To read Mark Kenny’s analysis of Israel and Palestine (“Blind support for Israel unhelpful”, February 19), one would think the West Bank was a place where arrogant, lawless Israelis tormented and oppressed innocent Palestinians almost for sport, while steadily undermining the only real chance of peace: the two-state resolution. The good news is that reality is somewhat different. The bad news is that peace will still be difficult to achieve, just not for the reasons Kenny gives.
Israel captured the West Bank in a defensive war in 1967 and, when its offer to exchange land for peace was unequivocally rebuffed by the Arab League, began establishing settlements in the area. This was partly for the need for security, given the hostile intentions and actions of its neighbours, and partly to allow some Jews to live in places that had Jewish communities going back hundreds if not thousands of years, until the Jordanians ethnically cleansed them in 1948.
Read the article by Jamie Hyams and Colin Rubinstein in The Age.