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Response to Hakim
I'm writing to respond to two assertions in Prof. Semya Hakim's April 15 letter to the (University) Chronicle. First, Prof. Hakim says that "Arafat and other Palestinians do want peace." Maybe so. However, since it's impossible to get into other people's heads and know exactly what motivates them, we can only infer what they want by looking at their behavior. Arafat's behavior for years suggests quite the contrary:
a. He has a history of talking peacefully in English to the West while encouraging jihad and violence in Arabic to Palestinians. In other words, he has been talking out of both sides of his mouth.
b. Ehud Barak put a peace offer on the table, but rather than negotiate, Arafat gave Israel the intefada instead.
c. Documents of all kinds have recently revealed that Arafat has been giving active support financially and otherwise to terrorist groups attacking Israel. The boatload of weaponry recently captured by the Israelis is only one example.
In other words, if Arafat wants peace, it's apparently a peace imposed by threat and terror, not peace through negotiation.
A second quarrel I have with Prof. Hakim's letter is its flagrant lack of context in describing the Israeli action on the West Bank. Prof. Hakim says nothing about why the action occurred, only that because of it "peace cannot be had." When Israeli women, children, the old and young, in streets and restaurants and at religious observances were blown to pieces by Palestinian suicide bombers, Israel had to act in defense, as we did in Afghanistan. Since Arafat obviously did nothing to stop these massacres of innocents in Israel, the Israelis finally acted to protect their lives. That innocent Palestinians along with the gunmen operating IN THEIR MIDST died is a result of Arafat's leadership and the Palestinians' refusal to negotiate in good faith.
Negotiation requires two parties with a willingness to compromise. The question today is, "Will the Palestinians at last decide to negotiate in good faith, or will they, as in the past half century, try to impose their will by wars and bombings.
Herbert Goodrich
Prof. Emeritus, SCSU
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