Arabs for a just peace?

Letters

Editor: Stephen Aberle is at it again. He says that the Israeli "occupation" is a disaster ("End the occupation," Bulletin Letters, April 12) and further implies that if Israel were to withdraw tomorrow, then we would have peace after that - what utter and absolute rot.

In case Mr. Aberle has forgotten, from 1948 to 1967 Israel "occupied" nothing - not the West Bank or Gaza, not the Golan Heights and certainly not East Jerusalem. Where was the outcry then that the poor Palestinians were deprived of their "state" - of course, there was none. The cry from the Arab nations was to push the Jews into the sea and the cry from the Palestine Liberation Organization, when it was formed in 1964, was that the creation and the existence of the state of Israel was null and void. Nothing much has changed since, even though Israel has signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, has withdrawn from the Sinai and southern Lebanon and has offered the PLO more than 90 per cent of the "occupied territories." What compromise has Arafat offered? Absolutely none. And shrilly insists that he be a martyr in Jerusalem. In the meantime, Arab violence continues unabated, and it is the height of hypocrisy for the United States to say that it will root out and destroy terrorism, but then criticizes Israel for a "disproportionate" response for the very same terrorism that the United States is trying to eradicate.

When will we have peace? When the Arabs concede and compromise that Israel will and must retain some of the "territories" for security purposes; that Jerusalem is not negotiable; and that the refugee camps be closed and their inhabitants absorbed into Arab society. Indeed, the biggest tragedy of the Middle East has been that no one exploits and brutalizes Arabs worse than other Arabs. When that is overcome, then we just might see "Arabs for a Just Peace" - who are prepared to denounce violence, and sit down and negotiate. Wouldn't that be nice for a change?

Murray Shapiro
Vancouver

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