Readers' corner
Right way
Sir-- Hamas is correct ('Hamas throws a hardball', Al-Ahram Weekly 2-8 March). Palestine's leaders like Arafat recognised Israel for years but Israel has never recognised Palestine's right to exist and has had the US bully the UN into not allowing the entry of Palestine into the UN as a full member state with voting rights. Israel is an illegitimate state unilaterally founded without the consent of the majority non-Jewish population in Palestine. Purging Palestinian non-Jews by Israel and importing European and American Jews while denying the international right to return to the ethnically cleansed Palestinians created a Jewish majority. Invasions and occupations of lands of all its neighbours makes Israel the pariah in the Middle East. The US supporting Israel makes Americans complicit unless we as citizens do what we can to resist the abuse of Palestinians and others by rallying together to demand of our country and the UN to bring justice to the Palestinians and implement the creation of their state on the 45 per cent of land of original Palestine as promised in 1948 and bring all the refugees home to resume their lives in their homeland.
Kathleen Wang
California
USA
Who said?
Sir-- Khaled Amayreh again strikes... "Hamas has been arguing loudly -- and convincingly -- of late that it is wrong to demand that the Palestinians recognise Israel while not demanding that Israel recognise Palestine, i.e. a Palestinian state within the internationally recognised 1967 borders. Hamas is also asking the international community to pressure Israel to define its physical borders before considering the issue of recognition."
Exactly what international authority has identified the borders in this conflict?
Kerry Winn
Henderson
USA
Status quo
Sir-- The article from Khaled Amayreh is perfect, clearly demonstrating the Israel negation of a Palestinian state. Nothing has changed from the first Zionist settlement. I hope the UN can vindicate itself with the Palestinian people.
Juana Beehresn
Ottawa
Canada
A suggestion
Sir-- What if Palestine gave a pre-emptive recognition of an Israeli presence inside its original or 1967 borders? A recognition of Jewish legitimate interest in their ancient land, granted by the Palestinians, even under Palestinian protection, contingent upon certain actions by Israel, possibly with new legal definitions of ownership and sovereignty.
Helen Rosen
Seattle
USA
Racism DNA
Sir-- As the title suggests ('Pressuring Hamas', Al-Ahram Weekly 2-8 March) pressure should be placed on Israel. In January the Israeli Knesset voted to ethnically cleanse 40,000 Arabs-Israeli citizens living in "unrecognised" villages in Negev, because Shimon Peres and others called for the "Judaising" of this region which has been home to Bedouins for a thousand plus years. How can ethnic cleansing be legal in a democracy?
In 1948 Israel created the first of its Absentee Property laws which allowed them to seize land, property and bank accounts of Arabs absent for as little as one day (and they drove them off at gunpoint). In 1965 the Israeli government passed the National Planning and Building Law. Arab-Israeli villages became "unrecognised villages" which effectively made these communities illegal. Though the indigenous people of the region continued to live on their traditional lands, Israel rarely provided services and made it illegal for private agencies to do so. As a consequence, residents in these villages were denied running water, electricity, sewage treatment facilities, schools, and health centres.
What is at the heart of the so-called Arab-Israeli conflict is found in the Basic Laws of Israel. They imprint within the hearts and minds of Israelis the DNA of racism.
Genevieve Fraser
Massachusetts
USA
Falling into the trap
Sir-- In 'Please smile while under the boot' ( Al-Ahram Weekly 2-8 March) Mulham Assir makes more mistakes than your 300-word limit allows me to discuss. One of the most egregious, however, is this one: "the cartoons had been commissioned with what seems to be a deliberate intent to provoke," by the enemies of Islam in the West, Assir says. True enough. And yet he manages to slide towards the conclusion that the right thing to do here is exactly what the enemies of Islam would like you to do: be provoked. In due course, he dutifully passes over a range of inconvenient facts, such as that it is not only Zionists who have noticed terrorist organisations promise posthumous virgins to young martyrs. The martyrs have noticed too, which is why their martyrdom posters often take the guise of wedding announcements.
What is most deeply wrong with the piece is that it seems to posit that there is no such thing as a proper way to respond to an offence, that this is always and exclusively for the "offended" party to decide. The obvious problem with this view is that some people are much more easily offended than others and some of the offended have much greater recourse to violent response. Is it Assir's position, for example, that Sharon is within his rights to decide how "offended" he is by the existence of Palestinians and to determine for himself what is the appropriate way to handle the "offence?"
Jeff Seamons
Louisiana
USA
UN in Darfur
Sir-- Commenting on 'Flurry but no action yet' ( Al-Ahram Weekly 2-8 March) as a Sudanese I support the deployment of UN peace-keepers in Darfur. Sudan's CPA already makes provisions for UN peace-keepers as monitors to be deployed in north, east and south Sudan. There are already Italian, Bangladeshi, Nepalese and Burmese blue helmets in Sudan, so why should UN peace-keepers in Darfur be violating Sudan's sovereignty whilst the other UN peace-keepers are not? The politicisation of the Darfur crisis by the Sudanese government and its regional allies is unethical in light of the continued lack of dignity in which the peoples of Darfur live. May UN peace-keeping troops be deployed in Darfur and may they be deployed as soon as possible.
Maalik Barshambu
New York
USA
Media martyr
Sir-- Atwar Bahjat will not be the last media martyr in Iraq ('Living murder', Al-Ahram Weekly 2-8 March). The ruthless terrorists have murdered press men and women, lawyers, judges, interpreters, social and welfare workers and numerous others. We are faced daily with headlines announcing the death of X number of Iraqis, but stories such as "Al-Arabiya journalists murdered" and "Holy shrine bombed", show that the desperation of the terrorists has reached such a point that they resort to silencing media workers. The killing machine of Osama Bin Laden, subcontracted to Al-Zarqawi, is working flat out. The aim of the two and their bloodthirsty lieutenants is to ignite a sectarian war in Iraq to halt its rebuilding and scupper the US project for spreading democracy.
Genuine resistance movements do not target civilians, mosques, churches or TV crews. These people are terrorists, pure and simple, and must be defeated.
No doubt the US has made mistakes in the handling of Iraq after the invasion, but there is no justification whatsoever for killing Iraqis and bombing of holy sites to punish the US. It is time the Arab and Muslim worlds stand up and speak up against these atrocities. Silence is not an option. In the meantime more brave people such as Atwar Bahjat will pay the ultimate price searching for the truth in Iraq.
Nehad Ismail
Surrey
UK
How to make water
Sir-- Could Muslims do something constructive about getting water? Run electricity through sea water and it will break down into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen can be pumped just like natural gas and when it is burned it will become water. Electricity can be produced from sunlight. It can be produced by the waves and tides of the ocean. It can be produced by wind. All of these things you have in abundance -- and the oil money to get it done. Put the end of a pipe 10 metres in the sea at Sidi Hunaysh and run it to Al-Qattarah where it can be 50 metres lower. Pump the air out and sea water will flow forever without doing anything else. Use that to generate electricity that will break the sea water into hydrogen and oxygen. Pump the hydrogen to the Tibesti Mountains and burn it. The result will be a river that will fill Lake Chad till it covers most of Chad and Niger, southern Algeria, northeast Mali and northern Nigeria. This will evaporate and fall as rain over north Africa making it like Texas or Kazakhstan. How soon? Depends on how much hydrogen you burn.
Allen Doudna
Nebraska
USA
Voice gone
Sir-- So sorry to hear about the death of Mohamed Sid-Ahmed. He stood out clearly on the editorial page and brought balance and insight to a conversation too often marred by abject dogmatism. He was an asset to the inter-civilisational dialogue as well as to the Al-Ahram Weekly. I am sorry for his family's loss and, simply as a reader of this newspaper, will miss his voice.
Mark Thomas
California
USA
If they had read
Sir-- Congratulations on your 15th birthday. The Al-Ahram Weekly has become an indispensable organ for alternative, rich thinking about the Middle East. Had the official US view been influenced by the many perceptive pieces in your paper, especially on Palestine and Iraq, that country's policy and the region itself would not have sunk into the deep pit they are in.
Sharif Elmusa
Washington DC
USA
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