We regret that The Palm Beach Post covered the issue of Palestinian refugees from a point of view that has served to inflame war in the Middle East rather than bringing peace between the parties ("Israel's refugees also note 60 years," May 12 by Robert Gee).

The story describes the founding of the state of Israel as a "dispossession" of the Palestinians. The recent declassification of millions of documents from the period of the British mandate reveals that the claim of Palestinian dispossession is unfounded. Historians of that period, including Howard Sachar, Mark Tessler and Benny Morris, agree that there was no premeditated plan to remove Palestinians from their homes when Israel proclaimed statehood. Most Palestinians fled as a result of the 1948 war that was waged against Israel by its Arab neighbors. Historians agree that there would not have been a Palestinian refugee problem at all had there been no war. Testimony from Palestinian refugees confirms that refugees left their homes because they were scared by the prospects of a war launched by their fellow Arabs and expected to come back later.

Contempt for the Palestinians existed in Arab countries where, with the exception of Jordan, Palestinians were not made citizens but were placed in filthy refugee camps. Most Arab countries follow the Casablanca protocol of 1965 that stipulates Arab countries should guarantee Palestinian refugees rights to employment, residency and freedom of movement while maintaining their Palestinian identity and not granting them citizenship. In Syria and Saudi Arabia, Palestinians are not allowed to apply for citizenship. Lebanon barred Palestinians from practicing medical, legal and engineering professions. Palestinians are neither allowed to own property nor given access to the Lebanese health-care system.

In the Middle East, the Arab League's intent to keep alive the right of return of the Palestinians to Israel is used to weaken and subjugate Israel. This has been the main reason why the Palestinian/Israeli conflict has been perpetuated, a problem further aggravated by the increasing influence of radical Islamic groups, such as Hamas.

The most constructive thing that could be done to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinians would be for the Palestinians and rejectionist Arab states to recognize Israel and to negotiate toward a just and durable peace.

GARY WALK, chairman Jewish Community Relations Council

LOUIS ELLMAN, International Affairs Task Force chairman Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County, West Palm Beach

JERUSALEM — Beatrice Habesch still remembers serving Turkish coffee to the three Jewish people who came to her parents' home in 1948. Her father asked her to leave the room and closed the door. Fifteen minutes later, the visitors left. "He told my mother, 'It's better that we leave the house. It is temporary. It could be two months or three months. Nothing more,' " she said. The family of seven left their furniture, table settings, food in the refrigerator. They never returned.

Habesch, 80, joined several dozen Palestinians on Sunday for a march through the Jerusalem neighborhoods their families once called home. According to the organizers, it was the first such political protest to take place in West Jerusalem, which has been almost exclusively Jewish since 1948. They did not shout slogans or carry placards. Instead, they wore black T-shirts that said, "This is my home," in Arabic and English.

On Thursday, Palestinians commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Nakba, which means "catastrophe" in Arabic - the uprooting of 700,000 people who were living in what became Israel. It is the counter-narrative to Israel's independence, marked with fireworks and a state holiday, congratulatory greetings from nations around the world and, this week, a visit from President Bush, who will host a reception to honor the Jewish state's 60th birthday. He will not take part in Palestinian commemorations.

Palestinians say acknowledgment of their dispossession must be a basis of negotiations, now foundering after restarting in November at a conference hosted by the Bush administration. "There has never been a recognition or an apology or a healing process," said George Sahhar, 42, whose grandfather owned a West Jerusalem hotel, cinema and sports club, which were taken over, along with his house, by the newly formed state of Israel. "The episode remains painful, even after 60 years." The right of return - the right of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return to their former land, affirmed by two U.N. resolutions but rejected by Israel - has been one of the most contentious issues in peace talks. Israel rejects the right of return because it would mean the country no longer would have a Jewish majority. Most Palestinian refugees were peasants; West Jerusalem, by contrast, was home to a burgeoning Arab professional class, predominantly Christians who were merchants, doctors, journalists and scholars.

Beatrice Habesch's father owned a printing press - the largest in Jerusalem, she said - as well as six apartments he rented to new European Jewish immigrants. She remembers celebrating Passover and Christmas together with their Jewish neighbors. The Palestinian homes in neighborhoods like Talbieh and Baka, built in the first decades of the 20th century, are still some of the most stately in Jerusalem. They are made of rough-hewn rose-colored stone, often with second-floor balconies and colonnades. In the months preceding the 1948 war, during fighting between Jewish and Arab militias, Palestinians living near the front lines left their homes; some on their own, others by gunpoint. They expected to return after the war. Instead, the Haganah, or the "defense," a Jewish paramilitary organization that was the precursor to the Israeli Army, directed Jewish immigrants to the vacant homes - a policy that continued once the state was founded. By April 1949, 110,000 new immigrants settled in abandoned Arab homes, their owners barred from returning.

"For me, acknowledging what happened to the Palestinians ... is the first step toward any reconciliation in the future. This acknowledgement means taking responsibility for what happened," said Eitan Bronstein, a Jewish Israeli who leads tours of remains of Palestinian villages destroyed in 1948. He was one of a few Jewish Israelis present at Sunday's march. One ultra-Orthodox Jewish man shouted in Hebrew at the marchers: "Go away from here! The land of Israel belongs to Jews only!" He was led away by police.

Discussion of the Palestinian dispossession of 1948 has been taboo in much of Israeli society until recently. Last year, the Israeli education minister was criticized as anti-Zionist for approving a third-grade textbook for use in Arab-Israeli schools that said for the first time that some Palestinians were expelled from their homes in 1948 and their land was confiscated. The Hebrew version of the book does not include those details, although the Palestinian Nakba was recently added to Jewish high school curriculum.

The organizers of the two-hour march hoped the event would raise awareness of the Palestinian narrative, both in Israel and abroad. The marchers were followed by almost as many photographers, television cameras and reporters. "To me, it's the most powerful thing - more powerful than violence or political statements," said Diana Buttu, a Palestinian lawyer and activist. "These are real people who want to go home."