Dennis Ross respondsThe corresponding letter by Farley Weiss ("Experts keep getting it wrong") states that Abu Mazen was the financier of Munich, a claim made up out of whole cloth.Did he write a Ph.D. thesis on the Holocaust? Yes, he did, and he raised questions about the numbers of those murdered in it. Ask him today and he will say that he regrets having done it, saying that it was a time of struggle with Israel, but that it was still a mistake to raise such questions. In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz he described the Holocaust as a crime against humanity and a crime against the Jewish people. Will I defend everything Abu Mazen has done in his life? No, I will not. Nor could I defend everything he has probably said at different points. But I do know that he is committed to living with Israel, and Israel, at some point, if it is to have peace, must have Palestinian partners for it. I believe strongly in peace, but not at any price. I believe that Israel can never fulfill its promise without peace, but it will have to have a partner for that. The vast majority of Israelis crave peace. They want to explore possible opportunities - not exclude them. The writer charges me with constantly pressuring the Israelis to do what they did not want to do. Interestingly, it was Israeli governments - Labor and Likud - that chose to recognize the Palestinian Liberation Organization and work with Yasser Arafat. They were never forced to do so by the United States. Most Israelis involved in the peace process would describe my efforts as designed to find the way to overcome the gaps between the two sides - in a way that reflected what each needed. One thing is for sure: I never short-changed Israeli security needs, recognizing that there could be no peace without that. I won't apologize for efforts to promote peace - nor for efforts that probably prevented a great deal of bloodshed in the past. As for learning the lessons of the past, there can be no hope for the future if we do not understand what happened in the past and why it happened. The writer would do well to learn truths, not half-truths. Dennis Ross, director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is a former U.S. envoy to the Middle East. |
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