LETTER: Arabs were not the belligerents

SIR – I refer to J Rowe’s letter (June 1^st) from Manchester, ‘Palestinians refused a “two-states” solution,’ in which he rewrites history. He castigates Palestinians for refusing to accept a two-state solution in 1937 but refuses to consider why an occupied ethnic people should legally or morally accept that the land they owned be taken away by the colonial occupiers to be given to those with no entitlement to that land other than those Jews who owned 7% of it. 

Rowe did not mention either that David Ben-Gurion presided over the ethnic cleansing of approximately 750,000 Palestinians and the destruction of hundreds of their villages in 1948. It is important to remember that PM Netanyahu’s Likud Party has a charter which rejects a Palestinian state.

He (Rowe) would have us believe that the Arabs were the belligerents in the six-day war, but the opposite is true as can be borne out by the many interviewed such as that published in Le Monde on February 28^th, 1968 when Israeli Chief of Staff Rabin said: ‘I do not believe that Nasser wanted war. The two divisions which he sent into Sinai on  May 14^th would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it.’

Rowe should think about the atrocities of Israel today and admit that it is not the Palestinians that violates the Geneva Convention by imposing collective punishment on entire towns, villages, and camps, for the acts of a few, and even goes as far as demolishing entire villages while people are still in their homes?

It is not Palestinians that routinely kills young Palestinian children for no reason other than throwing stones at armoured vehicles, bulldozers, or tanks but Israel?

It is not Palestine that created millions of refugees and refuses to allow them to return to their homes, farms and businesses but Israel?

It is not Palestinians who are in defiance of the 4th Geneva Conventions and 69 United Nations Security Council resolutions while protected from 29 more by US vetoes?

It is not Palestinians or any other Arab ME country that has nuclear weapons of mass destruction and refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty or bars international inspections?

It is Israel and its refusal to allow those under its illegal occupation that refused their right to self-determination, justice and an end to land theft for settlement by Jewish only immigrants that prevents peace.

Bob Storey,

Skibbereen.