Sir, – The usual reasons have been put forward by some of your correspondents in justification of the Hamas terrorist attack on innocent Israeli men, women and children (Letters, October 10th). The blockade of Gaza, settlements in the West Bank, etc. These are issues that need a political solution. But a political solution requires at least two parties who are willing to engage in reasonable discussions where there is the possibility of compromise. Israel has shown itself willing to engage with its neighbours. But as long as Hamas is funded, guided and controlled by its ideological overlords in Tehran this will not happen.
Tehran’s leaders have no interest in solving this dispute; the resolution of this dispute would reduce their influence in the region.
People can blame Israel for everything and anything, but as long as Tehran’s interests are served by Hamas, Israel will find itself under attack and more civilians will suffer and die.
Disputes are resolved by speaking to each other; only one party in this dispute has shown any willingness to do so. – Yours, etc,
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TREVOR TROY,
Baile Átha Buí,
Co na Mí.
Sir, – Michael Jansen (“Hamas attack on Israel followed years of containment and dire poverty in Gaza”, World, October 9th) rightly notes that the attack on Israel by Hamas was inevitable. Gaza has been under siege and blockade for 16 years, with 60 per cent of its people living in poverty, and tens of thousands suffering from post-traumatic stress after suffering four full-scale Israeli military attacks between 2008 and 2021. When people protested at the Gaza fence in the Great March of Return, they were met by snipers’ bullets.
The response of the Israeli government to the Hamas attack in recent days is shocking. It intends to punish the civilian population of Gaza, in knowing breach by a government of international law.
Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant has ordered a total siege on Gaza. “There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, it’s all closed. We are fighting against human animals,” he said. The dehumanisation of Palestinian residents is the prelude to massacre. The bombs have started to fall on Gaza wiping out entire families. The statement by the Israeli ambassador Dana Ehrlich (News, October 9th) that lawyers sit with “very strict rules” observing each target is palpable nonsense.
There is no care to avoid civilian fatalities, and now starvation of the people is to be added as a weapon of war. Israel has told Gazan residents to leave the area, but they know full well that they prevent movement out of the territory. The ambassador disingenuously says people can seek safe places in Gaza, but there are no safe areas in the overcrowded enclave, as the bombs rain down.
The violence and racially based apartheid against Palestinian civilians has intensified under the current Israeli far-right government. For months we have read of teenagers shot dead, of house demolitions leaving Palestinian families homeless, of water springs blocked and Palestinian farmers being chased off their land by armed Israeli settlers. This year alone over 200 Palestinians were shot by the Israeli military, including 45 children. Yet the international community remained silent and complicit.
It is time to address the fundamental issue of the injustice that has been done to the people of Palestine, the seizure of their land and the growing armed settlements being sponsored by Israel.
It is beyond time for Ireland to make its mark by insisting on the dismantling of apartheid, and by passing the Occupied Territories Bill. – Yours, etc,
BETTY PURCELL,
Dublin 6W.
Sir, – The sense of outrage that victims of Hamas’s attack were attending a music festival underlines the dehumanising terms through which the Palestinian people are viewed: it is seen as the natural state of things that Israelis should be free to enjoy themselves without a care, while mere kilometres away their Palestinian neighbours are subjected to unspeakable persecution, harassment, and humiliation, hounded from their villages by rampaging mobs of armed paramilitaries, their crops and fields burned or seized, forced at gunpoint to demolish their own homes. – Yours, etc,
BEN WALSH,
Glasnevin,
Dublin 11.
Sir, – I cannot imagine the terror of the Israeli hostages and the traumatised Israeli bereaved. I cannot imagine the terror inflicted on ordinary Gazans under brutal bombardment and the traumatised bereaved in Gaza. Both are horrific, barbaric and wrong. – Yours, etc,
DAVID CURRAN,
Knocknacarra,
Galway.
Sir, – Over one hundred members of a kibbutz were murdered in the recent Hamas attack. Subsequently hundreds of people calling themselves socialists wrote, tweeted or demonstrated in support of this atrocity. Bizarre. – Yours, etc,
DM WILCOX,
Cappoquin,
Co Waterford.
Sir, – According to UCD’s Vincent Durac, the Hamas atrocities in Israel emanate from a “broad-based sense of hopelessness on the part of Palestinians” on the lack of prospects for “meaningful change” (“Palestinian hopelessness drove Hamas attack on Israel”, Opinion & Analysis, October 9th). No responsibility is ascribed to Palestinians; we are invited to infer that Israel is solely to blame.
A look at recent history may be useful here. Eighteen years ago, as the Israeli army and all 9,000 Jewish settlers were being withdrawn from the Gaza Strip, hopes were high that an unoccupied Gaza would blossom economically.
Optimistic souls dreamed of a “Singapore-on-the-Med”. (Incidentally, Singapore’s population density is 8,592 per sq km; Gaza’s is 5,500 per sq km)
Hopes focused especially on the fruit-growing industry developed by the settlers. A group of Canadian Jewish businessmen donated more than 3,000 greenhouses purchased from the departing farmers at a cost of $14 million. Within a month of the Israeli withdrawal, all the greenhouses had been looted and destroyed along with their water pumps and irrigation pipes.
The Gaza pull-out also brought the final closure of the 30-year-old joint Palestinian-Israeli Erez industrial zone on the Gaza border, where over 200 companies (half of them Palestinian-owned) had provided jobs for more than 4,500 Palestinians at pay rates almost double the Gaza average. In 27 months before the withdrawal, 14 Israeli civilians, policemen and soldiers had been murdered in the zone by terrorists, including a woman sent by Hamas who blew herself up, killing four.
Unbiased readers may know where to allocate their own blame for Palestinian “hopelessness”. – Yours, etc,
DERMOT MELEADY,
Dublin 3.
Sir, – Some have called the weekend’s terror attacks on Israel its “9/11″. Perhaps, though the reaction from some in Ireland has been very different from the attacks on the US in September 2001. Would The Irish Times carry an opinion headline “Middle East hopelessness drove al-Qaeda attack on US”. I doubt it.
Would our Tánaiste have called for a proportionate response from the US in reacting to such terrible violence in its cities. I don’t think so, although I do remember a public holiday to mourn the dead. – Yours, etc,
ANDREW MACALISTER,
Raheny,
Dublin 5.
A chara, – I think most fair-minded people stand with Israel after the recent abominable attacks.
However, Israel will lose a huge amount of support in the blink of an eye if it performs collective punishment on the two million people literally trapped in Gaza.
A siege will harm the innocent vulnerable people most. They cannot get out of Gaza.
I urge Israel to think long and hard about its proposed siege.
Israel must restore water and electricity supplies immediately, and allow essential food imports. – Yours, etc,
HENRY SHEIL,
East Fremantle,
Australia.
Sir, – Before the inevitable whataboutery that will fill these pages in the coming days, can we at least agree that shooting dead youngsters at a rave, or seriously wounding or kidnapping these party-goers, is morally reprehensible? Perhaps this is, alas, too much to expect. – Yours, etc,
PIERCE O’SULLIVAN,
Glaslough,
Co Monaghan.