Making peace

The final paragraph of “Zigzagging on the Arab peace initiative” (Analysis, June 1) is particularly significant and considerably overdue: “[Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s challenge in his new embrace of the Arab plan will not be to convince [Defense Minister Avigdor] Liberman. His challenge will be to convince the Arab League that changes need to be instituted in the plan, and so far they have not given any public indication of a willingness to do so.”

We need to recall that UN Resolution 242 specifically calls for Israel and its Arab neighbors “to achieve a peaceful and accepted settlement,” with absolutely no mention of the PLO. We need also to recall that it was the Arab League that helped create the PLO, the forerunner of today’s Palestinian Authority.

Martin Sherman, in “The political algorithms of the Arab-Israeli conflict” (Into the Fray, May 6), points to Israel’s need to be “viable both geographically and demographically.” For this, it cannot withdraw to indefensible borders. Indeed, following the Six Day War, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff laid out geographic parameters for secure borders that were coincidental with present-day Israeli thoughts.

Saudi Arabia could conceivably make available land for the creation of a Palestinian province. Money handed over to the PA for weaponry could more realistically be redirected for resettling the Palestinians. Moshe Arens, writing in

Haaretz in January 2014, points to the so-called two-state solution not being that all. If implemented as such, it would mean three Palestinian states – East Palestine (Jordan), West Palestine (Judea and Samaria), and South Palestine (the Gaza Strip). Having Arab neighbor states whose children have been raised on absolute hatred of Jews can never assure peace.