Palestine Liberation Organization spokesman Maen Rashid Areikat’s opinions are based on self-serving fictions (“Palestinian official explains where his people are coming from,” Dec. 29).

He forgets that Jews lived in Israel since biblical times. Israel is the Jewish homeland.

There is no historical or anthropological evidence for a Palestinian people until the 20th century. History describes a depopulated land with nearly empty villages. The mix of ethnicities who lived there were nomadic. Early European immigrants found willing sellers in absentee landlords from Damascus and Beirut, speculators with little connection to the place.

Tranquility was not shattered in 1948, as Areikat writes. He forgets the Arab pogroms and massacres of Jews, as in Hebron in 1929.

The two-state solution had been the plan since 1917, when it was stopped by Arab pressure on England, the region’s rulers after World War I. It was delayed again by World War II, until the UN’s 1948 mandate. But the Arabs would not accept it. They attacked and lost, resulting in Israel gaining more territory than in the UN plan.

Many Arabs became refugees, fleeing to neighboring countries. They were deliberately marginalized there. Why? The plight of the Palestinians is the primary wedge against Israel. If their brethren cared about them, they would have permitted them to integrate into their societies, instead of making them pawns in a global PR game.

Palestinians are unwilling to coexist. Recent PA magazine ads showed Palestine but not Israel. Schools teach all the land is theirs, as soon as they defeat the Jews. Martyrdom is a virtue and racism against Jews is institutionalized.

Israel wants peaceful coexistence, while the Arabs insist on all the land, refusing to recognize Israel. The cold peace brokered at Camp David in 1979 rewarded President Sadat of Egypt with assassination and Israel with terror and rocket attacks. Should Israel try it again?