For Mideast peace, Palestinians must be willing to negotiate

Dr Bryna Lewis, Port Elizabeth

I agree that the present situation in the West Bank is “untenable” and deplore Israel’s collective punishment and the demolition of houses of terrorists and their families. I am wholeheartedly for co-existence, for human rights and I endorse the “moderate, reasonable pro-peace” stance of the signatories of the letter.

However, I take issue with the label “occupied territories”. It cannot be unknown to such outstanding jurists as Mr Justice Dennis Davis and Professor David Bilchitz that this designation has been disproved by such legal luminaries as Professor Eugene Rostow, dean of Yale Law School, Eugene Kontorovich, Avi Bell and Edmund Levy (see five letters in the “International Jerusalem Post” of June 16, 2017).

A former assistant professor of history, Moshe Dann, explained the origin of the classification in an article some years ago in the same newspaper as follows:

Meeting secretly in the early 1970s in Geneva, the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) determined that Israel was in violation of the fourth Geneva Convention… All decisions and protocols of the ICRC in this matter are closed, even the identities of the people involved are secret… Without transparency or judicial ethics, ICRC rulings became “international law”.

As for negotiation, do the signatories know of any Palestinian negotiators willing to compromise for Israel’s security?

How many generous and genuine offers of peace have been made? Has the lesson of the total withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 not been learnt? Do the signatories not know Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”?

I look forward to reading Messrs Davis’s and Bilchitz’s reply.