Peace and the Palestinians

David Hirst’s commentary “Path to Peace Runs Through Palestine” (Dec. 21) brings much-needed balance and understanding to Americans willing to listen. The demonization of the Palestinians and the unwillingness of [the U.S. and Israel] to recognize the plight of the Palestinians will help keep that region unstable and dangerous.

If the people of the region view us as the quasi-colonial protectors of Israel, we and Israel will suffer the consequences of nonstop conflict and continuing attacks. The twin occupations of Palestine by Israel and Iraq by the U.S. will weaken both the U.S. and Israel in the end.

Larry Saltzman

Santa Barbara

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Hirst conveniently ignores the fact that it was Britain that was given the Palestine Mandate by the League of Nations after World War I and partitioned it in 1923 to award 80% of it to the Palestinian Arabs. The British then told the Jews of Palestine that the remaining 20% of the land would be theirs, including Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), a promise that was obviously never kept. It was the Jews who lost 80% of their homeland, not the Arabs.

If Jordan, with a population that is 75% Palestinian today, is not the Palestinian state, then what is? And if the other Arab nations are so concerned about the fate of the Palestinian refugees, why haven’t they resettled them in their countries in the last 50 years, as Israel did with almost 1 million refugees ethnically cleansed from the Arab world after 1948?

The central issue of Middle East peace remains the lack of freedom in the Islamic world and the inability of Arab nations to live in peace and equality next to non-Muslims. Solve that problem, and the issue of peace in the Middle East becomes one of merely drawing lines in the sand.

Robert Miller

La Crescenta