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Coalition for Peace with Justice
Letter to Raleigh News & Observer [to CPWJ Letters page] [ to CPWJ home page] August 28, 2002Israeli curfews Thank you for printing Matthew Smith’s piece, “Israel's hopeless curfews”. The situation Mr. Smith describes for the vast majority of innocent Palestinians living in the Occupied West Bank is appalling. Ordinary towns have become a network of prisons truly wretched prisons at that, since prisoners in most civilized nations are given better access to food, sanitation and health care than are these Palestinians. As Mr. Smith points out, this has been totally unproductive as a means to end the terrorist bombings. Worse, it is counter-productive, breeding still more hate and violence. I believe that Israeli Prime Minister Sharon’s government can see what Matthew Smith sees, that its policy “squanders and avoids every opportunity for movement towards peace that appears”. Billions of American tax dollars given to the Israeli military budget have made that policy possible. We Americans need not only to understand Mr. Sharon’s strategy as a security failure. We need to question Mr. Sharon’s real objectives. And we need to consider our government’s - and our own - responsibility for underwriting an Israeli policy which seems to intend nothing less than ethnic cleansing. Phil Jacobson Raleigh |
