Dear editor,
Record correspondent David Netterville recently advised Israel “to treat the Palestinians as people and to stop maintaining Gaza as a huge prison cell” if it wanted peace (Tough time believing Israeli missiles could go astray, Letter to the Editor, July 24).
Israel does want peace and has treated the Palestinians as people.
Even as Palestinian rockets were landing in Israel humanitarian aid was still being sent into Gaza and when Israeli rockets disrupted Gaza’s electrical supply Israel made electricity available. If Palestinian hospitals and schools are subjected to Israeli missile attacks it is because Israeli intelligence has revealed that Hamas had hidden its weapons in these facilities. If Israeli missiles have killed civilians it is not because they were the targets but because Hamas has used civilian neighbourhoods as launching sites for its rockets.
Those rockets have been smuggled into the Gaza Strip and are supplied by the Iranian regime which has publicly avowed its intentions of wiping the Jewish state from the map. The blockade of Gaza and the controlled land access from both Israel and Egypt is necessary to stop this smuggling. If Gaza is a “huge prison cell” it is because Hamas has made it one. Even as the recent conflict began people were allowed to freely enter and leave Gaza, hardly the nature of a prison cell.
In the 1990s The Oslo Agreement approved a two-state solution: Israel would recognize a Palestinian State (and even began an elevated highway to connect the two sections across Israeli territory). The Palestinians would have to recognized the existence of the State of Israel.
The Oslo Agreement was accepted by Israel but rejected by the Palestinians. Hamas, which failed to get elected in the whole of Palestine, then seized power in the Gaza Strip. Hamas has stated that its sole purpose for existing is the destruction of the State of Israel.
Delbert Doll
Courtenay