Moslem emotions
Sir: On my return from a holiday I am an)azed to see that your correspondent H. ?inner (21 April) has been busy rewriting the facts of history in a blatant attempt to Obscure the true origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict as sketched in my letter of 7 April. If Mr Pinner had done his homework a bit rtdore thoroughly (and a little less cockily) ue would have discovered, from any good cYclopaedia, that Mandatory Palestine did not include the territories east of the Jordan river, and that it was in fact only 1.0,425 square miles in area. The final ratifIction of the Mandates by the League of N. ations in 1922 included an article separating Palestine from Transjordan (as it then Was), so that the latter could become an autonomous emirate with a view to its Intore independence under the Hashemite ,uYnasty. This of course was duly achieved °Y 1946, and before the state of Israel was conceived by the UN Partition Plan. .Under this plan the one-third Jewish nnoority (most of whom were recent foreiMmigrants from the Arabs' point of le. w) were awarded just over 5,700 square rniles (about 57 per cent), while the two thirds Arab indigenous majority were awarded just over 4,300 square miles (about 43 per cent). No nation on earth would have agreed to 'set up their own state' under these grossly unfair arrangements, and of course the Arabs' unsuccessful resistance against this injustice netted Israel further territory to a total of about 8,000 square miles, which is actually a little more than the three-quarters of Mandatory Palestine which I mentioned in my letter. Now Israel holds all of former Palestine, and claims sovereignty over the West Bank of Jordan.
The PLO's non-recognition of Israel is an entirely mutual matter, as Israel has never recognised the Palestinians as a nation, any more than ex-Irgun terrorist Menachem Begin is prepared to talk to his opposite numbers in the PLO.
N. Si/kin 3 Abbotts Crescent,
Enfield, Middlesex
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