No reconciliation through dialogue

"At 4 A.M., I got out of bed and went to read the letter," says Robi Damelin. "Palestinian friends knew that the Palestinian news agency Maan published a letter of response from the sniper to the letter I wrote to him, but it was hard for them to tell me about it. One night, at 11 o'clock, I turned on the computer and saw an e-mail that a friend had sent from America, in which she told me that there was a letter. Think about it: I'm living alone, it was already late and I couldn't start calling anyone. I was shocked and afraid to read the letter. I couldn't fall asleep, as much as I tried."

Just before Yom Kippur, Robi Damelin, 65, an activist in the Israeli-Palestinian Bereaved Families for Peace (also known as the Parents Circle - Families Forum, or PCFF), revealed in these pages ("I forgave him," Haaretz Magazine, September 25) an unusual letter of reconciliation that she'd written to the Palestinian sniper who killed her son David, an officer in the reserves. In March 2002, Ta'er Hamad positioned himself with an old carbine rifle on a hill opposite a checkpoint in Wadi Haramiya, killed eight Israeli soldiers and two Israeli civilians - and escaped unscathed. Two and a half years later, in October 2004, he was arrested by an Israel Defense Forces unit operating in his village of Silwad. After learning of his incarceration, Damelin decided to contact him and his family, seeking reconciliation.

Mr. Hamda's response to the overture of reconciliation and forgiveness to her son's murderer?

"I recently learned of the contents of a letter by Robi Damelin, mother of the soldier David, who was one of the 10 soldiers of occupation who were killed in the operation for which I was sentenced to 11 life terms," Hamad wrote. "I cannot address the soldier's mother directly. Not because it is difficult for me to convey my response from prison, but because my hand refuses to write in a style that epitomizes the policy of the occupation, that refuses to recognize and to accept the rights of our people. I cannot hold a dialogue with someone who insists on equating the criminal and the victim, and on equating the occupation with its victims. This is my response to the letter of Mrs. Robi, and I hereby criticize her sarcastic style when she thinks that with emotional words it is possible to resolve this decades-old conflict."
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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1124595.html