A pleasure to hear from Shimon Peres that "Israel welcomes the Arab spring" (Clash of generations, 1 April), particularly given its initial response, as reported in both Haaretz and the Jewish Chronicle, of fear and anxiety to the uprising in Egypt. I have no idea of the correctness of this assertion – but the rest of what he writes does make me wonder which planet Peres is living on.
Israel may have given some support to economic development in the occupied territories, but this goes hand in hand with the destruction of farmland for Jewish settlements, the inhabitants of which often violently prevent Palestinian farmers from reaping their harvest. There may be the establishment of institutions in some areas of Palestine, but this is in tandem with Israeli abuse of human rights through house demolitions, night-time military incursions into villages where there is peaceful protest against the occupation, humiliation at the numerous checkpoints and in many other ways. Yes, there are Palestinian security forces; they are subject to and controlled by Israeli security. With peaceful co-operation such as this, who needs war?
Sylvia Cohen
London
• Shimon Peres's self-reinvention as a peace-loving elder statesman fools no one who knows his real record as father of Israel's nuclear weapons programme from 1957, his responsibility while Israel's prime minister for the 1996 massacre of 106 Lebanese civilians at UN headquarters in Qana, and his presidency over a state which perpetrates a daily war of repression against Palestinian civilians demanding the very freedom and democracy Peres claims to know so much about. Israel's brutal response to the 2006 democratic election, blockading the new Hamas-led government, is a case in point. It is not the Arabs but Israel which needs to join "the family of democratic nations".
Ghada Karmi
London
• It is very important that Judge Goldstone regrets his report into the Gaza war, which accused Israel of intentionally killing Gaza civilians and committing war crimes (UN judge backtracks over Gaza war findings, 4 April). Now he says that there was no intentionality. He also says that the indiscriminate firing of rockets by Hamas at Israeli civilians is a serious war crime. In his opinion the laws of armed conflict apply no less to non-state actors, such as Hamas, than they do to national armies.
The Geneva convention states in part III, section I, article 28: "The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations." This means that when the Hamas combatants fire their weapons and hide among civilians, they are not immune from attack. Also, if civilians get hurt, the responsibility lies with those who hide among civilians and endanger their lives.
Dr Jacob Amir
Jerusalem, Israel