Who’s to blame for hot-beds of hatred?

Sir,
As a regular reader of the Cyprus Mail, I feel that the comment article by Bernard Wasserstein on August 17 (‘Can the wild men of the Middle East be tamed?’) in part presents a rather sanitised view of Israel’s responsibilities towards the non-Jewish Palestinians. I think that comment should contain a less sanitised view in order to add balance to the discussion.

In a speech to the Israelis on August 14, Mr. Sharon, Prime Minister of Israel, confessed that “changing reality” had compelled him to shift his position on relations with the Palestinians – “We cannot hold on to Gaza for ever,” he said.

”More than a million Palestinians live there, crowded in refugee camps, poverty and hot-beds of hatred with no hope on the horizon.”  He said he awaited the Palestinians’ response to the removal of the Jewish settlers from Gaza. He announced: “To an outstretched hand [from the Palestinians] we shall respond with an olive branch.”
And who, might we ask, is responsible for the Palestinians having to suffer the crowded squalor of refugee camps, poverty and hot-beds of hatred with no hope on the horizon? None other than Sharon and his fellow Zionist invaders, having stolen Palestinians’ land, devastated their livelihoods with resulting poverty, and created an environment of hopelessness and, understandably, hatred.

The reality that Sharon needs to respond to is the cruel tyranny and deprivation he and his Zionist fellow travellers have imposed on so many Palestinians for so long. He needs now to co-operate to facilitate the formation of a Palestinian state which is the minimum that justice requires.

So, after all the terrorism and suffering imposed on the Palestinian non-Jewish community – in order to effect the desired ethnic cleansing by the Zionist Jews – the developing demographic reality of the Palestinian non-Jewish community in Palestine progressively determines that Israel cannot create an exclusive Jewish state by continuing to illegally occupy the land acquired by its aggressive invasions.
D. S. Wingrove, Sevenoaks, Kent

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.