Madam, - According to Prof Benny Morris, the Israel-Palestine conflict has, from its beginnings, "been treated with emphatic partisanship by commentators and historians". Sean Gannon's latest contribution to the debate (Opinion, August 15th) represents a disturbing extreme in this trend.
Mr Gannon refers to the Israeli government's blockade of Gaza as a process of "economic sanctions" whose legitimacy is "enshrined in the UN Charter". Eight human rights and aid agencies, including Amnesty International, Oxfam and Trócaire, produced a report last March entitled "The Gaza Strip: A Humanitarian Implosion". They were unanimous in describing the blockade as an illegal and indiscriminate collective punishment that had "increased polarisation at the expense of security for both Israelis and Palestinians". The report documented the rapid slide of Gaza's economy into outright ruin as a result of the blockade, along with a litany of pointless human rights violations.
In December 2007, only 64 per cent of patients in need of medical care were granted permits to leave Gaza. Some of these were later prevented from crossing the border. According to the World Health Organisation, 20 such patients, five of whom were children, died between October and December last year. This policy violates Article 17 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Mr Gannon's shabby argument that an amendment to the convention fails to "list fuel or electricity" as necessary to a population's survival is a new low in journalistic sophistry. Preventing such repairs and supplies has left hospitals unable to operate basic life-saving equipment. Decaying sewage systems have been left to spew into residential areas and rivers, leading to serious risk of disease. The overall blockade has caused the suspension of 95 per cent of Gaza's industrial operations and 80 per cent of its population now rely on humanitarian aid to survive.
In his comments on the education rights of Palestinians, Mr Gannon appears oblivious that 2,000 children dropped out of school in five months during the siege. A survey by the UN Relief and Works Agency in September 2007 reported an 80 per cent failure rate among grades four to nine.
While the Israel-Palestine issue is complex, some facts are not in doubt. We have a duty to consider these in our judgments. It is difficult to know if commentators of Mr Gannon's school of thought are engaged in a deliberately sinister agenda of misrepresentation, or if they are genuinely blind to the logical and moral absurdity of their position. Whatever their motives, they contribute in no small measure to the sanitising of a brutal colonial campaign.- Yours, etc,
LIAM QUAIDE, Mayor Street, Dublin 1.