Various correspondents have criticised my letter suggesting a refuge for Palestinians in the Sinai Desert — with the wider world first urgently building the world’s biggest refugee camp, and potentially then upgrading it to a new and pristine Gaza — as ridiculous and arrogant.
The United Nations demonstrates on a weekly basis that it is a “paper tiger”, flailing around impotently. It is likely Israel will suffer nothing more than verbal censure, and will soon have reduced Gaza to rubble. So how could the survivors expect to live there, even if Israel withdraws?
In a new Sinai-Gaza, access to refugees would be unhindered and the UN could put in a peacekeeping force based in Egypt — even if the refugee situation was subsequently declared to be ‘transitory”.
A suggested single state with all to have equal rights seems a great idea — if we lived in a perfect world and believed the present generations of Palestinians and Israelis could put aside all the hurt and desire for vengeance for what has been wrought upon them, by people who would also then become their forgiving brothers! That would be asking too much of even present-day humanity, let alone for peoples whose long history of enmity has literally been Biblical.
I look forward to reading the solutions put forward by your other correspondents, but I will flinch at their naivety if they put too much trust in the UN, international courts or even the present-day “enlightened” humanity.
