Is Israel a land of apartheid?Regarding Israel, who gets to use the word 'apartheid'?

In his March 2 op-ed, "Apartheid? Not Israel," Richard Cohen berated critics who apply the term apartheid to Israel's settlement policy.

Apparently, he is unaware that former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's defense minister, Ehud Barak, are among the offenders.

Mr. Cohen was wrong when he said the term was applied by me to the situation within Israel in my recent op-ed in the Financial Times. I said explicitly that the issue of apartheid arises with the disappearance of a two-state solution to the conflict, which is exactly what Mr. Olmert and Mr. Barak (and even Israeli President Shimon Peres) warned would happen in these circumstances.

In 2004, Mr. Cohen described what he saw in the West Bank as a "mind-numbing enterprise, a reordering of the landscape -- roads and tunnels and fences and walls and barriers designed to separate Muslim from Jew." Six years later, that landscape is even more transformed by the settlements and is seen by virtually all Israelis and Palestinians as irreversible. However, Mr. Cohen strangely sees it as "the heartland of a Palestinian state."

Henry Siegman, New York

The writer is president of the U.S./Middle East Project.

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I regret that Richard Cohen showed that he cannot extract himself from the quagmire of semantics that so often dominates discussion of the Mideast conflict. Whether Israel is an apartheid state or not, objection to its violence against Palestinians is legitimate. Mr. Cohen would do well to review the number of fatalities during last year's Operation Cast Lead.

Those of us who protest against Israel's actions are not motivated by imaginary grievances or racism but by the tragedy of those killed.

Sarah Johnstone, Baltimore