Arab/Israel commentaries
Sir: I really have been immeasurably depressed by your recent issue (19 September). Firstly, your leader-writer (could it have been your retiring editor?) should not have allowed his personal prejudice to so outweigh his sense of justice as to state: 'Since it is too late now to reverse the decision to allow the Jews of the diaspoin to re-create a national state at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, the only way forward must in the end involve the destruction and dispersal of the guerrilla movement.' I as- sure your readers that neither the original Bal- four Declaration nor the post-war United Na- tions Resolution gave the Jews the right to create a national state seriously prejudicial to the rights of the previously existing Arab popu- lation, as they have done.
Secondly, Peter Paterson in his 'Political Commentary' is sadly deluded in thinking and trying to persuade us that the Prime Minister has: `. . . accomplished what had to be done' following the recent hijackings. Let me tell your readers what the Prime Minister has in fact accomplished: Initially without charge and then on an irrele- vant one, he has imprisoned and interrogated one Palestinian Leila Khaled who had com- mitted no crime against Britain, in order to please Israel—whose killer he did not detain. By refusing to release this Palestinian he pre- cipitated our Boric vc-10 being hijacked and burned as well as two other airliners, at astronomical cost to our Lloyd's underwriters. His intransigence resulted in unnecessarily pro- longed suffering to hostage British women and children, until they were released by the Pale- stinian guerrillas voluntarily, and suffering plus continued great danger to the eight British host- ages remaining with the guerrillas, as well as to all British civilians resident in Jordan. It also helped to undermine King Hussein's reign in Jordan.
In short. the Prime Minister has accomplished great harm and so far no visible benefit to the Britishers whom it is his prior duty to protect. Once upon a time our Conservatives were Sympathetic to the Palestinian Arabs. and my depression arises from the realisation that your SPECTATOR is now using wrongly tinted lenses. Cledwyn Williams Alpenrose, 42 New Brighton Road. Emsworth, Hants
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