On the MSNBC “Hardball” show recently, House Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey stated bluntly “that the land of Israel belonged to the Jewish people, and if the Palestinians could not live side by side with the Jewish people they need to leave.” Israel has never said they wanted the Arabs to leave; on the contrary, at Camp David and then at Taba, not so long ago, Ehud Barak, then prime minister of Israel, offered Arafat and the Arabs, for the second time in 50 years, the opportunity to create a Palestinian state, which would be made of 95 percent of the West Bank and then all of Gaza with sovereignty over half of Jerusalem including the Temple Mount, and $30 billion in world economic aid. They refused.

So we would like to say a few words as a response to the May 21 letter, “Just solution needed,” by 20 faculty members of the University of Maine. Jews settled in Hebron until the Arab residents of that city in 1929 committed a massacre against them. They were continuous habitants, not occupiers, there for more than 3,000 years. The territories of Judea-Samaria-Gaza and the Old City of Jerusalem were part of the Jewish kingdom, as stated in our Torah throughout the biblical eras.

These territories are plainly mandated within our Bible as part of the land of Israel. Thousands of years ago, these lands were Jewish, and our rulers were King David, King Solomon and others. Can anyone name a “Palestinian Arab king” who ever ruled over a land of Palestine? No. Palestine was a name that King Herod decided people would call the Jews, just because he disliked having to hear the word Israel. So Israel has been called Palestine for more than 2,000 years.

The League of Nations in 1922 endorsed the Jewish people’s right to all of the Holy Land, on both sides of the Jordan River. (The Jordanian occupation of Judea-Samaria and Jerusalem, from 1949 to 1967, was then illegal, and was in any case in defiance of the United Nations declaration at that time.)

However, Israelis have always been willing to share everything, but in peace. They are willing to give up land and settlements unlike any other country in the world for a lasting peace and no more violence. If the people who are today called Palestinians wanted a state for themselves, which they should have(but not at the cost of lives – either of theirs, their children, or Jewish lives) and if they wanted peace, they could have had it 10 times over.

Even now, with all the violence and bloodshed on both sides, if the Arabs truly want peace today they can have it. The Israelis unequivocally want peace above all else.

This commentary was written by the following Bangor-area residents:

Deborah Marlowe, Cantor Ronald Marlowe, Pianist Rita Mastroni, journalist Joseph Myerov, composer Leo Parla, retired businessman Reba Epstein Parla, teacher Paul Shapero, M.D., physician Louise Small, Teacher William Small, Teacher