Sir, - The poet Mahmoud Darwish (The Irish Times, April 4th) claims that Jews dispossessed Arabs in setting up their state and that Palestinians' grievances are the reason for the current conflict.
The British set up an agency to deal with Arab complaints on the first issue but received few claims (six in 1936). The Hope Simpson Report of 1930 and the 1937 Peel Commission Hearings, in fact, proved massive illegal Arab immigration into areas set apart as a Jewish homeland. Despite M. Darwish's reported experience of 1948, the main reason for the Palestinian refugees was Arab pressure rather than Israeli action. This was confirmed by Arab spokesman M. Ghoury of the Palestinian Higher Committee in the Beirut Telegraph of September 6th, 1948, a view echoed in the Jordanian daily Falastine: "The Arab states, having encouraged the Palestinian Arabs to leave their home temporarily to clear the way for Arab invasion armies, have failed in their promises to help these refugees".
The words of former UNRWA head R. Galloway in 1958 are still true today: "The Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem but want to keep it as an open sore as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders do not give a damn whether Arab refugees live or die."
The PLO was set up in 1964 to gain all Israel by an armed struggle while the West Bank was in Arab hands and has thwarted repeated Israeli attempts to improve the refugees' conditions. Mr Arafat has spent funds meant for them on his elite, arming a massively inflated "police force" while indocrtinating their children to hate the Jews and promoting the myth of the "Palestinian" state being theirs from time immemorial.
In reality, the majority of Arabs in West Palestine arrived during the first half of the 20th century to work there after Jewish restoration of the long-neglected land.
Arab leaders have hijacked the term "Palestinian" applied to Jewish inhabitants up to 1948 and employed it for their political aims. - Yours, etc.,
Dr Steve Harris, Broadford Crescent, Ballinteer, Dublin 16.