To the editor:

Peter Beinart writes how he knew, as a young adult, "Israel was wrong to deny Palestinians in the West Bank citizenship, due process, free movement and the right to vote in the country in which they lived."

At that time, prior to the disastrous Oslo experiment, the Arabs living in the disputed territories did have free movement and had more rights than Arabs anywhere else in the Middle East other than those living as citizens of Israel.

Today, they do have the right to vote for their own government; it's just that their government - or governments, since they now have two, one in Gaza and one in Areas A and B of Judea and Samaria - aren't interested in holding elections. Those governments have also taken away so many of the rights they had when those areas were administered by Israel, while the repeated waves of terror encouraged and often organized by their governments have forced Israel to restrict movement, not within the Arab-governed areas, but in the areas where Israeli Jews live.

The Palestinian Arabs can still have their own state - or states - whenever they put a higher priority on their own welfare than on destroying the Jewish homeland.

Sincerely,

Alan Stein