Scotsman Letters: Israel is flouting humanitarian laws in Gaza

People on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing watch as a convoy of lorries carrying desperately needed humanitarian aid crosses to the Gaza Strip yesterday

Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer both say upholding the laws of war is essential, but have failed to call out breaches in Gaza.

Israel has gone for collective punishment of all Gazans, with a high population of children, including non-stop bombing and restriction of food, water, electricity and fuel. This siege is forbidden under international law. Amnesty International has also said the 16-year blockade by Israel on Gaza already amounted to collective punishment, a war crime.

Israel has also refused humanitarian access through its border. Genocide is defined as ‘acts of killing…deliberately inflicted on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction’.

Amnesty International and the International Committee of the Red Cross have also said Israel’s evacuation order is not in line with humanitarian law. The evacuees must have adequate hygiene, health, safety and nutrition and be able to return to their homes as soon as possible. Israel is ignoring all this.

Amnesty International presumes the Gazans are being forced from their homes. This has happened before in Israel when the Palestinians, who are semitic, were forced from their homes in Israel and their land taken. Some ended up as refugees in Gaza. The Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights has said the evacuation order combined with the siege of Gaza is not lawful temporary evacuation but ‘forcible transfer of civilians’ – against international law, ie ethnic cleansing.

All responsible leaders need to make sure international laws are upheld and genocide and ethnic cleansing stopped now.

Pol Yates, Edinburgh

Labour failings

Alexander McKay says the writing is on the wall for Scottish nationalism and English Labour is now the party of the people (Letters, October 21).

I have news for Mr McKay. Support for Scottish independence hasn’t fallen and Scots don’t want more Tory austerity and incompetence but that’s exactly what they’ll get from a Starmer Labour administration.

If it wins, Labour will inherit an economy at the bottom of the G7, with stagnant wages and productivity, collapsing public services and widening inequality. And yet Labour is promising economic growth and improved services without additional government spending. That’s impossible.

The UK is literally falling apart and Labour’s failure to recognise this fact and then do something about it is malfeasance of the highest order.

Labour will never be the party of the people because it has turned its back on proportional representation that would give the people a voice. It won’t renationalise public services, invest in infrastructure and green technologies, increase taxes on wealth and pay public workers a living wage. And it won’t even talk about the damage Brexit has inflicted. Like the Tory Party, it is a profoundly neoliberal entity, interested in gaining power not to improve people’s lives but to further enrich the elites who fund it.

England’s remaining colonies – Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – all have a choice – sink deeper into the morass that calls itself the UK or break free to finally govern themselves.

Leah Gunn Barrett, Edinburgh

Flood protection

Professor Gordon Masterton, chair of future infrastructure at Edinburgh University, was interviewed by Martin Geissler on the BBC’s Sunday Show yesterday about the recent floods. He advocated a "more joined up, systems-based holistic model", since many incidents are caused by conditions and geography in other council areas and obtaining agreement on funding and planning can be difficult.

This should be the responsibility of the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency and comparisons were made with the relative success of the agency in England and Wales. Sooner or later, the issue and cost of protection and resilience will join that of heat pumps and electric cars, and since Scotland produces .01 per cent of global warming but will incur all the impact from other countries' carbon emissions, perhaps spending should be diverted to mitigiating the impacts.

Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven

Renewables costs

Brian Wilson provided a litany of areas where the SNP have evaded their responsibilities, but one project, namely the repayment plan to achieve a Just Transition, was not included in his Perspective article (October 21).

If the warning from Vattenfall that renewable projects have doubled in price is correct, then the debt arising from the Green Revolution detailed in a paper issued by the Climate Emergency Review Group in 2020 will now increase to £300 billion.

In addition, as the SNP plan to increase the electricity grid capacity from 15GW to 85GW by 2045, then the 45GW of additional wind power comes with a debt of around £270bn whilst the media claims that ' the transport and storage of hydrogen poses huge technical and financial challenges ' would indicate a further debt of around £270bn for the gas turbine project needed to keep the lights on in Scotland.

That makes the total debt for a Just Transition to be around £840bn or £280,000 per household. Repayment of such a debt indicates the truth in the claim that 'independence is irrelevant until we repay the climate change debt’ should be a paramount concern for every political party at Holyrood!

Ian Moir, Castle Douglas

Brecon or Brechin?

As Storm Babet slammed into Angus and Aberdeenshire, both BBC Scotland and London based correspondents covered the devastation.This duplication was, surely, unnecessary.

It is unacceptable that the latter reports mispronounced, eg Brechin, Forfar, Montrose and Arbroath etc. Indeed, I was becoming increasingly concerned for Brecon in Powys, Wales!

This is particularly galling given the commendable care and attention BBC News puts in to correctly pronouncing the most obscure locations in Africa and Asia.

John V Lloyd, Inverkeithing, Fife

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