Sir, - In his article-length letter of May 2nd, Sean Gannon lumps me together with "anti-Israeli activists". He is wrong. I am a pro-Palestinian activist who wishes the Israeli people well. I sincerely hope they will soon come to their senses and stop electing war criminals (or war heroes, which usually comes to the came thing) to lead them ever further from peace with their neighbours, with the rest of the world, and with themselves.
Mr Gannon accurately pinpoints my error in attributing UN Resolution 194 (on the Palestinian right of return) to the Security Council rather than the General Assembly: I can only offer a frank mea culpa. However, his conclusion that UNGA resolutions are "not part of international law" oversimplifies the matter. According to the UN "Compilation of International Human Rights Instruments", "even without binding legal effect, they may be seen as declaratory of broadly accepted principles within the international community". Further, the "inalienable right of return" of Palestinians, as of all other civilians displaced by war, is immutably enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a useful document that is unlikely to hang on the walls of too many Israeli politicians or generals.
Finally, UNGA Resolution 194 was effectively incorporated into Security Council Resolution 242, which calls "for a just settlement of the refugee question". Abba Eban's (untenable) assertion that "the Arab nations bore full responsibility for the plight of the refugees" should be complemented by the same ingenious statesman's aphorism that "propaganda is the art of persuading others of what you do not necessarily believe yourself".
The claim that Israel's conditional admission to the UN "was premised on its acceptance of" UNGA Resolution 194 has been asserted by, among others, the US legal expert Francis Boyle, advisor to the Palestinian peace negotiators (1991-93). Prof Boyle believes that UN Resolutions 181 and 194 provide the Palestinians with an instrument to press for Israel's suspension from the UN, there being precedents in the cases of apartheid South Africa (of which Israel was such a faithful supporter) and rump Yugoslavia. Mr Gannon's conclusion that "Israel's admission. . .was effected in spite of an almost outright rejection" of Resolution 194 is accurate, and suggests that the world body has been excessively lenient with Israel.
Mr Gannon recycles the old chestnut that UNSC Resolution 242 calls for "withdrawal. . .from territories occupied" and not "the territories occupied." My print-out of the resolution carries the French text alongside the English one, and the definite article is very definitely included. Either way, the argument is indeed "a mere semantic quibble", in Mr Gannon's phrase. May I recommend for his perusal a document by John McHugo of Edinburgh University (published by the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding in 2001) which deals decisively with these issues, concluding that "all such territories are intended", and that "the Israeli interpretation is inconsistent with the prohibition on the acquisition of territory by war" which is enunciated in the second "recital" of 242.
The assertion that "Israel was. . .in the final stages of negotiating these. . . 'boundaries' when the intifada was launched in the autumn of 2000" is unsubstantiated by any unbiased perusal of the record, such as it is. As for Robert Malley's criticism of the conduct of the Camp David summit, I believe that, if anything, he whitewashes his former boss, Bill Clinton, and Ehud Barak.
That Clinton "in June 2001 named Arafat as the reason for failure" has been dealt with by former UK Foreign Office special adviser David Clark (Guardian, April 10th, 2002): Clinton "needed a quick deal rather than a just deal. . .When this failed, Clinton vented his wrath at the Palestinian leader." Asserting that Shlomo Ben-Ami "laid full responsibility for the breakdown. . .with Chairman Arafat" is like triumphantly proclaiming that "Noonan blamed Ahern".
As for my "defective reasoning", it is not proven by throwing up a list of guerilla organisations and asking me "what I would call them". Given that the right to take up arms against oppression is enshrined in international law, each case must be decided on its own merits. Where a government is democratically elected and its police and armed forces act within the law, paramilitary actions against them are criminal. In the case of a dictatorship, or an elected government that acts illegally, and when police and armed forces act against the law (and such regimes are often installed by the US and maintained in evil running-order by Israel - Guatemala is Israel's most fervent supporter in the UN), then it may indeed be justifiable to take up arms, though never under any circumstances against civilians. (Without reservation, I condemns suicide bombings and assaults on illegal settlers).
Let us not forget what Prof Richard Falk, in a recent article in the US periodical The Nation (April 29th), calls "the regressive narrowing of the concept of terrorism to apply only to violence by non-state movements and organisations, thereby exempting state violence against civilians from the prohibition on terrorism."
If this self-serving exemption is lifted, then the state of Israel does indeed stand convicted of grievous state terrorism. - Yours, etc.,
RAYMOND DEANE,
Ireland Palestine
Solidarity Campaign,
Dane Street,
Dublin 2.