On Jerusalem's Violence

To The Editors of The Crimson

Chuck Lane's "Losing Control" (April 15th) presents the recent violence in Jerusalem in a rather distorted context. The piece asserts that the deplorable attack on the Dome of the Rock Mosque--by a deranged Israeli reservist--is "a vivid example of the extremism fostered by the Israelis' uncompromising attitude."

Lane shows no connection, implicit or explicit, between the shooting spree--which Prime Minister Begin promptly and officially condemned--and government policy. The Begin government, of course, is the one that concluded the peace treaty with Egypt, and the one that is risking its political life by forcibly dislodging militant settlers from the Sinai in order to meet the terms of that treaty. These are hardly examples of extremism.

The term "uncompromising attitude" and its synonym "intransigence" often creep into the political vocabularies of those who find it easier to reduce the complex Arab-Israeli conflict to a simple issue of Israeli stubbornness.

The article is oblivious to the hostility Israel has faced from the Arab countries since her creation, even at times when the West Bank was not under her control. This suggests that the key to peace is not further Israeli concessions but the Arabs' coming to terms with Israel's existence.

Lane correctly notes that the occupation of the West Bank is a political and moral thorn in the side of Israel, but he does not give us ways it can be removed.

To whom should the West Bank be given? To the Jordanians, who occupied and annexed it in 1948, preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state? To the PLO, who publicly state that they will accept nothing short of all of Palestine?

These hard questions are deftly avoided. If Israel just surrenders the territories. Lane promises, she will be miraculously rewarded with the peace she has for so long sought.

When one recognizes that control of the West Bank is inextricably linked to the larger Arab-Israeli conflict, one realizes that the answer cannot lie in unilateral Israeli action, but in the Arabs' re-evaluation of their attitudes towards Israel. Jesse Fried   Co-chairman,   Harvard-Radcliffe Zionist Alliance