On 12 December 2008, the Independent published a letter on Palestine by Arab Media Watch member Riyad Tibi.

I do hope that while Howard Jacobson was travelling around the Holy Land recently he spared a thought for the 1.2 million Palestinians incarcerated by Israel in Gaza.

As he is making a documentary about Jesus, I'm sure he paid a visit to Bethlehem and saw the ghettoisation of the town and its encirclement by Israeli settlements. Perhaps he even had time to visit some Palestinian refugees and explain to them the "truth" that they had been expelled from their villages not by Israel but by an "ahistoric, naive sentimentalism" on their part?

As for the Mumbai outrages, I as a Palestinian neither accept nor see any linkage between these crimes and the just struggle of the Palestinian people.

Riyad Tibi

http://tinyurl.com/6bbyb7