Jeff Halper is Such An ...

As Arlene Kushner shows:-

Clear & to the point

Sir, - Facts are facts, and Jeff Halper has his wrong in "Whose road map?" (November 7).

Says Halper: "President Bush (in his letter to Ariel Sharon) fatally but knowingly undermined UN Resolution 242, the very basis of the two-state solution since 1967... by nullifying the requirement that Israel return to the Green Line... so that a viable Palestinian state might emerge."

To begin with, Resolution 242 does not require Israel to return to the Green Line (essentially the 1949 armistice line). The resolution, with which its drafters struggled long and hard, calls for Israel to withdraw from "territories occupied in the recent conflict." It deliberately avoids reference to "the territories" or "all territories" because it was not the intention of the drafters that this would be required. For the other sense of the resolution is that every state in the area has the "right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries," and it was broadly recognized that the Green Line would not provide Israel with secure borders.

But it is with regard to what 242 does not say that Halper - by speaking of the requirement that Israel withdraw "so that a viable Palestinian state might emerge" - most seriously errs.

Resolution 242 addresses only the relationship between Israel and surrounding Arab states. There is no reference to either a "Palestinian people" or a "Palestinian state" - nor to direct negotiations. Such negotiations were anathema to the Arab states, which had declared three "Noes" - no recognition of Israel, no peace, no negotiations.

If there is no reference to the Palestinian people, to a Palestinian state, or to negotiations, clearly it cannot be said that this document envisioned a "two-state solution."

ARLENE KUSHNER
Jerusalem