Different histories of the Middle East

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/19/different-histories-of-the-middle-east

Version 0 of 1.

With his 20:20 hindsight, Joshua Rowe (Letters, 17 October) may be right that the Palestinians would have been better off, territory-wise, than today, had they accepted earlier partition plans. But the price for the proposed 1937 arrangement included inferior quality land, plus compulsory transfer of 250,000 Palestinians out of the new Jewish state (with the equivalent Jewish transfer being 1,250). Then, in 1947, the proposal was to allocate the 608,000-strong Jewish population 56% of the land and the 1,237,000 Palestinians 43%, with 2% (essentially, Jerusalem) under international jurisdiction. Which people anywhere possessing a scrap of self-respect, plus an inability to see into the future, would have agreed to such humiliating prospects? Yet even those inclined to do so might have thought again, had they known of Ben Gurion’s comment in a 1937 letter: “A Jewish state must be established immediately, even if it is only in part of the country. The rest will follow in the course of time.”

Rowe writes that the Palestinians would rather have nothing than allow Israel anything. In 1988 the PLO recognised Israel within its internationally accepted Green Line borders. It expected a state in the remaining 22% of Mandate Palestine in return. Can Rowe tell us when Israel ever offered that? He can’t, because Israel never did. Israel “negotiates” peace by announcing its own demands, then attacking the Palestinians for not simply accepting them.

Meanwhile, it defies international law, extends its Jewish settlements across the remaining Palestinian landscape and claims an inalienable right to all Jerusalem. The “genuine peace” with Egypt, to which Rowe refers, came about because Israel withdrew from every inch of occupied territory – no ifs, no buts. The Palestinians have been more accommodating, willing to negotiate land swaps where the land is of equal value. It is not the Palestinians who have obstructed peace – the ball has been firmly in Israel’s court for decades. Naomi WayneJews for Justice for Palestinians

• It’s disappointing that every time violence flares up in the Middle East, Israelis and Palestinians and their supporters fall over themselves to deny responsibility and blame everything on the other side. These attitudes are what perpetuates the conflict. Only when the Jews and Arabs of the region recognise and denounce the hatred in their own communities will there be peace.Alasdair MurrayRichmond upon Thames, Surrey

Join the debate at guardian.letters@theguardian.com