Sir, - It's very easy for Cathal Horan (March 15th) to sit comfortably in his Stillorgan apartment and pontificate about what he perceives as the failings of Mr Sharon and Israel. However, let Mr Horan think for a few moments about living in daily fear of being blown to pieces at a café or supermarket, or outside a place of worship. Israel is under attack and has a right to take preventive action, just as America has decided not to wait for its enemies to perpetrate more devastating damage on it. It seems that Israel, alone among nations, is not allowed to defend itself.
Mr Horan notes that there are refugee camps on the West Bank. One might ask: why should there still be such camps? There are no refugee camps in Israel, which has taken in hundreds of thousands of Jews fleeing from persecution.
The reason is that Palestinian refugees have been cynically retained as pawns, to be exhibited to a naïve world. With the funds available from Arab countries they could have been properly housed years ago. Instead, they are kept homeless, as mere chess-pieces in the struggle to have Israel eliminated.
Why else do Palestinian school maps show the whole area as Palestine? - Yours, etc.,
DAVID SOWBY,
Knocksinna Crescent,
Dublin 18.
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Sir, - The following is an e-mail sent by Zahira Kamal, a Palestinian woman who is truly committed to a peaceful future between the two peoples in the region, to Israeli peace organisations in the wake of the Israeli reoccupation of the West Bank and Gaza:
"'I am calling all of you for an urgent action to stop the Israeli attack and allow us to evacuate injured Palestinians who are bleeding in the streets of Ramallah. The Israeli army is not allowing doctors and ambulances to move and give the needed medical aid to them. Please do something - you might even give them the chance to live."
Zahira's is just one of many desperate appeals sent to Israeli peace organisations. Israeli peace and human rights activists have been working at a frenzied pace at every level - trying to extend specific aid where needed, while struggling to get the Israeli public to understand that violence is only the symptom, but the underlying disease is "occupation". It's very hard to think about the disease when the symptoms - bloodshed, death of loved ones, constant fear - are so palpable.
Many organisations are doing important work on the ground. On their behalf, I ask Irish people to support organisations such as the Palestinian Red Crescent Society or Physicians for Human Rights, Israe , and to ask the Irish Government to exert pressure on Israel to withdraw and begin negotiations.- Yours, etc.,
Dr RONIT LENTIN,
Course co-ordinator,
M. Phil. in Ethnic
and Racial Studies,
Department of Sociology,
Trinity College,
Dublin 2.