Dear Editor:

It might have been simpler and easier to give the Arab citizens of Israel the same full rights as citizens that the Jews have. But then the Jews of Israel would have to look the Arab in the eye and understand that it is not only their country but also the Arabs' country. Not merely as a sub-group or "minority" in the background at best or as a Fifth Column as worse, but as co-inhabitants of the land whose presence there make the Zionist ideologic "return" to the land less poetic and far more problematic. It would also have forced the ambiguity out of the Israeli-Arab conundrum. In such a hypothetical situation, the Arabs of Israel would be forced to choose between full rights in a democratic state or effemoral identity politics which would practically accomplish nothing.

Now the Jewish leadership of Israel will have a much greater problem and that is a Israeli-Arab intellegensia which is more and more identifying as Palestinian and is more and more identifying with the same sort of stagnant Arab Nationalist politics which has been dominating the political discourse of the Arab world to the detriment of the Arab people themselves. Since the Arabs of 1948 are considered in Israel to be a separate nation, isn't it logical for them to want to goven themselves as such and to take this concept to its logical and most extreme conclusion? Doesn't it make sense that if they are a national minority that they should have their own national institutions and politics? To be more dramatic, if the Arabs of Israel are forced to live in a ghetto and to be excluded from the mainstream of national life, then should they have their own legally-recognized community with its own self-governing communal institutions?

Sincerely yours, ARTH

Dear Editor:

I wish to congradulate Salon for going beyond the Americanist ideological parameters by publishing an article which states the truth: that the president's power is virtually unlimited and that the only true limit which Congress and the courts can place on it really depends on the president's own respect for these institutions.

The true flaw in this system is rooted in the ambiguity of these checks and balances as thay are loosely specified in the Constitution. The other problem is the gap between the scope of government power in 1787 and today. One serious flaw is that all the institutions of all of the branches of the government are all stretched far beyond what might be possibly expected of them 220 years ago.

Bush becoming president has been a disaster for our country. His ability to become president and then, after that, to force his policies upon the world without any sort of real check, is evidence not of the corruption of the system of governance in our country but rather the complete uselessness of our institutions in this day and age.

Sincerely yours,

Arthur C. Hurwitz

To the Editor:

Both Fatah and Hamas are resistance movements in their conception, ideology, and in their goals. Now, having been forced to operate as governing parties in the Gaza Strip, they have shown their neither of them groups is able to envision a future, or even a present, for the Palestinian People beyond fighting Israel.

In Gaza, both groups have revealed themselves to be more interested in their ideologies, and preserving the privileges of their members, rather than concerning themselves with the actual horrible living, and continuously deteriorating conditions of the Palestinian People under their rule. Their militias fight in the battlefield which are the civillian streets of Gaza.

Until the Palestinians in particular, and the Arabs as a whole develop some sort of liberal political culture, I'm afraid the situation will continue to deteriorate.

Yours sincerely, ARTH

To the Editor:

The Bush administration is struggling to apply the Viet Nam paradigm on Iraq. As it was done in Southeast Asia, they are imagining that the cause of the resistance is external, i.e. from the neighboring countries, and that if one expands the war, one will eventually be able to stop the resistance.

This paradigm is even less true in the Iraq situation than it was in Viet Nam as the Iraqi governent is Shia, with strong ties to Iran, and is also is, supposingly, the U.S. allies. The resistance in Iraq is primarily Sunni, with no connection whatsoever with Iran.

The bottom line is that they see the problems of Iraq as not being indiginous to the reality of that country and caused by some sort of external menace. Beyond that, they are making a lot of money from the private contracting of the war, the modern version of the midevil spoils system. Either way, the whole world in general, and the Middle East in particular, are heading for great trouble.

Sincerely yours,

Arthur C. Hurwitz