LETTER: Fake news or just plain ingnorance?

SIR – Taking Mr Teegan’s fake news, or plain ignorance, first. There are not 4,000 settlements between the River and the sea even counting the 2,000 khirbes- ruins on the British 100k Ordnance map – besides all actual villages and towns.

The Israeli government seeks to regularise 4,000 homes. For that matter there are many more irregular polygamous beduin and other Arab squatters’ homes on both sides of the Green Line. Simply because there are ten times as many, than in 1949. 

 We see the same deliberate misguiding of the readership when media claim Israel is going ahead with 3,500 settlements instead of 3,500 homes or buildings. The status quo since Oslo till now is that buildings in Israeli villages and towns increased in number but the number of settlements - towns and villages has not;  excepting in fevered minds, “Who only Ireland know,” apologies to Kipling. 

 Then the utterly misguided political fallacy that 136 countries have recognised a ‘state’ of Palestine (split in two if not three), so Ireland should waste some thousands euro on the same?  The only recognition of an (Arab) state in Palestine that matters to creating peace, is the Israeli recognition in the same way the refused [Palestine] Arab recognition of Israel has needlessly prolonged the1948 War for 70 years.  

Daniel Teegan composes music is his grip on counterpoint - before people misinterpret his initials?

Yours faithfully,           

Frank Adam,

Prestwich,

Manchester.