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The article by my colleague Avi Shlaim on recent Israeli history is a selective account of facts and sources. He deprecates the election of Binyamin Netanyahu in 1996 but fails to explain that a campaign of serial bus bombs in the weeks before the poll convinced many Israelis that the Oslo accords were failing to bring them peace.

He accuses Israel of not going to the negotiating table: if so, what was Ehud Barak doing at Camp David in July 2000? On the Camp David meeting, he does not cite Dennis Ross, President Clinton's special envoy to the Middle East, who placed the responsibility for failure with the Palestinians and Arafat. He contends that Barak was inept in beginning peace negotiations with Syria rather than the Palestinians, although a treaty with a powerful enemy would have given the Israeli electorate greater confidence to agree terms with the Palestinians. And he writes of "savage brutality towards innocent people" in Israel's military incursions but makes no comparable comment on "suicide bombings in Israeli towns".

Lawrence Goldman
Fellow and tutor in modern history
St Peter's College, Oxford