Illustration by Josh Hagler

To survive on this crazy planet, a human being has a few physical needs. However, one also needs to feel accepted and loved. For individuals who don't have a family, or dislike the one they have, they might choose friends to replace their lack of family.

This new friends-family can influence other kids very easily. For example, you get a 16-year-old kid to start doing small favors, and when he does them, give him a hug and tell him he's the greatest. The next errand you ask will probably not be denied. Before you know it, you have 20 kids who would die for you. It's called a gang. I think that any group of people for whom you have undying allegiance to is a gang of sorts. I know, I know. It's a little drastic, but humor me for a minute.

If your best friend gets beat up, what do you do? Most likely find the jerk who did it and give him a royal ass-whooping. Now that we have established an ambiguous meaning of gang, here is a more precise definition: a group of adolescents who band together, especially a group of delinquents. It can also be agreed that gang-affiliation is counter-productive.

If I heard an old gangster say of his archrival, "I wish I had liquidated him 20 years ago when I had the chance," I would think it is normal because he is part of a group of delinquents who can make such boorish comments. However, what if I told you the person who said this was not a gangster, but the head of legal state? How about Ariel Sharon? What would you think now? Is it appropriate? No.

We hold the heads of state to have a certain degree of professionalism and courtesy toward other human beings, not to make foolish comments that insult a group of people's most-revered leader - the same group, Palestinians, who have lived in conflict with Israelis for the past few decades.

Instead of making comments and actions that resolve a complicated issue, Sharon is ridiculing himself and making his government look like a group of delinquents whom he leads, which it is not.

Two months ago, he declared Arafat officially "irrelevant," and about three weeks ago, he placed him on house arrest. Now, I don't think that Arafat, the PLO and Fatah are always right either. Fatah, a division of the PLO that has Arafat as the chairman, have admitted to bombing Israelis and the like. However, it is important to make the distinction between Hamas, a group that blindly bombs Israelis, and Fatah who tries to bomb Israeli military forces. (Neither of which is completely justified).

Rather, they are trying to attack a group, who by name is an official army, but by action behaves like any other group of delinquents when they bomb and bulldoze Palestinian refugee settlements.

Neither group is making any constructive moves to solve a very serious problem. For the past 17 months, it has been a continuous cycle of tit-for-tat bloodshed that is only ripping both Israeli and Palestinian mothers from their loved ones, instead of solving their conflict. Last week, Israeli helicopters bombed the building next to Arafat's compounds to - what they say - "scare" him. The next day they, killed one of his bodyguards in another bombing.

Does this sound like the action of a rational human being? Sharon is completely wrong to do something like this. Imagine: Because we think that North Korea or Iran might have terrorists, President Bush bombs the buildings surrounding their homes to "scare" them. Yeah, right. Anyone who does that wants to kill the other person or at least harm them significantly. It is lunacy.

Spain, which holds the current presidency in the European Union, has deplored Sharon's remarks, as have other Middle Eastern countries, because it is in very, very poor taste. A few months ago, Sharon's approval rating by Israelis was almost 80 percent and now is down to 57 percent. This tells us that even his people are not in support of his unreasonable and terrorist-like activities. The latest development is that the Saudi and U.S. governments are trying to have some peace in the region and mediating peace talks between the two old and very stubborn leaders.

Hopefully, this positive step will help us curb a very terrifying reign of terrorism on both sides of the argument in Israel. I would not assume to be so bold as to offer a solution, but it has to be stated that it makes the situation a lot worse when the leader of a nation reverts to playground bullying tactics instead of being more productive to amicably draw this age-old controversy to an end.