To the Editors:

I was not going to write a response to Demchick’s commentary because I thought it was ridiculous, but on further thought I realized that the article offended me too much not to respond.

Demchick first brings up the June 4 Aqaba Summit. I agree with him that there were some hopeful declarations, and Mr. Abbas announced the end of the intifada and the renunciation of violence while Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared his support for the creation of a “democratic Palestinian state at peace with Israel,” according to a BBC report. Demchick forgot to mention that Hamas declared a temporary truce with Israel, promising to cease all attacks, in hopes that these negotiations would produce real conditions that both peoples would welcome.

Sharon said that he would not be bound to such a truce. Making such a statement, publicly, politically is just good politics. Privately, however, the fact that Hamas, seen by many as a terrorist organization, recognized a potential for conflict resolution and was willing to promote the Aqaba proclamations, reveals to me some willingness to recognize Israel as a legitimate state and entity.

However, Sharon and his government did not feel the same hopes for the Aqaba resolutions, for two months later, August 8, two Hamas militants and an Israeli soldier were killed in an Israeli raid on a refugee camp in Nablus. Two Palestinians died in protests that followed. Four days later suicide attacks were carried out against a settlement in the West Bank.

As to his assertion about the wall, many believe, in Israel and abroad, that the reason why Israel wants to disengage from the Palestinian territories is because of their statisticians. That is, according to them, if migration, population growth and other factors remain the same, in less than 15 years there will be more non-Jews in Israel and in the territories than Jews. This would compromise a democratic Jewish state.

A wall, which cuts into population centers in the territories would cut off populations from each other and possibly decrease population growth in the Palestinian territories. Thus, dismantling settlements, disengaging from the Palestinian territories and its economy is all an effort to ensure that Israel remains a majority Jewish state.

Although Demchick confused the dates and the facts, this is not why I took offense. I took offense in that he seemed to classify an entire people as “vicious psychopathic suicide bombers” and as such asserted that because “some people are just wrong” their claim to a land or self-determination is null and void.

Discussing details and facts of conflict should be encouraged in debate and dialogue; however, accusations that people who support the Palestinian cause are “blind” and only know the justice of “groundless emotion” is to imply that there are no grounds for supporting this cause. Even the most ardent supporters of the Israeli state will agree that Palestinians have suffered injustices.
I would call myself a Palestinian ally; however, I would not argue that Israelis are land-grabbing colonizers or that they want to see the elimination and death of all Palestinians or Arabs. Instead, I would argue that the system in which Israelis live now is one where the state of Israel is able to accrue land and settle parts of its population in the Palestinian territories.

Similarly I would argue that the societal structures and the historical background of the U.S. create a judicial system that is racist, but I would not argue that Americans as a whole are necessarily racist.

–Lina Elbadawi
College junior