Madam, – Your January 14th edition reports that the Israeli authorities are allowing food and medicine into the Gaza Strip during the daily three-hour ceasefire. However, this is not the experience of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) emergency teams who have been providing medical aid to the beleaguered population of Gaza since the Israeli offensive began.
MSF personnel on the ground report that the daily three-hour ceasefire is not being fully observed, while the shootings and bombings by the Israeli army prohibit the movements of medical personnel and limit their access to the injured and wounded. Furthermore, the Israeli authorities have authorised only certain crossing points for the movements of humanitarian workers and supplies while safer, more practical crossing points remain closed.
Shifa Hospital in Gaza City has requested and relied on the support of MSF staff and medical supplies for more than two weeks. In response to its urgent need for more medical personnel, an MSF surgical team has been trying to enter the Gaza Strip for over a week but has been denied access.
MSF’s medical co-ordinator on the ground describes the situation as a “nightmare”, with emergency departments and intensive care units overwhelmed by the number of wounded. Surgeons are so busy that they are frequently carrying out two operations simultaneously in the same room.
Meanwhile, an MSF mobile hospital with two operating rooms and an intensive care unit is also waiting for permission to cross the border.
MSF demands that Israel authorise the immediate entry of its emergency aid workers and calls on all parties to the conflict to respect aid workers and guarantee their safe entry into the Gaza Strip to reach the trapped civilians. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – The president and executive of CORI (Conference of Religious of Ireland), representing the leaders of almost 9,000 men and women across the whole island of Ireland, wish to add their voice to those protesting at the slaughter of innocent people in Gaza and call on the Government to do all in its power to bring about a ceasefire leading to negotiation and lasting peace. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Philip O’Connor’s claim (January 15th) that Jerusalem’s acceptance of Ismail Haniyeh’s offer of “a long-term truce with Israel, the price being Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories” would usher in an era of peace is, at very best, naive.
For Hamas has repeatedly stated that the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza would represent, not the beginning of end of the conflict, but merely the end of the beginning. In the words of senior spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, a 1967 state would represent just the first phase of “a gradual and transient solution” which would eventually result in Palestinian sovereignty from the river to the sea. Nor would this proto-Palestinian state “stem from recognition of Israel”, a point hammered home at every opportunity by the Hamas leadership including Haniyeh himself (“the issue of recognition of Israel has been settled. . .in our political literature, in our Islamic thought and in our Jihadist culture, on which we base our moves. [It] is out of the question”) and Khaled Meshaal (“We will never recognise Israel or cease to fight for our land”).
As Hamas MP Salah al-Bardawil told Reuters in 2006, “we said we accept a state in 1967 – but we did not say we accept two states”. Furthermore, the Arabic word used by Haniyeh to describe the cessation of hostilities was “hudna”, which has connotations alien to the English word “truce”. It is an Islamic concept under which hostilities are frozen for a defined period (in Hamas’s case, 10 years) to give the parties time to reach a final settlement or, as Muhammad himself used the 10-year Treaty of Hudaibiyah with the Quraysh, to recover and prepare for the next round of fighting (in fact, an improvement in Mohammed’s military position led him to renounce it two years later and slaughter his enemies). Given Hamas’s refusal to countenance a permanent peace with Jerusalem, Haniyeh’s “long-term truce” could only be used to prepare with impunity for Israel’s final destruction.
Last year’s six-month “truce” was clear evidence of this. Hamas used it to double both the range and the size of its missile arsenal and intensively train its 15,000-strong army for future battle. Indeed, the six armed Hamas operatives killed by Israel in what the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign has termed “an unprovoked assault” which O’Connor insists shattered the “truce” were building a tunnel under the Gaza border fence with the intention of abducting Israeli soldiers. Some “truce”.
Finally, in comparing Hamas to Sinn Féin/IRA, O’Connor engages in a slovenly ahistorical analogising. Sinn Féin/IRA’s goal was not the UK’s destruction but the end of British rule in Northern Ireland, while its campaign against Protestants was driven not by religious hatred but by their perceived political identification. Hamas’s raison d’être, on the other hand, is the obliteration of Israel and, contrary to O’Connor’s assertion, its anti-Semitic charter urges jihad against all Jews.
Can he be entirely serious when he calls this movement “a partner for peace”? – Yours, etc,
Madam, – I wonder why so many people in prominent positions in Irish life, when they wish to demonise others, reach for Nazi terminology so often. Every few weeks, it seems, someone or something is compared to Hitler, the Gestapo, Auschwitz, and, of course, Goebbels (by, for example, Aengus Ó Snodaigh of Sinn Féin).
The appalling and inexcusable situation in Gaza speaks for itself; throwing out clichéd insults only diminishes the points being made. – Yours, etc,
Madam, The power of Israel over the lives of the Palestinians in Gaza is being demonstrated in the most ferocious terms. Israeli leaders continue to justify their actions and reiterate their claim that Israel is a democratic state. The flagrant breaches of international law and the blocking of humanitarian assistance have been commented on by many analysts and human rights activists.
Working in journalism education, we have particular concerns about Israel’s treatment of the press, which falls short of the relationship any healthy democracy should have with the media. Foreign journalists have been denied access to Gaza to report on the impact of the military assault. For Palestinian journalists, conditions are extremely difficult and dangerous.
Israel’s contravention of two key principles of international humanitarian law – distinction between combatants/civilians and proportionality – has also affected journalists there. According to the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), five media staff have died as a result of the Israeli action. Others have been arrested. The IFJ has called for the release of two Palestinian journalists from Gaza detained by the Israeli military since January 5th.
The Israeli military have also been accused of targeting media organisations. Israeli aircraft struck the television station Al Aqsa and the Al-Johara Tower in Gaza City, a building clearly marked as housing media staff and where up to 20 news organisations were based. Vehicles marked with “Press” and “TV” have come under Israeli fire. Is this the price of trying to counter Israeli censorship and news management? – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Fintan O’Toole (Opinion, January 13th) makes much of the rhetorical habits of those discussing Israel’s actions in Gaza. However, nowhere in his two columns on the topic does he address the following facts: that Hamas is continually firing rockets into Israel; that Hamas is an organisation sworn to the destruction of Israel and whose charter denies any legitimacy to such a state; that a major and active sponsor of Hamas is Iran, a country whose president has specifically called for the destruction of Israel, and a country which is on the verge of becoming a nuclear power.
These are not rhetorical habits or tricks. These are concrete facts. If Fintan O’Toole and others were to address some of them, then maybe we could take more seriously his points about the rhetoric of the dispute. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – As a senior citizen I am writing for the first time to a national paper to express the dismay and indignation I feel at the Israeli military slaughter of innocent men, women and – above all – children in Gaza, referred to as “collateral damage” or “inevitable civil casualties”.
I am not against Israeli people, just as I am not against Americans when I criticise George Bush and his military friends, whose silence during this slaughter is deafening. I do not wish to be part of that silence.
Grievous indeed is the charge levelled at the Israeli military by the International Red cross: “They failed to meet their obligations under international humanitarian Law to care for and evacuate the wounded and dying”. Many Palastinians died waiting for help and no independent reporting was permitted by the Israeli military and administration. How could they let the outside world know what they were doing?
They cannot justify the slaughter. The Israel that portrayed itself as the David of biblical times has become the Goliath of Gaza times by the actions ot its administration and its military. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – The amount of space that your paper is giving every day to the conflict in the Gaza strip is quite remarkable. To whom are these long-winded letters addressed? Do the writers think the Israeli government or the Palestinians will care one iota what is written in letters to The Irish Times?
The writers’ opinions are pointless and will, as always, have no influence on the outcome. – Yours, etc,