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Palestinian State Is Key to Peace
By Anthony Accetta, Great Barrington
The letter in The Voice, "A Palestinian State Would Be a Disaster for the World" [August 2] by Marvin Peyser, reflects a distorted and biased view of the history of the Palestinians in the "Holy Land." It has been recorded and is well documented that Arab tribes (from which Palestinians are descendants), along with Semitic ones, have occupied what is now Israel and Palestine for a number of millennium.
Contrary to what Mr. Peyser suggests, and along with what is suggested by the UN, EU, President Bush and various responsible Arab states, a Palestinian state is one of the keys to peace in the Middle East. What does Mr. Peyser suggest be done with the Palestinian people? Are they to be put in concentration camps? In a way they already are. Isolated by the Israeli government, cut off from other Arabs, their land and water taken from them, dispossessed, treated as sub-human by Jews, required to use different colored license plates on what few cars they have, to identify them as Arab. Is it any wonder that they are enraged by these apartheid conditions—separate and unequal?
The problem with the citizens of Israel is that they want peace, but entirely on their terms. They want to be masters over the Palestinians, but those proud and ancient people, desirous of freedom from tyranny and control, won't accept the yoke of slavery. And why should they? They want their own state.
In your letter, Mr. Peyser, you appear to be very concerned with land and justice. If that is the case, why don't you give your land in Torrington back to its "rightful" owners, the American Indians? They owned and occupied it less than 400 years ago, before it was stolen from them.
So you see, it doesn't matter who owned or occupied land 3,000 years ago, or 500, or 50. Wars and politics and situations change boundaries, through the ages. What matters is who is there now. The Palestinians are and have for so long been on the West Bank and Gaza, the future Palestinian state. Get used to it, Mr. Peyser, and live with it!
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