As the World’s Focus Now Turns to Israel, Both Sides Should Bend

Re “Sharon Talks of Parting With Some Settlements,” April 14: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s suggestion that “some settlements” on the occupied West Bank may be abandoned is the first of many accommodations we can expect from the prime minister as President Bush responds to a world enraged by the knee-jerk mauling of Iraq over that government’s flouting of U.N. disarmament resolutions. Our nation’s casual attitude about Israel’s disregard for U.N. Resolution 242, which says that Israel should vacate land occupied during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, has been a sore point among the Arab and Muslim nations and most of our “sometime” European allies for more than three decades.

Sharon apparently anticipates that an enraged world community will now demand that Bush do what no U.S. administration has seriously attempted in 50 years: rein in Israel’s Palestine land grab and its virtual banishment or enslavement of the non-Jewish Semites who have lived there for centuries. We hope Sharon’s statement that the Iraq war “brings with it a prospect for great changes” in the Middle East signals a genuine tenderizing of the tough Israeli right-wing approach to problems with its neighbors. If so, it should stimulate a similar spirit of moderation among Palestinians still supporting Yasser Arafat, and among Arabs generally.

Paul Harder

Long Beach

*

The ongoing use of the Palestinians as a collective Arab cause is interesting, given the facts. Many people have noticed and remarked on the gap between (most of) the Arab nations’ official condemnation of Bush’s war in Iraq and their offers of ground access to U.S. troops, overflight rights, etc. What fewer people seem to know is that Palestinians are oppressed not only by Israel in the West Bank and Gaza but also in many of the Arab countries in which they live.

In Lebanon, where I recently spent 10 weeks shooting a film on the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre, Palestinians do not have anywhere near full legal rights, and most live in appalling conditions in ghastly concrete ghettos called “camps.” As some may recall, the Sabra and Shatila massacre in Lebanon was facilitated largely by Israel under Sharon, but the actual slaughter was carried out by Lebanese Arabs. But it is perfectly emblematic of the endlessly repeated distortion and simplification of Middle Eastern reality that a huge sign hanging over the mass grave at the concrete slum in Beirut states: “Here lie the victims of the Zionist enemy.” Any program or vision for peace and stability in the region would be well advised to note the facts, in addition to the accepted construction of the facts.

Nina Menkes

Venice