Dora McPhee (VIC) responds to Merv Morris’ letter in The Age 01Sep09 September 1, 2009
Merv Morris (Letters 1/9 see below) is playing with language to justify Israel’s colonisation of the remainder of Palestine – territories it took by force in the 1967 war. In stating that the West Bank was “rejected by the Palestinian Arabs in 1947” he is inferring that they rejected or somehow gave up all their rights to their homeland. This is twisted logic indeed. In fact the exact opposite is true. For a start the Palestinian Arab population was never given a say in the 1947 UN vote to partition Palestine but they rejected the PARTITION of their homeland outright because they were the majority population that owned 94 percent of the land at that time and it was, and still is, their birthright. Their inalienable right of return is reaffirmed in UN resolutions and in international law but has been denied them for the last six decades by Israel. And it is this injustice that needs to be addressed if we are ever to have closure on this subject.
Borders defined (The Age – 1 September 2009)
CRAIG Barrett ( Letters, 31/8) errs in his understanding of the 1967 UN resolution 242 relating to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Painstakingly crafted before its final adoption, it calls for Israel’s withdrawal from ”territories”, not ”the territories” it won in defending itself from Arab attack in the Six Day War.
The absence of the definite article in the resolution was no oversight but an acknowledgement by its formulators that Israel was indefensible within its pre-1967 borders and that territorial adjustments would be required.
The West Bank, rejected by the Palestinian Arabs in 1947 and 2000, is not ‘’somebody else’s occupied territory”. It remains contested land, the sovereignty of which must finally be decided by Arab- Israeli negotiations to end the conflict.
Merv Morris, East St Kilda
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