OUR correspondent, Observer of St. George's, last week criticised a column I wrote that described the waning of Yasser Arafat's influence on the politics of the Middle East (, January 17).

I hope you will allow me a little space in which to debate some of his, or her, points. Observer began by describing my column as misleading, in that it presented one side of the argument and not the other.

The pieces I write for are clearly marked , and describe my views on a variety of subjects. They are one-sided by their very nature. Had I tried to trick readers into thinking the columns were neutral summaries of the facts, it would have been right to criticise me, but that was obviously not my purpose.

Although my opinions about the Middle East are different from Observer's, we probably do have some common ground. We can agree that the Middle East situation is an almighty mess. We can agree that it has created great injustice, both for Palestinians and for Israelis.

I suspect we can agree that both sides have very bloody hands. And I hope, since it sticks out like a sore thumb, we can agree that arguments that follow a "My Atrocity is Bigger Than Yours" line are a waste of time. Beyond that, our views diverge. I see it this way: It is not a new problem. It has been brewing since the end of the First World War.

Jewish refugees and others, many of them people seeking a new life, have been pouring into Palestine in large numbers since 1922. There are now more than six million citizens of Israel. What can possibly be done to solve the problem they represent? Can we eliminate them? Can we move them elsewhere?

Neither of these is a viable alternative. The third option, the only one that is capable of yielding a solution, is to try to create circumstances in which the existing situation, speaking broadly, might work. That's what the many sets of peace talks have been about.

They fail, over and over and over again. Have the Israelis been trying to drive too hard a bargain, as those who take the Palestinian side have it? This is what former President Clinton is reported to have said about the failure of the Camp David talks: "The true story of Camp David was that for the first time in the history of the conflict, the American President put on the table a proposal, based on UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, very close to the Palestinian demands, and Arafat refused even to accept it as a basis for negotiations, walked out of the room, and deliberately turned to terrorism. That's the real story - all the rest is gossip."

Many commentators feel that the real reason the talks fail is that the Palestinians, encouraged by most Arab countries, are deep down simply not prepared to agree to any solution that might enhance the legitimacy of the Jewish state.

There are many people in the world who are convinced that this is a simple problem, in which the Palestinians are the good guys in white headgear, and the Israelis are the bad guys in black boots. They are apt to say that if the Israelis would just dismantle the settlements, stop driving their tanks into the refugee camps and give the Palestinians their own nation, everything would be fine.

I think that's a thoroughly na?ve view. This is not solely . . . it's perhaps not even predominantly . . . a problem pitting Israeli against Palestinian. It is a problem that pits Arab against Jew. As they used to say on maps, Here Dwell Dragons.

The United Nations approved the partition of Palestine into two states - one for Arabs and one for Jews - in 1947. Resolution 181 (ii) was a majority decision, because the Arab states involved voted against it, but it was a decision that, taken, created the circumstances in which a Jewish state was established.

The Palestinians are not now fighting and have never fought their battles alone, outnumbered and outgunned by wealthy Israelis, as Observer tried to suggest. The day after Israel declared its Independence in 1948, it was invaded by the Lebanese Army, the Syrian Army, Iraqi irregulars, the Saudi Army, the Jordanian Army and the Egyptian Army, all bent on strangling the nation at birth.

Arab states in the region have tried waging conventional war on the Israelis on a total of four occasions - the War of Independence in 1948, the Sinai War in 1956, the Six-Day War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Their attempts all failed.

Those wars are the reason for the difference between the shape of Israel today and the shape of the territory as envisaged by the United Nations in 1947. Some of the land taken by Israel in repulsing the attacks has been returned, but some has not. The Israelis have never made any secret about their intention to use some captured territory for one or both of two purposes - to enhance Israel's ability to defend itself and to bargain with.

Who could blame them? The Israeli Chief of Staff, Moshe Ya'alon, told the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in November of last year that both the Israelis and the Palestinians knew that "at the end of the day, most of the settlements will be evacuated".

The bargain the Israelis want is probably pretty close to the one the Saudis proposed last year - the right to exist, in exchange for withdrawal to the 1947 borders. One exception to the formula is likely to be Jerusalem, a city they captured during the Six-Day War that has great historical and religious meaning for them. Getting to the point of being able to make that bargain is a process that quite obviously requires both sides to commit to a future of living together, in the same region, in peace.

Two final points. First, I'm not certain why Observer got so entangled in discussing religious claims about the Israeli right to be in Palestine - I doubt that the views of fundamentalist Christians are important to this matter outside the context of US politics.

However, it is worth noting, for the benefit of anyone who didn't know, that the Jews did not suddenly arrive for the very first time in Palestine in 1947, or even at the beginning of the 20th century. They have had a presence there for over 3,000 years. They ruled the first country known as Israel for 1,000 years until the Romans conquered it, driving many, but not all, Israelites into exile.

Second, Observer seemed to want to debate whether Ariel Sharon was a good man or a bad, pointing out that he and members of his family had recently been accused of corruption, and that he had been criticised for his part in a 1953 raid into Jordan.

I know little about that particular action, and we are a distance from getting to the bottom of the corruption allegations, but I do know that he has been called a war criminal because, in 1982, he allowed Christian Phalangist militiamen to go into two Lebanese refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila, where they are said to have murdered hundreds of innocent people.

An independent Israeli inquiry at the time found that he was "indirectly responsible", and he resigned as the then-Defence Minister as a result, I recall. But I am not an apologist for Mr. Sharon. If he is a war criminal, then I condemn him for that as others do.

To sum up, Mr. Editor, Observer did not show that my opinion was incorrect, he seemed simply to have been offended that I criticised someone in the Palestinian camp. My point in writing about Mr. Arafat's corruption was to suggest one reason progress towards a solution is so slow.

As long as the impasse generates huge quantities of money that can safely be looted under the cover of the disorganisation of the Palestinian Authority, why would he and his friends have any interest in helping to find a solution to the crisis?

Thinking of him and others involved as if they were untouchable candidates for sainthood flies hard into the face of the facts, and pushes solutions farther and farther into the dim future.