On West Bank, There’s Little Common Ground

As justification for driving more than 200,000 Jewish settlers from their homes in the West Bank, you falsely assert in the Oct. 27 editorial, “Making the Gaza Risk Pay Off,” that many nations believe the settlements to be illegal because they were built on land seized by Israel in the 1967 war, and that the land is needed for a functioning Palestinian nation.

Regardless of what they claim, these nations do not really believe that Jordan’s prior illegal seizure of this land in the 1948 war, which previously had been part of the land held as a home for Jews under a League of Nations’ mandate dating from 1922, made it Arab land in the first place.

Nor is there any reason why the settlement land is needed for a functioning Palestinian nation. Those are lame reasons for ethnically cleansing a quarter of a million Jews (half a million if we include settlers in East Jerusalem) from homes they built in good faith on vacant land.

Herbert Grossman

Silver Spring, Md.

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So the Gaza pullout means that Israel is easing up on the Palestinians, right? Wrong. In the first place, new settlement home-building, an influx of new settlers and construction of the apartheid wall, all in the West Bank, continue unabated. Second, a buffer zone has been cleared at the Gaza Strip Egyptian border through blowing up hundreds of Palestinian homes in Rafah. Israel’s intent is clear. Get all the Israelis out of the Gaza Strip. Shove all the West Bank Palestinians into the Gaza Strip -- meaning that 3.5 million Palestinians will be stuffed into a 5- by 20-mile area -- like so many cattle going to slaughter shoved into a freight car. Seal off all the borders of the Gaza Strip with Israeli soldiers -- that’s what this Gaza pullout is all about.

Jerrold Cohen

Seal Beach

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The Times points to the remaining settlements in the West Bank as a “major stumbling block to the peace process.” How about the decades of “official” Jew-hatred and incitement against Israelis by the Palestinian leadership, the indelible dedication to Israel’s destruction and documented support for the murderous actions of terrorists? Those, the real stumbling blocks to a peaceful solution, you constantly ignore.

The Israeli government should, as you say, “work with the Palestinians to let them cross into Israel for the jobs they need.” That’s certainly desirable, and good for both peoples. But work with whom? Would the Palestinians make any effort to stop terrorists from infiltrating Israel along with honest workers and blowing up innocent people?

Martin Zucker

Westlake Village