U.N. Unlikely to Find a Middle East Balance What is essential for Israeli-Palestinian peace is direct negotiation by both sides without preconditions. Two Letters
http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-n-unlikely-to-find-a-middle-east-balance-1485200009
The essential action required for the U.N. to achieve the long sought for amicable solution to the Israeli/Palestinian dispute isn’t to declare that Palestinian refugees from the 1947-49 war have no legal right to return to Israel (“The U.N. Can Find Balance in the Middle East” by Einat Wilf and Adi Schwartz, op-ed, Jan. 13). The five million refugees already have, unlike any other refugees in the world, a special U.N. agency sustaining them. If the Palestinian Authority’s demands are fully satisfied, there will neither be a Jewish state nor a democratic state.
What is essential are direct negotiations by both sides without preconditions. In Moscow, Fatah and Hamas officials are once more attempting to unify into a single Palestinian unit. But negotiations between the two opposing Palestinian groups in many previous attempts have failed. In Resolution 2334 the U.N. should have demanded free elections within Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem before any negotiations, to determine which party and leaders represent the majority of the electorate and are therefore qualified to negotiate—without preconditions—with democratic Israel. Not doing so confirms the bias of the U.N. toward Israel, noted in U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power’s speech before justifying the U.S. abstention vote. When will the U.N. stop treating Israel like a banana republic?
Bertrand Horwitz
Asheville, N.C.
The writers state: Security Council “Resolution 2334 forcefully reasserted the 1949 Armistice line . . . which separates the West Bank from the state of Israel.”
This is the reverse of the truth. By attempting to define the border between Israel and Palestinian territory, the resolution directly contradicted the armistice agreement, which states: “The Armistice Demarcation Line is not to be construed in any sense as a political or territorial boundary, and is delineated without prejudice to rights, claims and positions of either Party to the Armistice as regards ultimate settlement of the Palestine question.” It thus leaves Israeli claims to that area intact until an agreement is reached.
Stanley Shapiro
Teaneck, N.J.
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