Letter: Battle over Kosovo

Sir: Below the banner headlines of Robert Fisk's moving front- page article "This atrocity is still a mystery to Nato ..." (17 April), small print refers the reader to page 15 where Patrick Cockburn describes Israel's takeover of Arnoun village in southern Lebanon and its ruthless eviction of the remaining inhabitants as it expands its occupation zone.

What is the difference that makes world opinion call for Nato to bomb the Serbs, while ignoring the Israelis? Indeed, Israel is benefiting from Nato's distraction of international attention and is taking the opportunity to pursue its Milosevician ends and create demographic "facts" almost unnoticed.

I have personally experienced the distress felt by the Kosovo refugees. Fifty-one years ago, as a child on a stretcher with four wounds caused by a Zionist terrorist grenade in Jaffa, I left Palestine, together with thousands of others, in a procession not very different from those of the Kosovo refugees seen daily on television.

After half a century, the process of ethnic cleansing, settlement and colonisation in the Middle East, of which I was a victim, has not yet stopped .