Re: “Partner or not, we need to talk” (Letters, Oct.1), Akiva K. Segan writes, urging Israel to just keep talking whether they have a credible “partner for peace” or not.
What Segan and others fail to realize is that both Hamas and Fatah’s charters call for the destruction of Israel in its text. How can Israel talk peace with people who won’t recognize their right to exist and want to destroy Israel?
Israel has consistently tried to make peace with its neighbors to no avail. Remember when Israel negotiated with the avowed PLO terrorist leader Arafat, like Hamas, at Camp David in 2000? The agreement was broken when Arafat rejected outright the generous Camp David offer by Ehud Barak and waged war with the second intifada that resulted in the loss of hundreds of Israeli lives.
Israel has only a tiny sliver of land that is no bigger than the state of New Jersey. Any further land it cedes to the Palestinians will empower the terrorists and threaten its long term survival.
Blame for the displacement of the Palestinians in 1948 and their decades-long incarceration in refugee (“concentration”) camps must rest solely with the neighboring Arab states that encouraged them to leave when they waged an aggressive war to destroy Israel. The Arab states have refused to grant them citizenship even though they have plenty of land. Sadly, they have been used instead as political pawns and a charge on the U.N. and U.S. taxpayers.
Segan omits to mention the nearly 900,000 Jews that were driven out by Arab and Muslim states who confiscated their property when Israel became a sovereign state in 1948 with U.N. approval. That injustice has yet to be addressed.
In reality, the majority of Arabs are not prepared for peace but still prefer a Middle East free of Jews. The main obstacle to a real peace is Islamic ideology that refuses to recognize Israel’s right to live in its historical homeland.
No peace can be achieved without credible partners and without the authority to make it happen.