Israel and Gaza: Despair and What-Ifs

To the Editor:

Re “In Israel, ‘the Darkness Is Everywhere,’” by Megan K. Stack (Opinion guest essay, May 18):

I appreciate Ms. Stack’s essay, in which she makes several important observations about current attitudes among Israelis. However, she leaves out the tragic choices that Palestinians have themselves made in Gaza and the West Bank.

In particular, after the Israeli withdrawal in 2005, Gazans had the opportunity to use huge amounts of international aid to build new residential communities and seaside commercial and tourist destinations.

Instead, they diverted essentially all investment into war preparations, including the rocket and tunnel technology that has proved so formidable in several wars with Israel since then. The extremism of attitudes in this conflict isn’t limited to one side.

Stephen Hall
San Francisco

To the Editor:

I am grateful to The New York Times for publishing Megan K. Stack’s essay. We need more articles on what it is really like on the ground in Israel, and, as disheartening as it may be, we are all better and more informed for reading it.

Only when Jews in the United States (I am one of them) obtain a greater understanding of the horrible plight of the Palestinian people and what they have been subjected to over decades will we be able to affect our government’s policies to produce a more hopeful outcome for the region.

Until then, this vicious cycle will continue, because, as Ms. Stack so eloquently described, “there is no wall thick enough to suppress forever a people who have nothing to lose.”