Sir, – Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and the Government should be commended for calling for a review of the EU-Israel trade agreement (“Ireland seeking EU-Israel trade review, says Taoiseach”, News, February 2nd).
A suspension of the favourable trade terms that Israel enjoys with the EU would send a clear message that the contravention of international humanitarian law in Gaza and the West Bank is profoundly unacceptable and, importantly, has economic consequences.
Admittedly, the implementation of such a sanction will be difficult to achieve, particularly with Germany so strongly backing Israel, but Ireland has done the right thing by animating the conversation, albeit tentatively. It is a very positive intervention that must be sustained and developed. – Yours, etc,
FINTAN LANE,
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Lucan,
Co Dublin.
Sir, – Justine McCarthy writes that “Unrwa’s remit extends to 5.9 million refugees in the Occupied Territories, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan” (“Varadkar needs more than a quiet word with Biden on Gaza”, Opinion & Analysis, February 2nd). The problem is the word “refugee”.
Today in schools in Jordan, there are children with citizenship of that country, who were born there and whose parents were born there yet Unrwa classes them as refugees and teaches in these schools that they have a right of return to a country they or their parents have never known.
Instead of supporting the integration and economic development of the descendants of Palestinian refugees displaced by war in 1948, Unrwa continues to destabilise regimes by promising a nirvana of “right of return” to Israel, which is never going to happen.
Wars displace populations and the challenge is to move forward from the tragedy. In preventing this, Unrwa is part of the problem, not part of the solution. – Is mise,
KENNETH HARPER,
Burtonport,
Co Donegal.
Sir, – According to Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, Israel may be in breach of a human rights clause in an EU-Israel trade agreement .
Strangely, Israel seems to be the only state in the Middle East that is expected to honour every agreement to the letter. For instance, under the 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, the latter was obliged to secure its border with Gaza. Yet it now appears that from about 2015 Egypt largely ceased its efforts to prevent Hamas smuggling weapons and military equipment into Gaza from the Sinai. Similarly the UN has repeatedly failed to live up to its commitments and obligations under UN Security Council Resolution 1559. As a result, Hizbullah has been able to site over 100,000 rockets and missiles, many hidden in civilian structures, along the Lebanon-Israel border. – Yours, etc,
KARL MARTIN,
Bayside,
Dublin 13.