the trial of the four Rwandans, which is now taking place at the Assizes Court of Brabant, started only after some victims of the genocide bumped into them in the streets of Brussels. The question of whether we accept "universal jurisdiction" is strongly intertwined with the openness for which we strive in Belgium. If we close our eyes to perpetrators of crimes against humanity when they visit Belgium, and if we allow money gained through such crimes to circulate in the economy and the financial system, then we should forget about the concept of "universal jurisdiction" and focus only on our own domestic problems. In order not to disturb our peace of mind and our isolation, it would be better for our media to stop reporting crimes against humanity.

Complaints against Ariel Sharon are also been prepared in other countries. But our Belgian judiciary is, in this case perhaps, in a better position than those of the other nations to start a real, independent investigation and hence hold a fair trial. Our country is indeed more impartial towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than a large number of other countries like the United States or the Arab countries. Our judiciary also has more experience in this matter and our public opinion supports these kinds of initiatives based on the principle of "universal jurisdiction" (this is shown by recent opinion polls in the Belgian newspaper Le Soir).

During the Belgian presidency of the European Union, our diplomacy is willing to play a greater role. This does not mean that we need to turn a blind eye to crimes against humanity. The recent actions against Pinochet and [those implicated in the genocide in] Rwanda, where the court operated without any political pressure, have proved to be very favourable for our international status.

• Indict Ariel Sharon now!

• Sharon's victory - what next?

• Ariel Sharon: a political profile

• September 2001 and September 1982: two crimes against humanity