Sir, – A number of points must be made in response to Israeli ambassador Boaz Modai (Opinion, October 11th).
The ambassador states, “the last thing the West Bank needs is damage to its cohesion and stability”. If anything is a threat to cohesion and stability it is the military occupation by his own government. Indeed, the construction of the separation wall and the policy of house demolitions and land confiscations are surely the greatest threats to the West Bank’s cohesion and stability.
The ambassador’s attempts to minimise the number of settlers by quoting the figure of 350,000 settlers does not take into account the estimated 190,000 Israeli settlers living in Palestinian east Jerusalem, which is considered occupied territory under international law. Claims that Israeli settler houses occupy just 2 per cent of the West Bank ignore the vast areas of land set aside for settlement use and expansion as well as “closed military zones”, which, according to the highly respected Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, brings the total area allocated to settlements to 42 per cent.
References to Area C as “a largely barren area that incorporates a mere 4 per cent of the Palestinian population” are also misleading, not only due to the fertile agricultural land in the Jordan Valley, but also due to Israel’s deliberate attempts to depopulate the area of Palestinians, which include the demolition of 560 Palestinian houses and other structures last year, resulting in 1,006 people losing their homes.
The ambassador’s claim that the Palestinian Authority does not support a ban on trade with settlement goods is simply untrue. Just last June, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad called for a worldwide ban on settlement goods.
Finally, ambassador Modai condemns the “politicisation of charity”. Pope Benedict says of charity, “If we love others with charity, then first of all we are just towards them. Justice is the primary way of charity”.
Our call for a ban on trade with illegal settlements is not motivated by political bias but by the very essence of charity itself. We make no apologies for calling for justice for the Palestinian people according to international law and human rights principles. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Those of us who sympathise with the only liberal democracy in the Middle East might be more likely to scrutinise Israel’s undoubted flaws if only the criticism directed at it wasn’t so disproportionate. Take the homepage of Trócaire’s website, which is filled with exhortations to “end trade with illegal Israeli settlements”.
The settlements are indeed a controversial aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but a cursory glance at basic indicators shows that life expectancy in the West Bank is 75.24 years. This means Lebanese, Turks and Egyptians live, on average, shorter lives than their occupied neighbours.
In his broadside against Israel Trócaire director Justin Kilcullen (Opinion, October 4th) claims Israel is guilty of “widespread human rights abuses” in the West Bank and that Palestinians live “in misery”, but how accurate is this?
For years we have been told that Palestinian suicide bombings are a result of that misery and those abuses, but there have been no terrorist attacks whatsoever in the West Bank this year. Does that mean things are improving or that, just maybe, things aren’t quite as bad as Palestinian activists lead us to believe?
Ninety thousand Sahrawi people have lived in a collection of refugee camps in Algeria since 1975. They are denied access to their homelands in Western Sahara by a wall 2,700km in length. There is little water and no possibility of growing food. Malnutrition is rife. The day I discover Trócaire is sending people to help the Sahrawi and asking for an economic boycott of Morocco might be the day I begin apportioning blame for the conditions under which the freest people in the Arab world live. – Yours, etc,