THE claim of an enlightened occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip , in which the life of those occupied 'improved drastically', made by your correspondent Robert Segal (Citizen letters, April 3) is not new.

It has been used by many colonial regimes. I do not want to refute Mr Segal's inaccuracies here but I do want to bring in a few facts regarding the supposed improvements since 1967.

Israel's occupation brought a population of approximately one million Palestinians under military control, with executive, legislative and judicial power vested in the Israeli military government.

Israeli control over water and its allocation had two major consequences: restrictions on supplies to Palestinian households and for farming.

Data for the 1980s and 1990s shows that average per-capita water consumption in the West Bank was between one-fourth and one-fifth of that in Israel and the settlements.

Rising demand for labour in construction and agriculture led to the opening of the Israeli labour market to Palestinians, but almost exclusively as unskilled labourers. Palestinians were barred from employment in the government sector as well as in all the registered professions inside Israel. They were also denied unemployment benefits, pen-sion, disability payment, and widow and child allowances, in spite of deductions from their wages for these.

As a Jewish Israeli I could tell you a great deal about supposedly humane soldiers determined to 'minimize Palestinian casualties'. And as a resident of Jerusalem, I could tell you a great deal also about the fear of exploding buses. But this does not blind me to histo-rical truth and current Israeli state terror and injustice.

Adi Kuntsman, studying at Lancaster University