Madam, – Dr Hikmat Ajjuri, the Palestinian Delegate-General, shows (November 2nd) a selective memory of the 1990s in claiming that Israel “never respected” the agreements reached between Israel and the Palestinians under the Oslo Accords. In blaming Israel for the failure to establish a Palestinian state he forgets that in 2000-01 at Camp David and Taba the then Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, made an extremely generous proposal for the sake of peace, offering the Palestinians most of the West Bank plus the Gaza Strip as a Palestinian state. Mr Arafat refused and precipitated the Second Intifada. It was this refusal that caused President Clinton to blame Mr Arafat publicly for the failure of the peace summit.
In 2005 Israel evacuated Gaza for the sake of peace, only to see Gaza taken over by Hamas which accelerated its terrorist rocket attacks on southern Israel.
Dr Ajjuri also suggests Prime Minister Netanyahu has no interest in an agreement with the Palestinians. Yet in his historic speech at Bar-Ilan University on June 14th this year, Mr Netanyahu stated clearly the commitment of himself and his government to a two-state solution: “In my vision of peace, in this small land of ours, two peoples live freely, side by side, in amity and mutual respect. Each will have its own flag, its own national anthem, its own government. Neither will threaten the security or survival of the other.”
In pursuit of this two-state solution, Prime Minister Netanyahu has repeatedly called for peace talks without any preconditions, calls which have been rejected by the Palestinian Authority.
Dr Ajjuri also accuses Israel of operating an “apartheid” water policy, with fresh water reserved for Jewish settlers in the West Bank. This is completely false. Israelis and Palestinians alike drink fresh or desalinated water; water shortages in the Middle East mean that there is widespread reliance on desalinated water and this has absolutely nothing to do with race or nation. – Yours, etc,