Madam, - The people of Palestine have democratically chosen Hamas, a party whose policy includes the destruction of Israel as an end, and violence as a legitimate means. The Western reaction is to insist that Hamas abandon policies it placed before the electorate and was mandated to pursue.
A wiser and more democratic response might evolve by addressing some questions, including: Why did the Palestinian electorate vote as they did? Have policies or political failures in my country contributed to that vote? Can the political will of the Palestinian people be changed? How can my country contribute towards that end? - Yours, etc,
MICHAEL WILLIAMS,
Grosvenor Square,
Dublin 6.
****
Madam, - Who are the Israelis to say that they will not deal with terrorists, as the present Israeli regime is the lineal descendant in politics of the Zionist terrorism which forced into being the Israeli state in the first place? Terrorism is the military expression of fanatical nationalism - in the case of Israel and Palestine, religiously fuelled fundamentalism. If such terrorism had been resisted in Palestine in the late 1940s, we would not now be in this awful mess. It is time, and beyond time, that democrats everywhere started taking the long view where terrorism is concerned. When will people learn this lesson - that the present situation is the kind of cul-de-sac into which religiously fuelled nationalism brings people?
Meanwhile, it was heart-rending to hear Hanan Ashrawi on BBC Radio 4 last Friday evening trying to draw attention to where the victory of Hamas leaves the women of Palestine and all peacefully inclined folk there, whose voices will now be drowned out by the blood-curdling screams of the fanatics.
Who will speak now for those thus marginalised, yet again, by the violence? Who will remember them in another 60 years, in the shadow of the statues raised to successful settlers on one side of a wall surmounted by barbed wire, and to the suicide bombers on the other side of it? This is what the victory of the "strong" actually means. - Yours, etc,
PETER THOMPSON,
Arklow,
Co Wicklow.