Palestinians continue to suffer despite the ceasefire - Yorkshire Post Letters

Statistics tell us a lot but they cannot fully describe the misery of those who suffer. We have a ceasefire in Gaza which Trump insisted would stop the killing. The horror was started (7/10/23) by the Hamas attack on a very small part of Israel. 1,219 Israelis were killed including 38 children. Hostages were taken.

The BBC reported that, before the assault, an Israeli military intelligence unit reported to their commander that a Palestinian attack was imminent; the unit was told to ignore what they were observing.

Since that brutal attack the Israeli response has caused 70,600 Palestinian deaths including around 20,000 children. Even since the ‘ceasefire’ (10/10/25) the OCHA UN organisation has recorded 400 Palestinian deaths.

UNICEF reports very heavy rains and high winds in Gaza. Night time temperatures, as low as 7 degrees, are faced by 3/4 million Palestinians. Most of these people, refugees in their own country, have been forced to move multiple times to escape the worst of Israeli bombardments.

Most moved on foot carrying diminishing amounts of spare clothing and utensils. They now survive often in temporary tents made of plastic sheeting. A typical case: a family of six ‘living’ in a tent measuring eight square metres. These now forgotten survivors have received 1/4m kids clothing kits and 600,000 blankets. The rains continue. How do you dry soaking blankets and clothes in a ticky-tack tent without heating? Children face death through hyperthermia during this ceasefire. The worst of the winter is yet to come.

Watching on is Mr Trump's son-in-law, J. Kushner, who intends to seize considerable profits for the Trump family when rebuilding of Gaza begins.

In the other part of Palestine, the West Bank, violence also creates inhabitant refugees.This area was designated Palestinian in the 1947 International Agreement and in the last two years 17 nations have recognised the sanctity. of a future Palestinian state.

Despite this 60 per cent of the West Bank is now occupied by Israeli settlers who force Palestinians to quit their villages. Israeli soldiers supposedly police the area and Netanyahu has promised action to stop the theft of land but to no avail. An MP typifies right-wing Israeli attitudes; he states that he "doesn't know what the word Palestine means" and that the people living there, often for centuries, "are illegal and (only) Arabs".

Meanwhile in the UK activists supporting Palestine have been imprisoned without trial, some for more than two years. It is certain that a small number of these prisoners vandalized military equipment drawing attention to the continued export of plane spares used by Israel in flights over Palestine.

Other crimes have apparently been committed by the prisoners but our Government refuses to provide any detail. Documents relevant to the upcoming trial have been withheld from defence lawyers and letters home have been censored.

Several of the accused have been on hunger strike.

Elsewhere the most powerful man in the world, supposedly giving the media facts, shouts at women reporters that they are "piggy" and "ugly both inside and out". Are we to accept that this total absence of virtues, truth and logic in what, in many ways, is the centre of the world - the White House - somehow excuses the situation in Palestine?

Put another way: why has the word justice been removed from dictionaries?