Edmund Sanders (“Pressure Rises for Israel to Offer Peace Plan,” News, April 21) got a number of things wrong, among them that Israel’s “right-wing parties [oppose ceding] land for peace.” Repeated public opinion polls show that, if ceding land would in fact bring peace, few in Israel, of any political persuasion, would oppose it. The problem is that not many Israelis think it would, and in fact, bitter experience–in Lebanon and Gaza–shows that ceding land is interpreted by the Arabs as weakness and only leads to increased aggressive violence on their part. Most Israelis would, in fact, like to end the vestiges of occupation in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria but doubt that it can be done safely.
However, the most glaring error in Sanders’ article is the map labeled “boundaries established in 1967.” None of the lines highlighted are boundaries and none was established in 1967. The Jordan River line is a partition line created by Britain in 1922, when it unilaterally separated Transjordan from the Palestine Mandate territory. The other highlighted lines, around the Gaza Strip and the so-called “West Bank,” were cease-fire lines drawn at the end of the war in 1949. These lines were nullified when Egypt and Jordan renewed hostilities against Israel in 1967, thus breaking the cease-fire. They have never been replaced by permanent boundaries, which would require the parties involved to negotiate a final peace settlement. This is something Israel has wanted to do all along and the Palestinian Arabs have never been willing to do.
— Michael Swirsky, Jerusalem
