The Editor:

The Guardian Weekly

 

June 11, 2001

 

Dear Editor:

 

David Quentzel's letter [June 7] is laden with fallacies and fabrications. The " most generous" offer by Barak, he refers to, was to create a fragmented Palestinians state composed of multiple "bantustans" lacking contiguity and remaining under Israeli control. The Palestinians are not asking for "generous concessions" from Israel, but merely compliance with international law and complete withdrawal from the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza, which have been under illegal occupation for 34 years, since 1967, in defiance of international law and repeated Security Council resolutions.

 

He states : " When a nation starts a war against another......." The 1967 war was not started by the Arabs or President Nasser, as Israeli apologists keep regurgitating. I will let Israel's leaders' own words tell the truth. Yitzhak Rabin, Chief of Staff of Israel's army at the time stated:" I do not think Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent to Sinai would not have been sufficient to launch an offensive war. He knew it and we knew it" {LE Monde, Feb. 28, 1968}. Menachem Begin, Cabinet Minister in 1967, and while Prime Minister, addressing Israel's National Defence College on Aug. 8, 1982, stated : " In June 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with our selves. We decided to attack him" { The New York Times, Aug. 21, 1982}.

 

Alas, there is a need for some honesty, instead of this continuing Zionist fabrication and rewriting of history.

 

Yours sincerely

 

[Dr.] Ismail Zayid