This letter appears in the Daily Telegraph, 26 August 2025
Sir
Mary Shields (Letters, August 25) says “more
and more land has been taken from the Palestinian people” compared with the
size of Israel when it was created in 1948. As Israel was created it was
attacked by Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. When the
fighting ended, Israel controlled some 78 per cent of the former Mandate
Palestine, compared with the 55 per cent
it had been allocated originally. This temporary situation was codified
in the 1949 armistice agreements with Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria.
Until the Six Day War of 1967, Jordan occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and
Egypt occupied Gaza. They could have created a sovereign state of
Palestine. Neither made any attempt to do so.
In 1967 Egypt, Jordan and Syria planned a joint military attack on Israel,
which Israel foiled. In doing so it ousted Egypt from the Sinai
Peninsula and the Gaza Strip, Jordan from the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and
Syria from the Golan Heights. Later, the Sinai Peninsula was returned to
Egypt following the Camp David Accords.
Under the Oslo Accords in 1993
and 1995, the administration of the West Bank was shared between the
Palestinian Authority and Israel as a temporary measure awaiting a final
agreement. That never came, as the Palestinian leadership rejected every
attempt to realise a two-state solution – and there were many, some offering
land swaps to compensate for obtrusive Israeli settlements.
The obvious conclusion is that
the Palestinian cause does not seek, and has never sought, a two-state
solution, but the elimination of the state of Israel.
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