Monday 23 May 2011
Letters
Obama's speech was disappointing (Obama tells Arab dictators: change or go, 20 May); he is prepared to support a radical approach across the region but not in Israel-Palestine. Instead we have the 1967 borders "with mutually agreed swaps", which would reward Israel for its illegal settlement policy; a "non-militarised" Palestinian state, which would be at the mercy of the Israel Defence Forces; Israel as a "Jewish state", which would mean that we'd probably see population "transfer" to accompany the land swaps; and, of course, US commitment to Israel's security is "unshakeable".
letters illustration 2305 Illustration: Gary Kempston
These starting points will, inevitably, be whittled down during negotiations. And yet as he prepared to meet Binyamin Netanyahu, Obama could have picked up on a statement made by the Israeli prime minister and proposed something really radical as the starting point which would leave all parties with room to manoeuvre. In response to Mahmoud Abbas's New York Times op-ed last week, Netanyahu boasted about the "Jewish leadership" accepting the 1947 UN partition plan for Palestine; call his bluff, Obama, and suggest that that plan is a good place to begin discussions, including Jerusalem being run by an international body. Netanyahu may well agree that the 1967 borders suddenly look very tempting.
Ibrahim Hewitt
Senior editor, Middle East Monitor
• Barack Obama is all mouth and no trousers. Once again he says he favours a peace agreement between Palestinians and Israelis, and once again he does nothing whatsoever to bring it about.
Indeed, the White House specifically supported the Israeli action against Palestinian demonstrators on 15 May, in which 14 Palestinians were murdered by Israeli troops. You refer to the sanctimonious speech by Obama in Cairo two years ago. What happened afterwards? Zilch. What will happen after this latest self-satisfied sermon? Zilch. The Palestinians will be left to fend for themselves until the Arab spring really takes hold in their homeland.
Gerald Kaufman MP
Labour, Manchester Gorton
• There seems to be some confusion about how "explicitly and in public" past US presidents have called for a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine based on the pre-1967 borders (Obama and Netanyahu a long way apart over president's Middle East peace plans, 21 May). In fact, it was very explicitly and publicly the basis of the roadmap proposed by George W Bush in 2003 – even if his motives were to buy off some critics of his Iraq policy.
Rob Wall
Bedford
• Ian Black states (20 May) that "UN resolution 242 of 1967 calls for the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces 'from territories occupied in the recent conflict'" and that therefore "The absence of a definite article has sometimes been interpreted as suggesting that Israel could keep some of those territories". The only parties to give that interpretation are the Israeli government and the US. Moreover, the UN's other five official languages – French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic and Chinese, all of which have equal legal status with English – use the definite form. Overwhelming international and legal opinion is against the US-Israeli interpretation.
Andrea Teti
University of Aberdeen
• James Zogby (Comment, 19 May) is right to highlight President Obama's lack of substance on the Palestine-Israel issue. But the reality is that however genuine a US president might be in wanting to act as honest broker, the forces of bigotry and bias lined up behind Israel in the US are overwhelming. Of course the Palestinians know this only too well, and it is their bond with Arab neighbours who suddenly find themselves free of US-backed dictators that holds out real hope for a fair and just resolution to decades of struggle.
Graham Simmonds
London
• There is one simple way to get Israel to agree to President Obama's plan that its borders should be set at the 1967 boundaries: for the US to withdraw the cash that bankrolls the Israeli state. In the long term, returning to the 1967 borders would increase Israel's security and that of the Middle East as a whole.
Valerie Crews
Beckenham, Kent
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