US president Donald Trump

• NICHOLAS Jacobs rightly says that Israel’s colonial and annexation policy “is bringing disgust and shame upon many diaspora Jews and upon some in Israel itself”, (The Board of Deputies of British Jews is giving succour to the most powerful creator of anti-Jewish feeling worldwide, February 20).

Indeed there is a significantly growing number of Israeli peace activists who criticise the policy of their own country and take an active stance against it (for example, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition).

Hagai El-Ad, executive director of the Israeli human rights centre B’Tselem, reacted recently to Donald Trump’s so-called peace deal by a powerful statement (January 28): “The reality on the ground is already one of full Israeli control over the entire area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and everyone living in it.

“It is a reality of one, inherently undemocratic state. And so, the main change today is that Israel and the Trump administration are taking a step further in laying bare their intention to perpetuate this reality… And all of us here, in one way or another, will remain under the rule of the same government in Jerusalem, a government that works relentlessly to advance the supremacy of one people at the expense of the other, while continually trampling its rights underfoot”.

Arguably the only positive outcome of Trump’s “peace deal” is that Fatah and Hamas’ leaderships have been taking steps to reconcile their long-standing differences in order to create a united front against Trump’s plan to legitimise Israel’s dominance over the Palestinians.

The long-standing separate factions of the past have now been calling on the Palestinians to stand together in order to “confront” Trump’s unlawful plan.

Undoubtedly Trump’s so-called “peace deal of the century” is bound to fail if the Palestinian people ,along with political leaders and human rights supporters around the globe, would undertake a united stance against it.

RUTH TENNE
Goldhurst Terrace, NW6