Simplistic thinking

Eyal Ben-Reuven’s thinking (“Pursuit of peace is the true key to Israel’s security,” Comment & Features, May 4) is disturbingly simplistic.

War is the worst thing, he says. Well, yes. And so Israel must do all possible to avoid it. Again, yes. But I seriously challenge his notion that Israel will “avoid war” by “pursuing peace with the Palestinians.”

Not an iota of evidence exists for genuinely peaceful intentions on the part of the Palestinian Authority. The messages of the PA leadership to its own people are hateful incitement. The official PA maps show “Palestine” from the river to the sea, with Israel erased. What is more, the PA is weak. Without support from the IDF, it would quickly be overtaken by Hamas or Islamists out of Jordan. Imagine these radicals controlling the highlands of Samaria!

Israel will avoid war by remaining strong and refusing to bow to dangerous notions of what we should do to show that we are willing to align ourselves with the world’s expectations.

Ben-Reuven is so quick to disparage the “settlement movement,” but in truth, it speaks for the rights – legal, historical and moral – of the Jewish people to the land.

ARLENE KUSHNER Jerusalem The writer is co-chair of the Legal Grounds Campaign, a group promoting Israel’s rights in Judea and Samaria.

Nabil Sha’ath, a senior adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, recently told Israel Radio that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s demand for Abbas to stop paying terrorists and their families a monthly stipend was “ludicrous” and “designed to destroy any chance for a peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.”

I assume Sha’ath meant that stopping the terrorists’ money might take away their incentive to murder Israelis, thereby making it more difficult for Abbas and his thugs to look forward to a time in their twisted minds when they can destroy Israel.

If Netanyahu still insists that the only solution is two states, with Abbas as his negotiating partner, and if he continues to make concessions to the terrorists, for example by refusing to build homes for the Jewish people, preferring instead to throw them out of their homes, it is difficult to take seriously that he has embarked on a campaign to end payments by the PA to terrorists, or for that matter any campaign against PA incitement and terror.

We really must take back the narrative and simply say over and over that this is the Jewish land for the Jewish people, and that it has never belonged and will never belong to anyone else.

YENTEL JACOBS Netanya