ROOT CAUSES, AGAIN

An Israeli reader e-mails about yesterday's post on Tony Blair's attempt to revive the peace process:

You say that the Arabs have a genuine grievance against Israel. What might that grievance be? That some of them lost their homes in a war that they started? I am a British Jew who came to live in Israel not because I think God gave us this piece of land - anyway I don't believe God exists - but for very pragmatic reasons: history has shown that the Jews have to have somewhere they can call their own, that will take them in when nowhere else will. It's our misfortune that the other people in this particular piece of land were Arabs who have a long history of nursing grudges and regarding Jews as inferior.

I actually moved to Israel after the Six Day War, and I can tell you that at that time the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza loved the prosperity that came to them as the Israelis flocked to East Jerusalem, Hebron and Gaza to shop and do business. But this situation didn't suit Arafat and his henchmen - no foreign donations of millions, no glory on the world stage as the champions of the downtrodden.

I strongly believe that if the Arabs had accepted the UN partition plan, nobody would have been driven from their home. So again, what exactly is the Arabs' "genuine grievance against Israel"? And why isn't Jordan - which was also carved out of British Mandate Palestine - enough for the Arabs?

A similar response here too:

I am a 50 year old American Jew who grew up in a Zionist environment, both at home and at Hebrew school. I was always told that the Arabs had a legitimate grievance, but Israel's existence was crucial for our survival. This was more or less the central premise of the Labour Zionist movement as I was taught.

There is nothing new in this. Over the years, I have supported several groups that were based on this idea. Unfortunately, it has all come to naught. There is nothing wrong, in theory, with addressing their genuine grievances, but that is not going to bring peace. In the view of the vast majority of Arabs Israel's existence itself is the grievance.