Your article ‘To resist is to exist’ by Martin Kemp and Eliana Pinto discusses the psychological impact of military occupation on the Palestinian people. If this is a legitimate topic for discussion in your journal – and surely it is – then description of the causative factors has to be part of that discussion. Contrary to your editorial note, this article does not present a one-sided political argument or indeed a political argument of any colour; rather, it describes a cause-and-effect relationship. 

The letters from dissenting correspondents do, on the other hand, present purely political arguments but these are either irrelevant or simply mistaken. Take the Separation Wall; the fact that there have been fewer ‘hostile infiltrations’ since its construction, which is still incomplete, does not prove that this was the result of building the wall, still less that the motive for building it on Palestinian land, rather than along the Green Line (the ceasefire line of 1949) was to deter attackers. Some readers may choose to doubt those historians who, like Ilan Pappé, conclude that the primary reason for building the wall was to facilitate the building of illegal Israeli settlements and to disrupt all aspects of Palestinian life, but either way the fact remains that building the wall where it is has contributed to mental health problems for the Palestinians.

Again, the account of Dr Marton’s views on an Israeli culture of denial, which are shared by many others – including the Israeli Ha’aretz correspondent Gideon Levy – was a straightforward report of what she said that was relevant to the topic under discussion. It may well be the case that a third of Sderot residents exhibit signs of PTSD, and that might be the subject of another article, but it is difficult to see any relevance to a paper about the psychological health of Palestinian people under occupation. 

However, if you will allow me to be as political as some of your correspondents, I might point out, as Robert Fisk has done, that 80 per cent of those living in Gaza now are refugees who were driven out of their homes by the Israeli army in 1948; and many had lived in the Palestinian villages that were destroyed to make way for the towns of Sderot and Ashkelon. Finally, the image of Palestine in 2005 described by one of your correspondents is unrecognisable today: the checkpoints are grotesque, not at all like Heathrow Airport; the treatment of Palestinians is humiliating; and the restrictions of movement are extreme.

David E Pegg MD