I REFER to the tribute to the state of Israel on the occasion of its 60th anniversary ('Israel bloodied but unbowed at 60', May 4) It was a welcome yet somehow grudging piece which, with customary political correctness and of course ever-conscious of the 'elephant in the room', tried to balance the success of Israelis against the conditions facing Palestinians, particularly in Gaza.
The report failed to acknowledge, however, that in addition to the Arab refugees who fled Gaza, Judea and Samaria in the late 1940s, 600,000 Jews ended up in refugee camps in Israel after expulsion from countries across the Middle East and North Afri
ca following the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel and both during and after the war of independence.
Of course, there is a longing for peace between Israel and the nascent Palestinian state but this won't happen until there is an Arab leadership – anywhere – brave enough and strong enough to revise the Arab analysis of history and to recognise that there is no historic injustice in the existence of a Jewish state. The Jewish people, no matter their numbers, from biblical times to Roman times, in 1048 or 1548, in 1848 or 1948, have been closely linked with the region. To this day, the Palestinian school curriculum and Palestinian schoolbooks deny this fact.
As for Hamas-led Gaza, the poverty and social regression that has gripped that sad entity are precisely the conditions craved and created by Hamas since the 1980s. These are the very conditions required for their grey, totalitarian vision of a greater Palestine.
(Dr) Graeme D Eddie, Dunbar The full article contains 276 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
