Hope and Possibility in the Middle East

We are foolish to believe that Yasser Arafat has any say over the Palestinian suicide bombers. It is the seething hatred of the Jewish people and their way of life that is in the hearts of most Palestinians. After Arafat shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin of Israel, the bombers and the assassins went on because they do not want peace. What they want is only for Israel to be destroyed.

If we could only move Israel to somewhere in the United States. If they would only be willing to do so it would be God’s greatest miracle on Earth.

Charles J. Thomas

North Hollywood

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If Arafat cannot stop the slaughter, what is there for the state of Israel to negotiate?

If he can but will not, can he be trusted in any negotiation? Should the Israeli government try to deal with someone else among the Palestinians?

Arthur Yuwiler

Woodland Hills

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Re “Hope Amid the Wreckage,” editorial, March 21: Your editorial on the “hope” that the frightful toll of death and destruction on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict makes a negotiated peace a possibility is most welcome. It will be possible if Saudi Arabia, the United States and the United Nations remain committed to a truce that time and new leadership from today’s younger generation can bring about.

For Israel, security rests in keeping the Judean Hills within the “land for peace” transfers necessary to make the Palestinian Arabs’ dream of independence a reality.

New leadership must educate the young in the benefits of people living in harmony--and the fact that such a hope can be found in the holy writings of both peoples.

The Arabs must also shut down the refugee hovels from the past 50 years and build fresh-start homes in the land they will hold in the West Bank and Gaza.

Together, religious ideals must encompass the democratic ideals of self-government and relationships between governments if peace is to hold, and the economy for both peoples must rise to a level where hungry stomachs are fed and hate cannot fester.

Hyman H. Haves

Pacific Palisades

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So once again the Israelis ceased and the Palestinians continue to fire; terrorists have murdered a dozen Israeli civilians in the past two days and wounded over a hundred others.

When will the world community finally realize that maybe a “peace process” can’t begin until all the terrorists are dead or in jail, the Palestinians stop teaching hatred of Jews and a new leadership has replaced Arafat’s terrorist dictatorship?

David Schechter

Los Angeles

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After 35 years of Israeli “occupation” and the combined denial by both the United States and Israel of human rights violations against Palestinian Arabs, the conditions for “terrorism” remain intact and are the primary elements impeding the peace process.

Until the conditions that Palestinians are forced to live under are changed and Israel is forced to comply with the fourth Geneva Convention--under international law Israel cannot “annex” Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem--there will be no peace.

When the ancient God claims of old Israel are advanced for land ownership and are used to supersede international law and United Nations intervention, then the Palestinians have every right to seek whatever military protections are available to resist being forced under “Jewish” law.

The United States has not remained impartial and continues to fund a diplomatic position that stands in the way of peace and has become impotent.

When policy considerations change that reflect an acknowledgment of Israeli bias, only then will a true peace be obtainable that the Palestinians can adhere to.

David N. Seaman

Los Angeles