Madam, - Reticence forbids us to ask how Mr Raymond Deane's self-confessed hedonism finds expression (October 6th), but it is interesting to watch his evolution into the über-Palestinian, the Irishman who knows better than moderate Palestinians what their real interests are and who has sold them out.
If foreign friends are to be of any use to the Palestinians, it must surely be to encourage them to do what they have not done in six decades - reach a compromise with Israel. Had the Arabs accepted the UN partition Resolution of 1948, this year would have seen the celebration of the 60th birthday of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Had Yasser Arafat not said no to the Camp David deal of 2000 which offered 97 per cent of the West Bank and all of Gaza, a Palestinian state would now be in existence. Had the opportunity of the total Israeli pullout from Gaza in 2005 been used to seek peace rather than the escalation of terrorism, the nucleus, at least, of such a state would now exist.
All of this is rejected by Mr Deane, who tries to out-Hamas Hamas in his criticism of those Palestinians who have engaged with Israel. His rejectionism now also embraces the EU, whose moves in the 1970s and 1980s to recognise the new phenomenon of Palestinian nationalism he dismisses as mere rhetoric, though they were gratefully enough received by the Palestinian leadership of the time. Most bafflingly of all, he flies in the face of known facts in his belittling of the extent of EU aid to the Palestinians.
Between 1994 and 2000, this aid amounted to $3.36 billion. In 2002, the EU was saving the Palestinian Authority from the self-inflicted chaos of the intifada by keeping it afloat with $9 million a month. By 2006, the EU was the single biggest donor of funds to the Palestinians, contributing $934 million of a world total of $1.5 billion, a figure exceeded in 2007. This year, according to EU figures, aid from the Commission together with member-countries is expected to reach about $1,000 for every man, woman and child in the West Bank - equal to three-quarters of the average Egyptian annual income.
A good case can be made that aid of this magnitude, based as it is on the questionable liberal assumption that terrorism results mainly from deprivation, has been misguided and counter-productive. A close correlation has been seen throughout the decade between the levels of aid and of violence. But whatever the arguments, there is no denying the extent of the aid. - Yours etc,
DERMOT MELEADY, Dublin 3.