Madam, - Tom Cooney (November 5th) makes a dubious case for the Israeli "security fence".
First, it is a wall - six metres high, reinforced concrete, towers every couple of hundred metres, a large belt of land on either side cleared of all vegetation or other structures. Second, he naturally does not make clear that it does not merely separate Israel from the West Bank, but will eventually encompass all of the major Palestinian population centres, on all sides, separating Palestinians from the strategic and heavily (and of course, illegally) Israeli-settled Jordan valley.
Third, Israel has a right to security, but it is not entitled to security at the expense of another people. Fourth, to the extent that the construction of the wall is a breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention, in that it is built on land confiscated from an occupied people, and results in the despoiling of their land and the destruction of their livelihood, it is clearly in contravention of international law.
But from the start of his letter, Tom Cooney displays only the extremity of his views and those of the violent and illiberal Israeli government he so fawningly supports when he uses the language of "disputed territories", in opposition to the entire international legal consensus on the situation. - Yours, etc.,
CONOR McCARTHY,
Ireland-Palestine
Solidarity Campaign,
Dublin 1.