By Akiva Kenny Segan, , Seattle
Josh Basson’s latest letter deserves congrats (“In need of democracy,” Feb. 25): He has made the strongest case possible against dozens of letters he authored over the past decade. He wrote forcefully and unceasingly in support of a rejectionist stance to negotiations with Palestinians (because of Palestinian terror, missile strikes from Gaza, and Palestinian refusal to accept Israeli statehood).
He wrote against land for peace, and recently urged Israel to not negotiate at all. He criticized Arafat and successors unrelentingly, including moderate Palestinians. He spoke of the need for strong military ops as the only way to address the conflict and has been a tireless local spokesperson of the same policies promulgated to Congress and the president by AIPAC, the ZOA, the ADL, and in Israel by every Israeli prime minister except for the assassinated Yitzhak Rabin.
Now that Mubarak’s brutal, corrupt and repressive regime has finally collapsed, Israel’s gross failure to have aggressively pushed to shut down 90 to 95 percent of West Bank settlements concurrent with a massive housing and infrastructure development for those who would have been displaced to new towns inside the Green Line is now going to hit Israel hard in the face.
Israel could yet aggressively push for a two-state solution and defuse outrage by millions of Arabs in adjacent countries. Save for Rabin, Israeli political leadership is not known for being visionary and farsighted: Israel will probably become more isolated and more of a pariah.
Re: Rabbi Jaron Matlow’s letter (“In need of education,” Feb. 25), he wrote: “With the creation of the state of Israel, it was supposed to be the Jewish homeland, with Jordan, the Hashemite kingdom, being a place for Arabs in Palestine; this has never worked as Jordan (along with Lebanon, Syria and Egypt) does not allow Palestinans entry.”
Oh? Fifty to 70 percent of Jordan’s population is Palestinian; the Palestinian population is between 2.4 and 3 million (the variance in numbers reflecting different demographic sources). The Palestinian population of Syria: 434,000; Egypt: 70,000. As of 2005, there were 405,000 Palestinians in Lebanon.