Clare Short needs to be more informed

Jan 30 2009 Letters To The Editor

Dear Editor, Clare Short’s disingenuous article (“West must hold Israel to the law”, 22nd January) contains the same old, oft repeated wild accusations and a litany of untruths.

The assertion that Hamas held to the June – October Tahidyeh (lull) is untrue. Rockets and mortars were fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip during every month of the so-called lull. If that’s not a clear enough violation, on October 31 an Israeli patrol, in Israel, was hit by advanced anti-tank missiles fired from across the border.

Israel has never ‘besieged’ the Gaza Strip. A siege is an hermetic seal. Explain, then, the border crossings between Israel and the Gaza Strip which are used for the daily delivery of food, medicine and fuel. Temporary closure of the crossings is a non-lethal response to rocket and mortar attacks across the border, or even attacks on the crossings themselves – in April 2008 a terrorist squad managed to break into the crossing terminal responsible for fuel delivery to Gaza, and summarily killed two civilians who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The November 4 Israeli operation – a commando raid, not a bombing attack – was not some arbitrary excursion by the IDF who had decided to go out on a jolly. It was an urgent counter-measure in response to the discovery of a tunnel approaching the border for the purpose of kidnapping Israelis, exactly as was done with Gilad Shalit – still in captivity, 950 days on.

It was Hamas who declared that the ‘ceasefire’ would not be renewed. Israel’s December 27th operation was not, as Ms Short portrays it, a response to a Hamas peace overture, but to their renewed bombardment of Israeli population centres, the final straw.

The idea that the rocket attacks would stop if the ‘siege’ was lifted is also a joke – more than 8,000 rockets & mortars have been fired at Israel since 2001 – long before Hamas came to power, long before Hamas brutally expelled Fatah from Gaza, long before the ‘siege’.

In another cutting-edge piece of analysis, we are told that Israel has a “long record of expanding settlements and refusing to negotiate”. So Camp David, Madrid, Oslo, Wye Valley, the unilateral 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, Annapolis, not to mention the fact that the current Kadima government was elected on a platform of further withdrawal and a negotiated two-state solution – all of these are irrelevant?

And according to Ms Short, Hamas is now willing to accept a two-state solution, although Jimmy Carter was under the same impression last year, before a swift and sharp contradiction from Khaled Meshaal, Hamas’ political leader. Then he insisted that Hamas would never recognise the Jewish state, as per their founding charter: “the land of Palestine has been an Islamic Waqf throughout the generations... no one can renounce it or part of it”; and “There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by Jihad”. Perhaps she knows something different...

Israel wants peace more than anything else and to co-exist with all its neighbours as it already does with Egypt and Jordan. It is interesting to see that there has been no significant outcry to the situation in Gaza from the West Bank, because Palestinians there are seeing the significant positive benefits of Palestinian Israeli co-operation, which will become even greater when a peace agreement is negotiated – something that Israel will do everything possible to achieve with Palestinians who want the same.

Ruth Jacobs,
Israel Information Centre Midlands,
Ellis St, Birmingham.

-----

Licensees are right to protest about soaring cost of a pint

Dear Editor, The licensees who broke ranks and protested publicly about the ludicrous price of a pint charged in the UK deserve the nation’s thanks (Post, January 27).

I have held a drinks licence and know from people who still work in the trade how much the fat cat brewery barons and pub chains are forcing licensees to charge.

The current licensed trade was set up by the Marquis of Granby to provide jobs for NCOs returning from the Peninsular War.

He thought these people were the best people to keep order in pubs.

The licensed trade is bedevilled by obscene rents, secret discounts on barrels and bullying area managers who are only interested in power and an easy life.

Despite what the brewery barons and pub chains claim, there is NO reason why the average pint should even cost £1.50.

If the trade was as free as the Marquis intended, I suspect the cost would drop to £1.30 a pint.

Chris Youett.