Madam, - Susan Philips asks rhetorically (June 22nd) if it isn't "interesting that the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza has led to diminished social conditions and vicious in-fighting?" According to Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East Division, "Under international law, the test for determining whether an occupation exists is effective control by a hostile army. . . Whether the Israeli army is inside Gaza or redeployed around its periphery and restricting entrance and exits, it remains in control."
In other words, there was no true "withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza", where their presence in the first place was illegal. The "vicious in-fighting" was fomented by the US, which armed the losers of the January 2006 elections in an attempt to overthrow its results.
The "diminished social conditions" are the result of an attempt by the West to starve the people of Gaza into kissing the Israeli jackboot that is pressed upon their necks.
Finally, "Fatah members are loathed by Hamas" (and, one should add, many other Palestinians) not, as Ms Philips disingenuously claims, "for their secular and more moderate stance towards a two-state solution in the Middle East", but for their past corruption and perceived willingness to collaborate with Palestine's worst enemies in order to regain undivided power. - Yours, etc,
RAYMOND DEANE, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Dame Street, Dublin 2.