Letter published in Jewish News

Your editorial is one of a number of articles I have seen recently which give advice to the Palestinians on whom they should elect as President, a matter, of course, on which they will make up their own collective mind. It is however, your assertion that, should Mustafa Barghouti win or even receive a significant proportion of the vote, negotiations would automatically freeze again that I take exception to. What you say would imply that the Israeli government was using President Arafat as an excuse to avoid negotiations over the last several years, but what are the facts?

Certainly Barghouti is in jail having been convicted of murder, and, although he was tried by an Israeli military court and refused to defend himself because he did not recognise its jurisdiction, that is a very serious issue. On the other hand, if he did receive endorsement from the Palestinians and was thereby enabled to negotiate seriously with Israel, that would be a very positive development.

And what of Prime Minister Sharon? It is a fact that he has a history of aggressive violence over his long career, and that his own hands are very far from clean. This history ranges from his leadership of Unit 101 in the early 1950's, which carried out a number of murderously effective raids on Arab villages; through his brilliant Suez campaign of 1973; the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 which gave few benefits to Israel at the cost of huge civilian casualties and resulted in Sharon's resignation as Defense Minister because of his complicity in the massacre of several thousand civilians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon; to the reoccupation of Palestinian towns and villages during the current intifada using overwhelming military force and resulting in 3000 Palestinian deaths and almost 30,000 injured, mostly civilians, an action I would categorise as state terrorism.

The point of this listing is that it is hypocritical for the Israeli government to pass judgement on whom they are willing to negotiate with when the current Israeli Prime Minister has a record like this--and he isn't the only one. If justice and peace are ever to be achieved, both sides will have to put such judgements on one side, and work with the negotiators mandated by their own people in good faith. The progress achieved in Northern Ireland, unfinished as it is, shows what has to be done and what can be done.

Yours faithfully,

Dr Mike Barnes