Sir, – As Gideon Levy has outlined to Lara Marlowe, Israeli policy is counterproductive ("The Holocaust makes Israelis think that international law doesn't apply to them", September 11th).
I cannot see how there is going to be a two-state solution to the conflict. The total area of Gaza is merely 360 sq km and the West Bank 5,860 sq km. There are at present 564,000 Jewish Israeli settlers in the West Bank. A lasting peace would mean a shared Jerusalem, with both Israelis and Palestinians living there. However, it will not be possible politically to remove the 400,000 or so settlers in other parts of the West Bank.
So, where is the Palestinian state going to be? As there is no possibility of a Palestinian state, this continued fiction allows the Israelis to dominate the area and treat Palestinians as second-class citizens in their own home. Israeli policy is leading effectively to one country containing Gaza, the West Bank and Israel.
In this new state Jewish Israelis will dominate and the Palestinian population in the Gaza and West Bank areas will be treated as second-class citizens, much as non-whites were treated in apartheid-era South Africa.
This scenario poses real problems for the long-term future of Israel. – Yours, etc,
NICK ARMSTRONG,
Pine Copse Road,
Dundrum, Dublin 16.
Sir, – Lara Marlowe has spent the past week or so travelling around Gaza and Israel, miraculously discovering en route that the opinions she arrived with were even more correct than even she'd believed them to be. I realise that in these days of advocacy journalism the perception of reportage being the first draft of history seems to have been filed on the "quaint" spike, nonetheless it might occur to the editors at The Irish Times to encourage writers such as Lara Marlowe to ask a question every now and then. For the optics if nothing else. – Yours, etc,
MELVYN WILCOX,
Dundanion Road,
Ballintemple, Cork.
Sir, – Lara Marlowe's article on Haaretz newspaper columnist Gideon Levy was a brilliant antidote to the recent utterings of the Israeli ambassador. A lone voice speaking the unpalatable truth of crimes committed by his own countrymen in Gaza. A real hero! – Yours, etc,
JUDY BURKE,
Burgatia,
Rosscarbery,
Co Cork.