DAVID Lacey’s recent letters (HAS, April 28 and May 5) have sought to justify Israel’s Operation Cast Lead attack, and its continuing stranglehold on Gaza, on the grounds of Gaza’s “endless rocket fire” into Israel.

Hamas in the past has, indeed, sent many, usually “homemade”, rockets onto Israeli territory, mainly onto Sderot because that’s as far as its rockets can reach (Sderot, by the way, was formally a small Palestinian town, before Israeli forces – at that time we called them “terrorists” – ejected its population).

But several months before Cast Lead, Hamas and Israel had actually agreed a truce. Hamas kept that truce. But late in 2008 Israel broke it by provocatively sending agents to kill some six Palestinians, who it claimed were terrorists.

Hamas inevitably retaliated by firing rockets again, whereupon Israel – glad of the excuse it had manufactured – launched its huge Operation Cast Lead attack.

Israel makes no mention of the truce Hamas had observed, but simply goes on “justifying” itself by citing Hamas’ previous rocket history, which Hamas doesn’t deny.

One is entitled to wonder whether that whole Cast Lead decision was just a round in Israel’s General Election battle, then at its height...

Stanley Walinets, Mickleton, Barnard Castle, Co Durham.