The concerted efforts of the UK, Australia and Canada in recognising Palestine deserve applause (UK recognises state of Palestine to ‘keep alive’ the possibility of peace, 21 September). It is also a moral duty to expose the tendentious and deeply cynical argument that the UK’s recognition of Palestinian statehood is “rewarding” Hamas.
Conflating Hamas with the struggle of Palestinian people is not only incorrect. It displays callousness in the face of the collective punishment and deliberate killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians, many of them women and children, and the accelerated settlement drive in the Palestinian West Bank.
The human cost on both sides is real. All efforts should be focused on ensuring that Jews and Arabs live safely with dignity, free from terrorism, whether perpetrated by individuals, organisations or states.
Palestinian statehood is more than a hollow mantra or political slogan. It requires Palestinian institutions free from corruption, with transparency and accountability upheld to the highest international standards. A successful formula for peace and future stability – with the UK playing its historic role alongside the US and regional powers who have accepted that peace and security for Arabs and Jews is the only way forward.
Lu’ayy Minwer Al-Rimawi
Peterborough
• I am a Palestinian, raised and living in Gaza. I obtained a PhD in the UK and in my time there I came to value the friendship of many British people. I also have Jewish acquaintances, some of whom helped me to travel to the UK.
Previously I was a university academic and worked for several universities and international organisations. But in the past two years, I and my children and grandchildren have been forced to flee the places where we were living on 11 successive occasions. Now, we are reduced to surviving in a single tent on an incredibly overcrowded and unhygienic piece of barren ground. All around we have seen countless thousands suffer or die.
It seems especially bizarre that Israel is perpetrating these crimes on the very people who are the closest in origin to themselves. It is clear that our people deserve to have their rights in this land recognised by the international community. Thus I welcome the UK government’s decision to recognise Palestine.
Name and address supplied
• The vision of a rebuilt and ethnically cleansed Gaza peddled by Donald Trump (Cartoon, 18 September) and Benjamin Netanyahu’s ally Bezalel Smotrich is not only an outrageous violation of international law but is sickeningly blind to the ghosts of Jewish history.
In 1939 the Nazi masters of the annexed Polish city of Łódź embarked on an ambitious vision for the city’s urban renewal and Germanisation. Led by the urban planner Wilhelm Hallbauer, this now notorious vision foresaw the comprehensive modernisation of infrastructure and urban amenities according to the latest principles of urban renewal, including a large-scale project of demographic engineering.
While the city’s 30% Jewish population was to be ghettoised and eventually “removed”, the city itself, beautified by parks and lakes, was to become a showcase of German culture in the east.
As a historian of Jewish heritage, I can only weep at the historical illiteracy as well as the utter inhumanity of today’s Israeli vision for Gaza.
Jane Caplan
St Antony’s College, Oxford
• Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
