Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says he rejects the ceasefire offered by Hamas on the grounds that Hamas has not given up violence or accepted the terms of previous peace agreements (Israelis plan to build homes in occupied land Herald December 24).
Yet the Israeli military has not given up kidnapping Palestinians - including democratically elected MPs. Nor have they given up their attempt to starve the entire population of Gaza into overthrowing the Hamas government elected by Palestinians in 2006.
The "previous peace agreements" referred to are the Oslo Accords and Roadmap to Peace which the Israeli government has failed to abide by itself and which surrender any Palestinian "state" to continued Israeli military occupation, military law and Israeli settlement of the West Bank, which involves the continuing destruction of Palestinian homes. Arafat's patronage network agreed to this, and through corruption lived in luxury while their people suffered dire poverty. So Palestinians voted them out of office.
So before Israel's government will recognise a Palestinian state, it demands all Palestinian parties accept that there will never be a Palestinian state in reality, only in name; that Palestinians must remain under occupation, attack and siege; must quietly fade into exile in poverty in refugee camps in "the territories" or abroad; must become like nineteenth-century American Indians on their reservations, living without hope and massacred by a stronger military if they try to resist new encroachments by the colonists.
Then Palestinians are blamed again for the "lack of progress" in "the peace process". It used to be Fatah who we were told were irredeemable terrorists who couldn't be negotiated with; now it's Hamas. The fact is that Palestinians democratically elected a Fatah President and a Hamas Prime Minister. Until our governments accept that fact and stop trying to impose the Israeli charade so far of a "peace process" as "peace", there will be no peace and no justice.
Duncan McFarlane, Beanshields Farm, Braidwood, Carluke.
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