Madam, - Raymond Deane (November 27th) would have us see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in simple terms of black and white, right and wrong.
This may be understandable coming from a co-founder of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign; but it serves little purpose to imply that, on the one hand, the Hamas government in Gaza is effectively blameless, while Israel and the EU are guilty of war crimes. And the characterisation of Gaza as being under occupation remains contested under international law. We need to move beyond such simplicities.
Both Israel and Hamas have in fact been accused of violations of the Geneva Conventions by groups such as Amnesty International. In addition, the collective sanctions imposed by Israel are deplorable, and the EU has strongly condemned them.
Israel itself has been critical of the EU for its extensive "indirect support for Hamas". The road to a solution to this terrible conflict does not lie in making allegations of complicity in war crimes against the EU.
The EU has the potential to play a very important role in assisting the Israelis and the Palestinians to resolve the deep and apparently intractable conflict between these peoples.
I believe it is more constructive to encourage and empower the EU to fulfil this role, than to continue condemning it for failing to do so. - Yours, etc,
Senator DEIRDRE DE BURCA,
Eglinton Road,
Bray,
Co Wicklow.
Madam, - Raymond Deane has long appeared to operate according to the principle that "the enemy of Israel is my friend". Nevertheless, his embrace of Hamas, culminating in his claim that the international community's boycott of its government in Gaza is "a war crime", still has the capacity to shock.
The fact is that Hamas is an unreconstructed jihadist organisation which has killed over 500 Israelis as part of its continuing campaign to "liberate the region from the impurity of Jews". To further this end it has turned Gaza into a de facto terrorist statelet, stockpiling massive quantities of locally manufactured rockets and smuggled missiles, firearms and explosives, and developing a military infrastructure along the Gaza-Israel border. This has been facilitated by its ousting of its political rivals in a murderous coup and its ongoing repression of the ordinary Gazan Palestinian population through arrests, detentions, kidnappings, beatings, and killings.
To describe the international community's refusal to conduct a business-as-usual approach to such a regime as a "war crime" empties the term of all meaning. - Yours, etc,
SEÁN GANNON,
Irish Friends of Israel,
Ontario Terrace,
Portobello,
Dublin 6.