On a day in which there was joy and celebration in Israel and accolades for President Donald Trump and his entourage, I read and then tearfully reread Nesrine Malik’s percipient analysis of the culpability of our government and many others for prolonging the suffering of innocent Palestinian people (While the perpetrators of Gaza’s genocide pose as its saviours, survivors return home – to a wasteland, 13 October).

The UK’s continued sale of arms to Israel, its criminalisation of those silently demonstrating in support of Palestinians and Keir Starmer’s lack of moral courage in failing to speak out against Israel’s genocidal war will remain a stain on this government’s reputation and this country for decades to come.

There is no hierarchy in the scale of suffering, whether it be that of the victims of the Hamas attacks on 7 October 2023, that of the Israeli hostages, or that of those Palestinians killed, mutilated or displaced. My Jewish wife and I will utter a sigh of relief at the release of the remaining hostages and the cessation of the relentless daily waging of war. We will not, however, be listening to or watching the sickening celebrations and the adulation being claimed by those claiming credit for the peace but who played a part in perpetrating the killing.
Peter Riddle
Wirksworth, Derbyshire

Who can truly claim victory now in this devastating Israel-Gaza war? Can Hamas consider itself victorious when more than 67,000 Palestinians have been killed, including thousands of children, and much of Gaza lies in ruins after its merciless, brutal attack on Israeli civilians?

If Benjamin Netanyahu’s goal was to eliminate Hamas and act in self-defence, how can the deaths of 18,457 children be justified? With Gaza destroyed and Hamas still standing, what conclusion can we draw? Either the Israeli government has failed in its objective, or the true aim was never to dismantle Hamas but rather to crush Palestinian civil life, to appease the Israeli public.

Then there is Donald Trump’s hubris. He supplied weapons to Israel for its destruction of Gaza, only to later call for restraint – and demand a Nobel prize for that. In the end, there are no winners here, only leaders chasing political gain at the expense of human life.
Dr Radhamanohar Macherla
Hornchurch, London

The two biggest barriers to turning a ceasefire into a permanent peace are the twin evils of blind optimism and fatalism: the assumption that success is either inevitable or impossible. That, allied to the tendency to make the perfect the enemy of the good. What it takes instead is persistence, a willingness to persist through the inevitable ups and downs of implementation.

It took nine years to go from the theory of the Good Friday agreement to the reality of Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, as the leaders of unionism and republicanism, sitting around the same executive table – nine years to get the right sequence of arms decommissioning, demilitarisation, reform of the police and, finally, power-sharing.

The Middle East process will, no doubt, follow the same tortuous pattern, but it can succeed if the international community persists in driving it through. Palestinians and Israelis may never trust – or even like – each other, but persistence can help them do something much more important: treat each other as equals. That is the true road to a permanent peace.
Tom Kelly
Northern Ireland Office 1998-2001; prime minister’s spokesman 2001-07