MB Civic

To the Editor:

Re “A Viable Palestinian State” (editorial, May 25):

It is generally agreed that the Palestinians should have a voice in what their state should look like going forward. But it is very hard for anyone to negotiate when a gun is pointed at your head with the intention that we truly want to eliminate you.

The Palestinian people have to recognize that Israel is not going away, and the Israelis have to recognize that the Palestinians are not going away either.

The Palestinians need to wake up to the fact that the world loses respect for violence as a means to an end. A peaceful resolution is a much stronger resolution and would lead to much larger concessions by the Israelis, because world forces would dictate it.

World forces remain against the Palestinians. Till this changes, Israel should go for a solution on its own.

It can’t wait for peace to come at this point. It has a right to protect its population from constant harm.

Peter G. Hill
Weston, Mass., May 25, 2006

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To the Editor:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Bush have arrogated to themselves the right to negotiate away Palestinian land. Past colonial powers did precisely the same.

Our policy toward the Palestinians uses terms like freedom and democracy, but this is cheap rhetoric.

The reality is presidential and Congressional backing for Israel’s abuse of human rights and the walling into bantustans of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

Michael F. Brown
Takoma Park, Md., May 25, 2006
The writer is a former executive director of Partners for Peace.

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To the Editor:

It is not a legitimate criticism of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s withdrawal plan to declare that it will not bring peace, for no matter what Israel does, there is no hope of peace while the Palestinian people and their leadership cling to their unrealistic expectations and culture of violence.

The putative point of withdrawal is not to bring peace but to retrench to more defensible borders.

The fact that the adjustment of the 1967 cease-fire lines to more defensible borders will be a unilateral one is the fault of no one so much as the Palestinian people themselves, who in free and democratic elections chose the party espousing the most unrealistic expectations and the most violent means of achieving them.

This unilateralism is not a punishment; it is a consequence.

Yaakov Har-Oz
Beit Shemesh, Israel, May 25, 2006

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To the Editor:

Question: What is the purpose of negotiating with the Palestinians if you have gone on the record as saying that if the Palestinians don’t agree to the borders you want to draw, you will unilaterally draw those borders anyway?

That is essentially the message delivered by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert during his recent visit to the United States.

At that point, the entire ploy of negotiation becomes a sham, since you have predetermined what the outcome of those negotiations will be.

Nidal Ibrahim
Huntington Beach, Calif.
May 25, 2006
The writer is executive director of the Arab American Institute.

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To the Editor:

Your plea for “a viable Palestinian state” (editorial, May 25) presents a bizarre comparison with the Upper East Side of Manhattan’s being cut off from Battery Park City.

But what if the residents of these two neighborhoods elected a regime dedicated to the destruction of the rest of New York City by terrorism?

This is exactly what the Palestinians have done.

If the residents of the Upper East Side and Battery Park City killed thousands of New Yorkers by suicide bombings, one hopes that New Yorkers would have the sense not to give the terrorists a contiguous enclave from which attacks could be escalated.

Israelis have no less right than New Yorkers to resist those who openly call for the destruction of their polity.

Joel J. Sprayregen
Chicago, May 25, 2006

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To the Editor:

Thank you for “A Viable Palestinian State.”

As an American-Israeli Jew and a longtime supporter of the idea of “two states for two peoples,” I have been horrified by the Israeli government’s recent attempts to end the occupation without actually taking the Palestinian people into account.

It’s as if my country’s leaders believe that we can just throw up a wall and declare victory, and with an American blessing, peace will reign.

Not only would any unilateral “solution” be unjust, but any attempt at such a solution will also prove bad for Israel — a nonworkable, cantonized Palestinian state can’t be considered good-neighbor material.

Moreover, I can’t imagine any people’s allowing another to make decisions for them. Wasn’t that what Zionism, our own nationalist movement, was all about?

Referring to President Bush as an “enabler” hits the nail squarely on the head: to encourage this kind of magical thinking is to allow the Israeli government to do further damage to its own people and to the Palestinians, in the name of not rocking the boat.

Emily Hauser
Oak Park, Ill., May 25, 2006

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To the Editor:

Unilaterally drawn borders are nothing new to the Middle East.

The borders of many Arab countries in the Middle East were unilaterally drawn by European countries after World War I, but those Arabs welcomed their independence.

The borders of Israel were drawn by the United Nations and originally did not include any of Jerusalem, and if it were not for subsequent unsuccessful Arab attempts to destroy Israel by war, none of Jerusalem today would be controlled by Israel.

Nevertheless, the Jews accepted a truncated state in 1948.

The Palestinians can prove the sincerity of their nationalist yearnings by doing the same.

After electing a government committed to Israel’s destruction, they can hardly complain that Israel is not consulting them.

Steve Sheffey
Highland Park, Ill., May 25, 2006