I know you got a solution working -- wanted to put my two cents in for other people that happen by.
--------------
if (param1 == 1 || param2==1) {
// do this
}
--------------
FYI, if for some reason you're dead-set against using jstl core or scriptlets, you *can* achieve OR-logic with logic:equal tags:
<logic:equal name="param1" value="1">
<!-- do this -->
</logic:equal>
<logic:equal name="param2" value="1">
<!-- do this -->
</logic:equal>
Yes, "<!-- do this -->" will be repeated HTML, but it's up to us to weigh the tradeoffs. Certainly, with the massive hard drives in today's servers, JSPs don't have to be as tiny as possible. Also, as long as the values you're comparing aren't calculated -- or, even worse, being queried via a connection to a remote database -- extra comparisons aren't going to substantially affect processing time.
One issue is maintenance, but if you extract "<!-- do this -->" into a template file to be
jsp:included, that issue goes away.
Of course, a better solution is to have a JavaBean that returns "(param1 == 1 || param2==1)" as a boolean, so you can merely:
<logic:equal name="bean" property="orCondition" value="true">
<!-- do this -->
</logic:equal>
That way, non-trivial (business?) logic is out of the JSP.