How a great opportunity for peace was missed
IN most Irish homes, especially in six of the northern counties of Ireland, there is a sympathetic ear for the plight of the Palestinian people, given our history of occupation by foreign forces.
The murderous attack by Hamas on Israeli territory that has left hundreds of innocent civilians dead has to be condemned outright. Firstly, we must ask: why did it happen? Eighty years of occupation and confiscation of land from the native people by the Israelis has left the Palestinian people congested into an area known as the Gaza Strip.
It is akin to a concentration camp surrounded by security posts, barbed wire fencing, and concrete walls six to ten metres in height and 25 metres in depth, leaving those within, living in survival mode on a day-to-day basis for years on end. This should provide some semblance of reasoning for this dastardly taking of life.
Many of us will remember how it was here in the six counties with British soldiers in lookout posts along the border, checkpoints at all border crossings, nationalist/ republican areas swamped with fortified barracks, concrete walls and steel fencing, haranguing of GAA players and spectators by gun-toting squaddies only out of school or prison.
This is the scenario for Palestinians – multiplied tenfold – while the great and the good in Brussels stood idly by. So yes we do have a lot in common with the Palestinians, but no one is condoning murder by extremist paramilitary groupings such as Hamas, an Islamist organisation whose goal is to eliminate Israel.
The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), unlike Hamas, has always sought to secure a Palestinian state through diplomatic means but was never treated with respect by the Israeli leadership, hence the evolvement of Hamas, which took over power from the PLO in 2007 after a brief war and consequent elections.
Had Israel played ball in a more constructive fashion with the more moderate PLO, the possibility of peace and co-existence could have been in a better position today, just like we are without British soldiers tramping through our fields and hedgerows.
JAMES WOODS, Gort an Choirce, Dún na nGall.
... I’D say that the general corporate mainstream news media’s ‘coverage’ of the Israel-Palestinian conflict in particular reveals how ethically challenged they’ve allowed themselves to become.
This includes their reporting on the current violence as well as their non-reporting on the consequential anti-Palestinian social injustices that continue in between every military flare-up over decades of Israeli occupation. Palestinian suffering and deaths in their entirety need to matter to the West as much as that of Israelis. Apparently they don’t.
FRANK STERLE JR, White Rock, British Columbia, Canada.
... IF we are going to be honest, while condemning the Hamas attacks in Israel, we will acknowledge that the ongoing humiliation, oppression, dispossession and low-level but continual maiming and killing of Palestinians by Israel is part of the background to the recent terrible events.
BRENDAN O’BRIEN, London.
... MAY I offer a heartfelt personal message of condolence and support to every victim of the raid on Israel. This is not the time for appeasement or politically crafted words, as there is absolutely no justification for a barbaric assault in which young Israelis and Jewish grandmothers were snatched before our eyes. This atrocity exposes the brutality of the perpetrators and the failure of the current political regional construct, the premise of which was that peace can be achieved through cynicism and brinkmanship.
There are deep-rooted issues, no matter how creatively and repeatedly they are brushed aside, and their resolution will require courage, justice and even-handedness. Let us honour the victims by standing firm in the defence of all civilians in the region without favour or discrimination, especially our Jewish brothers and sisters this week.
PROFESSOR LU’AYY MINWER AL-RIMAWI, former visiting fellow, Harvard Law School.