‘The Wall runs between Israel and the West Bank’

Last July 26, the Inquirer published my letter (“The Gaza Strip-Israel Wall: What it signals and symbolizes,” Opinion) on the International Court of Justice’s judgement on the Israeli Wall between the West Bank and Israel, declaring it to be illegal. There was however a slight but (for me) embarrassing editorial change. I had merely spoken of the Wall, deeming the object sufficiently familiar not to need any further indication. Through an editorial change, this was transformed into the Wall between Israel and the Gaza Strip. There is of course no such wall. As said, the Wall runs between Israel and the West Bank.—ARIE BRAND

As Mr. Brand indicated in his e-mail, the July 26 letter was “Re your recent editorial ‘Victims too’” (Opinion, 7/14/14), which was on the Israeli incursion into Gaza. The unedited version of the letter’s first line reads thus: “It is this month exactly ten years ago that the International Court of Justice came up with its verdict on the Wall put up by Israel.” Nowhere in Brand’s five-paragraph original letter was there any mention of the wall being between Israel and the West Bank. As Brand wrote in his follow-up letter above: “I had merely spoken of the Wall, deeming the object sufficiently familiar not to need any further indication.” Our apologies to our readers for our wrong appreciation of Brand’s first letter, which led to the erroneous editorial alteration.—Ed.