Three Recent Unpublished Letters (Oh, Well)

Mr. Saeb Erekat, a negotiator attached to the Palestinian Authority, needs to hear four digits that define for him Israel's permanent borders: "One-nine-six-seven" (May 4). This is problematic. The 1947 borders, much more constricting for Israel, were rejected at that time by the Arab community of Palestine and until 1967 were never recognized. Worse, the terrorists of that time, first the fedayeen until 1956 and then the Fatah starting in 1965, gave expression to that refusal of boundaries by waging a 19-year campaign of bombing, shooting and pillaging.

If compromise is the way to peace, why cannot Erekat compromise and agree to a readjustment of Israel's future borders taking into consideration the technological advancement of weapons such as shoulder-to-air missiles that would wreak havoc with Israel's Ben-Gurion airport, for example, not to mention the Arab aggression that led to the outbreak of the 1967 war?

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Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter favors talking to Hamas terrorists and, after doing so during his trip to the Middle East, but not to Gaza where the terrorists actually reign, believes that "more official consultations with these outlawed leaders" would be beneficial to peace (April 28). Mr. Carter, however, will not talk to me.

I am a resident of a Jewish community in Samaria. In fact, Carter requested that my village be destroyed in 1978, the year it was reestablished on the site of the Jewish people's ancient tribal federation capital. I have extended to him over the years several invitations, timed to coincide with his visits to the Palestinian Authority, to observe the progress we have made since our founding. Carter chose to ignore this attempt at dialogue and made no effort to meet with any representative of our communities. That he insists on meetings with killers and persons, as he admits, who direct and commit despicable crimes against civilians, but avoids another crucial element of an eventual peace process, some 300,000 Jews in over 150 towns and villages, is true indicative of his moral blindness and a political bias.

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Robert Malley and Hussein Agha's article on a possible Israel-Arab peace arrangement ("Into the Lion's Den", May 1) asserts that the Palestinians rejected the 1947 UN partition plan "because at the time they formed a majority in and controlled most of Mandatory Palestine". That is a misleading statement.
The essence of partition was meant, as it had been back in 1937 when first promoted by the British as official policy, to separate territorially the Arab and Jewish communities. It was intended to resolve the violence that the Arabs initiated as early as 1920 and coninued in several waves in 1921, 1929 and in an especially murderous period between 1936-1939. Partition symbolized the British slide into a reneging on their obligations as outlined in the Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations decision of 1923 to promote a Jewish National Home, originally in an area on both sides of the Jordan River. Their treachery was accomplished in 1939 when, in a White Paper, which Lloyd George described as an act of perfidy and against which Winston Churchill voted, despite he being a minister in the government, it was declared "His Majesty's Government therefore now declare unequivocally that it is not part of their policy that Palestine should become a Jewish State". The closing of the gates to immigration doomed millions of Jews to the Hitlerarian Holocaust.

The Arabs rejected partition because they assumed they could roll back the previous twenty years. They did not want the Jews to live as a sovereign and politically independent entity anywhere in the area they called "Palestine", a Latin name for a supposedly Arab country which had never existed and was envisioned by Christian Arabs. Muslim Arabs had first insisted on the idea of a Greater Syria, a concept Bashir Assad currently supports.

Malley's proposals revive those feelings that Jewish rights and the past twenty years can be ignored and rolled back again.