“Oppressive” measures on West Bank are a response to attacks

 FRIDAY 14 MARCH 2014

 

Mr McKenna (letter 13th March on heraldscotland) refers to Israeli “oppression” (of the Palestinians). The reality is that that 20% of Israel’s population are Palestinian Arabs, living peacefully and prosperously within the pre-1967 borders of Israel. Let me assure him that walls and “oppressive” measures in the West Bank are a reaction to and not the cause of the Israel-Palestinian tension. Such measures owe their existence to intifadas, stabbings, rock-throwing at fast-moving traffic, families attacked in their home, and even a baby horribly and brutally slaughtered in his cot.  Even within Israel’s pre-1967 borders, not only Palestinians but I, as a UK tourist, and my Israeli friends are subject to security checks at shopping-malls, and stopped at checkpoints on roads leading to the airport and on roads leading to Israel from the West Bank. These are basic common-sense measures to ensure security for citizens but with security and, consequently, terrorist attacks improving  many have been dismantled.  

 

Jews living in the West Bank Jewish settlements, are not forcefully imported, as Mr. McKenna asserts; even though a politically sensitive issue, they are nevertheless living there by free-choice.   At the same time Mahmoud Abbas has declared that under an independent Palestine Jews will be declared personae non gratae and will be completely banned from being there.

 

Mr McKenna (letter 13th March) accuses the world of hypocrisy in its dealings with Israel, but not everyone sees the world as he does. David Cameron yesterday referred to “the ridiculous situation where last year the United Nations General Assembly passed 3 times as many resolutions on Israel as on Syria, Iran and North Korea put together” and notably called for “an end to the outrageous lectures on human rights that Israel receives at the United Nations from the likes of Iran and North Korea”. As the P.M. said yesterday  in Israel “I really appreciated for the first time just how narrow and vulnerable this land is. A vulnerability that has already seen 38 missiles from Gaza this year alone”.

 

A proper lasting peace demands an end to threats of annihilation, the withdrawal of support for terrorism  and an end to daily rocket bombardments from Gaza.

 

M. Green