Israel, the Palestinians and the peace process

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/06/israel-palestinians-peace-process

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I would like to take issue with your editorial (2 January) about the Israel/Palestine peace process. It is untrue to say either that the Palestinians are the aggrieved party or that Israel bears the major responsibility for making peace.

The truth is that the Palestinians could have had their own state at any time in the past 67 years. They were offered one in 1947 and refused, preferring to make war on Israel. Indeed, one of their key arguments in this rejection (apart of course from their refusal to countenance any autonomous Jewish presence in Palestine) was their rejection of the very concept of Palestinian peoplehood, arguing that this notion was merely a Zionist plot to divide the Arab peoples.

When they did finally (for opportunistic reasons) decide in the 1960s that there was indeed a Palestinian people, they adopted a rejectionist, annihilationist policy, which demanded the destruction of Israel as an independent country.

In recent years they have turned down generous offers of statehood (in 2002 and 2008).

The heart of the conflict is Palestinian refusal to recognise the legitimacy of Israel, and to persist in using any means at their disposal (war, terrorism or political) to demonise and destroy it.

When the Palestinians finally recognise the legitimacy of Israel alongside their own, peace will follow. Until then, Israeli concessions will merely encourage the Palestinian intransigence. Harry Goldstein London

• It is hard to understand how you conclude that Israel will be the party most to blame should the peace process fail. Israel has released well over a hundred Palestinian prisoners – many guilty of the murder or attempted murder of Israeli civilians – as part of an agreement to simply bring the Palestinians to the negotiating table. This was not easy for Israel to do and will have cost Israeli leaders much political capital at home. What steps have the Palestinians taken in return? I can't think of any apart from reluctantly turning up at the negotiations.

In the meantime, almost daily attacks on Israeli civilians occur, released murderers are hailed by Palestinian leaders as heroes, and hatred against Jews is still taught in schools. Would it be too much to expect Mr Abbas to acknowledge Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state?

For a peace process to exist – never mind succeed – both parties must be willing to show that they are serious in pursuit of peace. I see only the Israelis showing any willing at all. Harry Figov Redhill, Surrey

• Peace negotiations between Arabs and Israelis have always been extremely difficult and delicate. Often they failed, but there were also instances of success in the past. The latest round of Palestinian-Israeli peace talks has not achieved success so far; but neither did it fail. Yet the Guardian is already concerned with apportioning blame, specifically with blaming Israel for a failure that has yet to happen. And what if the negotiations succeed, despite the Guardian's pessimism? Will the newspaper then bestow all the credit on the Jewish state? Noru Tsalic Coventry

• "Awaiting justice" could summarise your excellent editorial squarely laying responsibility for failure at Israeli and American doors. For all the Palestinian leadership's shortcomings, the onus is without doubt on the occupier, not the occupied. Israelis cannot be blind to the cause of their growing isolation given the extent of Israel's disrespect, sadly condoned by the US, for international law.

As Kerry arrives in the Middle East, an Israeli ministerial committee approves a Knesset bill allowing Israel to annex the Jordan Valley and, going by history, Israel will announce this week or next plans to proceed with about 1,400 new housing units on Palestinian land. Unless the US, with the UN and EU, promptly enforces the illegality of the occupation, there is no chance of a just and durable peace. Catherine Thick Equity & Peace

• Jonathan Freedland (Ariel Sharon's final mission might well have been peace, 3 January) appears to overlook Sharon's real intentions, by implying that Sharon's policy of so-called disengagement from Gaza, in 2005, might have been his desire for peace. The real intents of that so-called withdrawal are clearly outlined in the statement by his chief adviser, Dov Weisglass, who explained the real intentions of Sharon in an interview in Haaretz in October 2004, reported as follows by the New York Times: "Weisglass assures us that given the conditions Sharon attached to a theoretical resumption of a peace process, 'Palestinians would have to turn into Finns' before this could happen. 'Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda,' he said … he explains that the proposed Gaza disengagement 'is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians'." Ismail Zayid Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

• I have yet to read Ari Shavit's My Promised Land, praised by Jonathan Freedland, but, as one of the Bentwich clan (Shavit is the son of one of my surviving first cousins) might I comment that he is not the first prominent "WASP" (White Ashkenazi Supporter of Peace) in our family. He is preceded by the oldest son of Herbert Bentwich. Norman Bentwich, like his father a lawyer, was attorney general in Mandatory Palestine, a founder of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and professor of international relations there. He was a radically minded Zionist who in mandatory times advocated a binational solution for Palestine and, post-1948, was a strong critic of Israel's discriminatory and hawkish policies towards the Palestinians. As one contemporary with Israel's "founding fathers", he was one of the very few who witnessed the wrongs and fearlessly acknowledged the truth. Benedict Birnberg London

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