Sir, - Edward Said's article (The Irish Times, August 8th) clearly demonstrates Israel's difficulty in negotiating with Palestinians. Prof Said himself decries those Palestinians who have given up the struggle in favour of the fleshpots of Amman, London and New York. In the absence of people who have got out, Israel is left to deal with "the occupants of VIP cars, with their bodyguards, their cellular phones and a penchant for expensive shopping expeditions".
Prof Said chooses to overlook the fact that Palestinians could still be comfortably occupying Samaria and Judea, as they were until 1967 when Jordan foolishly joined the Arab attack on Israel and the Palestinians paid the price for it. Instead, he would have your readers link the demolition of houses to some Israeli plan to take over the land, "inch by inch, house by house". Your readers should know that houses, Jewish as well as Arab, are demolished when they have been put up illegally, without planning permission. Israel is a small country, one-third the area of Ireland, and it simply cannot have people erecting sub-standard, unplanned houses. If only the authorities in this country were as assiduous.
I am shocked, but perhaps not surprised, that you, Sir, should have chosen to use such a mendacious title for Prof Said's article; it is simply not true that Israelis are systematically stealing the homeland of Palestinians. Furthermore, were you trying to be deliberately provocative by including an irrelevant and poorly drawn cartoon from the Russian paper Krokodil? This sort of journalistic propaganda is not up to the usual standard of The Irish Times. - Yours, etc.,
D. Sowby,
Dublin 18.