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A Correction

Well-meaning people sometimes throw numbers around carelessly, which diminishes their argument. Such is the case with the article by Phil Heft in the Dec. 6 issue of Eat the State!. In "A Visit To Israel" he claimed that after the 1949 war for Israeli independence, the Palestinians were left with about 23 percent of the land allotted to them by the UN Mandate. Not so.

UN Resolution 181, passed by the UN on Nov. 29, 1947, partitioned the land west of the Jordan River roughly 50-50. The land east of the Jordan River, which was a part of Palestine from the time of Moses up to the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, had previously been handed over to the Arabs on Sept. 16, 1922 by the League of Nations. So two-thirds of "Palestine" was already allocated to a non-Jewish government before the 1947 Mandate.

Even the half of a third which was allocated to the Israelis in 1947 was contested by the Arab League. Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Arabs ganged up to eliminate the Israeli state altogether. The Israelis won, and took 50 percent more land than they had been given by the 1947 Mandate. That left the Palestinians with 50 percent of the mandate, not 23 percent.

The second major discrepancy in the article is the statement that "[t]he state of Israel ... is comparable to the I-5 corridor from the B.C. border to the California border." Hello? Geographically challenged? At its furthest extent, Israel is about 260 miles long by 55 miles wide. The distance from the B.C. border to the California border is more like 475 miles.

In 1967, Israel successfully beat back another combined offensive by Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq. In this war, Israel not only defeated vastly superior numbers, it seized the Golan Heights from Syria, the whole of the Palestinian territories, and all of Sinai. The Arabs attacked Israel in 1973 and were defeated once again. Finally, the Sinai was returned to Egypt when Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Menachem Begin of Israel signed the Camp David Peace Agreement in 1978. Both men won the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts. Jordan made a separate peace with Israel. Syria and Iraq never made peace. Iraq bombarded Israel with Scud missiles in the Gulf War even though the "mother of all battles" was south, not west.

I visited Israel in 1985. I explored the Syrian bunkers on the Golan Heights and peered through the gun slots from which Syrian soldiers shot at Israeli farmers on the kibbutz where I slept the night before. I've been in Israeli-occupied Lebanon and I took my early morning runs alone through East Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives. Then as now the Israelis practiced apartheid against their Palestinian neighbors who eventually launched the Intifada, raids followed bombings, and now the Israelis are building a wall of separation. A wall is needed but this wall is a stupid one. It gerrymanders in and out and around more illogically than congressional districts in Texas. It is an expensive enterprise in lieu of an actual peace treaty, but if the Israeli soldiers stay behind it, the wall in effect creates a Palestinian state where all the fulminations of US presidents and Arab leaders have failed.

Last month, the Bush Administration cobbled together a makeshift "summit conference" at Annapolis to demonstrate a modicum of attention to the problem. The Arabs and Israelis saw it as nothing more than a window-dressing political sham to make Bush look good. Nothing was accomplished and Bush doesn't look any better than he did before. For better or worse, the wall is made of sterner stuff and it may by default define the final line of demarcation between Israel and Palestine.

--Janice Van Cleve, Seattle