‘Post-conflict Israel and Palestine’

Sir, – The opinion piece by Ray Murphy made for interesting reading, though more for skirting around crucial issues rather than addressing them (“Can outsiders keep the peace in post-conflict Israel and Palestine?”, Opinion & Analysis, June 4th).

If by some miracle a permanent ceasefire was agreed with all hostages released and a full Israeli withdrawal, it is highly unlikely that any UN member will be rushing to volunteer their troops as peacekeepers. To do so would be to expose them to likely attacks from Hamas seeking to re-establish control and to attack Israel via rocket fire, to say nothing of Israeli drone strikes that will be focused on eliminating anyone looking like a militant.

Dr Murphy is silent on who will pay for a Gaza rebuild as most of the oil-rich Arab states that funded previous much lesser scale ones may be reluctant to commit funds to a project that may be destroyed in the near future, should Hamas or Israel go to war again with all the civilian casualties and infrastructure damage that will result.

A final thought that should interest the Irish body politic is that of the 411 international protection applicants that claimed asylum last week, 192 claimed to be from Jordan or Palestine. – Yours, etc,