In reply to Mr Jones letter (Easy to point blame in Gaza, October 17).

Ironically, my letter (Three reasons for Middle East troubles, October 17), did contain a solution in the last sentence, but it was left out to make space for Mr Jones’ letter.

What I wrote is as follows: “And ‘decisive action for peace’ is what I proposed last week, with (a) an official United Nations exchange of Palestinian Muslim Arabs for Christian Arabs, and (b) under UN Authority, Israel replaces the Post 1946 [Post Jordanian Partition] British Mandate of Palestine.”

Footnote: The Post World War I British Mandate of Palestine was originally composed of Palestine and Trans-Jordan.

Then, in 1946, Trans-Jordan (two-thirds of the British Mandate) was detached to be the independent Arab State of Jordan.

In 1947, the much smaller remainder of the British Mandate, Palestine, was sub-divided into the independent Jewish state of Israel and an independent Arab Palestine, but any hope of establishing an Arab state of Palestine was immediately strangled by the attack upon Israel by five Arab armies, resulting in a stalemate whereby Jordan occupied and annexed the West Bank and Egypt occupied and annexed the Gaza Strip, a state of affairs which existed until the Six Day War in 1967, when Israel took these areas, the Golan Heights from Syria and the whole of Sinai from Egypt.

NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED