Food for thought over daily life in Gaza

Graeme Eddie (Letters, 2 June) paints a rosy picture of Gaza where he says one million tons of supplies are allowed in by the Israeli border guards manning the controlled crossings. Such is the abundance of consumer products, he avers, that the "shops and souks in the entity are bulging with food, bottled goods, clothes, toys, sweets and cakes". "What suffering and what humanitarian crisis?" he asks.

This sounds good news for the Gazans living in what is arguably the biggest open prison in the world and perhaps Graeme is right. I don't know, having never been there, but if it is the paradise that he describes, perhaps the depressed economy in the entity – as he calls it – could be revived by attracting tourists to what sounds like a veritable Arabian land of plenty?

Travel companies could advertise the joys of sitting among the rubble of bombed-out schools, clinics and houses to watch the helicopter gunships firing missiles (in a targeted way of course) and, maybe for special occasions, the white phosphorus firework display? All of this while stuffing one's face with the sweets and cakes from the souks. It has got me interested for next year's holidays and I bet Thompson is arranging charter flights even now.

TOM MINOGUE

Victoria Terrace

Dunfermline, Fife

While the world's attention is focused on the Israeli attack on the flotilla of peace protestors who were headed for Gaza (your reports), it's easy to lose sight of the bigger picture in our efforts to unravel the sequence of events that led to such carnage. Why are 1.5 million people crammed into a tiny strip of land that is surrounded on all sides by hostile forces that seek to control nearly every aspect of life within?

The Palestinians of the Gaza strip are there because they were forcibly expelled from their villages and land to make way for Jews coming into Palestine to create the Jewish state.

Israel, a highly-militarised nuclear power, always plays the victim in the Middle East when it is the aggressor with insatiable, expansionist ambitions grabbing every bit of land it can from its neighbours. Why are we surprised when the people of Gaza elect Hamas and fight back?

SALWA JONES

Greenbank Loan

Edinburgh

Why do Western "human rights" activists never organise mass protests against Iranian sponsored Hamas and the other gangs who control the Palestinian people?

As far as Hamas and it's brand of Islamic totalitarianism is concerned, a Palestinian has no right to his own life (or property), he exists for the sake of the Palestinian "collective". Any dissent is punished by beatings or death.

D S A Murray

Deepdene Avenue

Dorking, Surrey