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May 2, 2003
Take steps for justice
Letters
Editor: A few clarifications and comments on your article ("In
search of love, law, peace," Bulletin cover, April 18)
and editorial ("Learn, think, then speak," Bulletin,
April 25) on Love, Law and Peace in Israel/Palestine:
Your wise editorial advises us to learn, think and then speak. Following
your recommendation, I have reviewed Israeli historian Benny Morris's
works, Rabbi Michael Lerner's Healing Israel/Palestine, recent
newspaper articles and various U.S. university-based and UN Web
sources. I've learnt, thought and am now speaking, as you advised.
The main message is that organized Palestinian groups, including
the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and others, as well as organized
Israeli groups, including the Israeli government, have been behaving
illegally and criminally for a long time. This began before 1947
with attacks on civilians by both sides. It continued during the
1948 war with expulsions and attacks on civilians and prisoners
of war. After 1967, Israel illegally has been establishing civilian
settlements in West Bank and Gaza, and there have been many organized
killings against Israeli civilians by the Palestinian groups. Recently,
Israel has practised collective punishment, illegal home demolitions,
ongoing curfews and assassinations of terrorist suspects and their
associates. Palestinian groups have bombed civilians and allowed
execution of untried Palestinians suspected of helping Israel.
Thinking about this leads me, and I think it should lead anyone,
to the conclusion that both sides must acknowledge their illegal
wrongdoings and make a heartfelt acknowledgment of the rights of
all people in Israel/Palestine to fundamental needs. I recommend
return to the 1967 boundaries with small negotiated or arbitrated
changes, yet with respective access to holy sites in Jerusalem for
both sides, compensated return of Israeli settlers to Israel proper
and a serious, yet practical, resolution of the Palestinian refugee
problem.
A few corrections of errors in your coverage. The article says that
the talk was about Israel and "what Angel referred to as Palestine."
My references were to "Israel/Palestine" and the idea
was precisely to allow for neutrality of language, so that discussion
of proper ownership in the region, particularly, the West Bank and
Gaza, is determined by the evidence.
In listing the crimes committed by both Israeli and Palestinian
groups, I am reported as having included "the expulsion of
Arabs from Israel, and Jews from Arab countries in 1948." To
be accurate, my remarks about 1948 were about the expulsion or killing
of enemy civilians by the Jewish forces and by the Arab armies in
Israel/Palestine. The Israeli expulsions of Arabs included expulsion
of Arabs from their villages in land outside the 1947 partition
for Israel. There is clear evidence, presented by Israeli historians,
that in the 1948 war, Arab forces massacred Jewish civilians and
also that the Jewish forces to a greater extent massacred Palestinian
civilians and prisoners of war.
Several times I have been asked for details on the international
law by which Israel's establishments of settlements in the West
Bank and Gaza after 1967 are illegal. A basic law is the Geneva
Conventions, IV, of 1949, Article 49, which states that an occupying
power cannot transfer its own civilians into occupied land. Israel
recognizes the Geneva Conventions. By all ordinary standards of
interpretation, the West Bank and Gaza have been occupied by Israel
from 1967 to 1993 and onward, too.
For more details about the above, please contact me. Tikkun.org
has useful materials, as well.
Leonard Angel
Vancouver
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