Mideast: Innocents’ Deaths, Refugees’ Rights

“Settlers Demand Reprisal After Brutal Slaying of Boys” (May 10), about the beating deaths of two Israeli teens in the West Bank, reported that Yasser Arafat “did not condemn the killings when asked about them.” Certainly Arafat could have taken what seems like a politically safe opportunity to denounce the killing of civilians, especially children. Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, he didn’t. As Americans, we do not have the luxury of such irresponsible reticence and inaction.

Under U.S. law, it is a federal crime to murder a U.S. national. Yaakov Mandell, only 13 years old, was a U.S. citizen. President Bush and Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft must respond promptly and with the full force of the law to ensure that those responsible for the brutal murder of the young American are brought to justice.

Jeffrey Hoschander

Stamford, Conn.

Your May 9 editorial makes the same critical mistake that the Mitchell report made in outlining a strategy to end the intifada. While the Palestinians consider the issues of settlement-building and full military withdrawal from the occupied territories to be critical to renewing the peace process, the refugee issue is even more central.

There are over 5 million Palestinian refugees, over 3 million of whom are registered with the U.N. They are denied their basic human rights to return to their homes and receive material compensation for their losses. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights resoundingly supports these rights. In conflicts from East Timor to Kosovo, in recent years, refugees have been granted the right to return, and both survivors and victims of the Nazi Holocaust have been granted their rights to compensation for their material losses. The precedent clearly exists for taking the moral and legal steps to go beyond the supposed clarity of the Mitchell report and truly achieve peace in the Middle East. It is up to Israel to acknowledge this and move forward.

Rabee Sahyoun

Beirut

“Sharon Rejects Settlement Curbs” (May 9) refers to “skirmishes in which Israeli forces this week killed a 4-month-old Palestinian girl.” While we are all appalled by the killing going on there, it is inevitable that many nonmilitants will suffer as long as the Palestinian gunmen are allowed to shoot at the Israeli patrols from the relative safety of high-density residential neighborhoods. We loudly criticized Saddam Hussein for placing his military installations in similar sites so we could not avoid civilian casualties if we struck at them.

I am saddened at the death of this baby, as I am by all the deaths on both sides, but let The Times report it as a senseless death that occurred during the fighting.

Hyman Brown

La Verne