Sent: Monday, June 02, 2003 2:25 PM

Subject: How about international law ?

In your editorial [ "Along the hard road to Mideast peace[1]" June 2}, you describe well the tragic manifestations of this bitter conflict. You,then, proceed to propose a solution along the Barak and Clinton schemes, which fall very short of the minimal requirements of international law, let alone those of the long oppressed and dispossessed Palestinian people. Israel stands in illegal occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, for 36 years in defiance of international law and repeated Security Council resolutions.

In dismissing the Palestinian refugees right of return, you are legitimising ethnic cleansing and denying these refugees their inalienable right of return to their homes, as defined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and repeated UN resolutions.

To secure peace and security for Israelis, Palestinians and the entire area of the Middle East, let alone the world at large, it is imperative that there is complete Israeli withdrawal from the illegally occupied territories, dismantlement of all Israeli settlements, which are all illegal, and allowing the refugees the rght of choice to return to their homes or accept compensation, as stipulated in UN resolutions.

Evidently General Montgomery understood the situation in Palestine well, as did President Franklin Roosevelt, who stated on March 5, 1945: " A Zionist state in Palestine can only be installed and maintained by force, and we should not be a party to it."