Hopes for Palestine - Letter to the Editor

Letter 1 :           (tanslated from Danish)

To: Politiken

Dear Letter Editor                                           December 18, 2004

Sub: Hopes for Palestine - new openings for peace

I fully agree that after Arafat's death there is a long-awaited opportunity to seek peace between the Arabs and Israel. But strangely your writer wants to press Israel only to create a Palestinian state. Your analysis ignores facts and obvious lessons of the Oslo accord and the past 5 years.

Israel gave autonomy to Palestinian territories and Palestinians did not try to stop there terror, the other way round. To achieve peace between the Palestinians and Israel the West has to demand this time also from the Palestinians to deliver. Israel has to make actual steps for peace - and seems to be resolute to do so again, for example by the painful evacuation of forty-years-old Jewish settlements from Gaza in order to leave the whole Gaza strip to the Palestinians.

The Palestinians have to fulfill now their long-due obligation, they never sincerely tried, to make all possible efforts to stop terror. To stop bombarding Israeli civilians in the poor development town Sderot, from the territories where Palestinians received autonomy. Mahmoud Abbas must act bravely against terror organizations like Hamas and Fattah's armed thugs like the Martyrs' Brigades. If he does not act, he must be pressed also by The West. When the Palestinians will sincerely fight against their own terrorist wings, then there will be real hope for peace.

Respectfully yours,

Astrid Nielsen

Copenhagen

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