According to press reports, two traumatised lions have been moved from Gaza to a new home in Jordan. Let me apologise in advance for dwelling on the plight of animals when more than 1,200 people, including hundreds of innocent children, were killed in the 50-day onslaught on that beleaguered enclave.

On reading the recent letter by Derek O’Flynn of the Israeli embassy staff, I am reminded of the fact that Israel is a state self-declared for Jews only. 

The Israeli military says it is permitting hundreds of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to pray at Jerusalem’s most important mosque for the first time since 2007.

Medical officials in Gaza City say an Israeli air strike has killed four people who were attending a funeral.

Jim Monaghan (in Letters to the Editor, August 14) draws parallels between the Northern Ireland situation and that of Gaza, implying that — like the IRA — Hamas is merely fighting for the rights of its people.

The Hamas/Israeli conflict has dehumanised the Gazan people. Dehumanisation is not new in war. 

Germany, France and Britain have proposed reactivating a European Union mission on the Egypt-Gaza border to help stabilise the Palestinian enclave after a month-long war, a German diplomatic source said.

AS the slaughter of the innocents in Gaza has increased in recent days, some people have been making comparisons between the Israelis and Adolf Hitler.

Israel has said it is calling up another 16,000 reservists, giving the military the ability to substantially widen its bloody Gaza offensive.

Fighting in Gaza continued to rage yesterday — displacing thousands more Palestinians in the battered territory even as US Secretary of State John Kerry said indirect truce talks between Israel and Hamas had made some progress.

The international media has much to answer for in the conflict between Israel and Gaza in their failure to report consistently on the issue.

Israel has launched a large-scale ground offensive in the Gaza Strip, escalating a 10-day military operation to try to destroy Hamas’ weapons arsenal, rocket firing abilities and tunnels under the Palestinian territory’s border with Israel.

Israel briefly deployed ground troops inside the Gaza Strip for the first time today as its military warned Gazans to evacuate as part of a widening offensive that has killed more than 160 Palestinians.

Egypt’s new government has imposed the toughest border restrictions on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip in years, sealing smuggling tunnels, blocking most passenger traffic and causing millions of pounds in economic losses.

RONI KEIDAR’S house is close to the Gaza Strip — so close that when the border heats up, she hears the attacks from both sides: The thud of Israeli missiles hammering targets inside the Hamas-controlled area and the whoosh of Palestinian rockets being launched into Israel.

A ceasefire between Israel and the Gaza Strip’s Hamas rulers brought an end to eight days of the fiercest fighting in years and possibly signalling a new era of relations between the bitter enemies.

Israel and Hamas agreed yesterday to an Egyptian- brokered ceasefire to halt an eight-day conflict that killed 162 Palestinians and five Israelis.

The world’s top diplomats were today trying to end the week-long convulsion of Israeli-Palestinian violence.

Israel and Hamas continued to bombard each other today as attempts began to broker a cease-fire after six days of death and destruction.

The Gaza Strip erupted in celebratory gunfire today with news that the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate had secured the presidency in neighbouring Egypt.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza celebrated the homecoming today of their prisoners and demanded militants seize more Israeli soldiers for future exchanges.

SARAH STACK’S short piece on the Gaza flotilla (News, June 21) lacked only one thing: a statement from the Israeli side.

Egypt will open its only crossing with the Gaza Strip this weekend, the Cairo military government announced today, significantly easing a four-year blockade on the Hamas-ruled territory but setting up a potential conflict with Israel.

Four people were reported to have been shot dead today when the Israeli military opened fire on a group of Syrians trying to cross the border along the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.

The Free Gaza Movement will keep up its campaign until the siege that is violating human rights is fully lifted, writes Fintan Lane

THE international community must pressure Israel to go beyond easing its Gaza embargo and throw open the territory’s long-blockaded borders, the EU foreign policy chief said after a tour of the Hamas-run coastal strip.

An Israeli military official has this afternoon said that all foods would be freely let in to Gaza, effective immediately.

Israel agreed today to ease its land blockade on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, hoping to quell growing international criticism after a deadly sea raid.

Israel will significantly ease its blockade of the Gaza Strip today, officials said, in an effort to blunt widespread international criticism after a deadly Israeli commando raid on a blockade-busting flotilla.

Israel today rejected calls from the United Nations and others for an international investigation of its deadly raid on the Gaza aid flotilla.

MORE than two dozen Israeli soldiers who fought in the Gaza war say the military forced Palestinians to serve as human shields and used reckless firepower that caused needless deaths, according to a report released yesterday.

PRESIDENT Barack Obama has acknowledged that Palestinians cannot be treated as they have been by Israel and that progress will have to be made towards establishing and independent homeland for those displaced by Israeli expansion.

Five people died when a tunnel under the Gaza border collapsed early today.

IF NICENESS had anything to do with it, George Mitchell will pull off Middle Eastern peace by Easter.

Tens of thousands of children wearing uniforms and carrying satchels flocked back to schools throughout the Gaza Strip today, days after Israel ended its fierce military operation against the territory’s rulers, the militant group Hamas.

The United Nations Gaza HQ was set on fire by an Israeli bombardment today as the organisation’s chief Ban Ki-moon was in the area on a peacemaking mission.

BLOCKED from all sides with no means of escape, Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinians are trapped in the battlefield between Hamas fighters and Israeli troops.

HAVING read Steven King’s column (January 7), I can only conclude he has never been to the occupied Palestinian territories and conducted his research by visiting Israeli websites.

I OBJECT strongly to Steven King’s column (January 7). The distortion of fact and history that it embodies is astounding.

Israeli troops battled Palestinian gunmen in a suburb of Gaza City today in one of the fiercest ground battles so far as Israel’s military inched toward Gaza’s population centres and residents braced for an expansion of the offensive.

Israel rained bombs and leaflets on Gaza, pounding suspected rocket sites and tunnels used by Hamas militants and warning of a wider offensive despite frantic diplomacy to end the bloodshed.

Israel gave a guarded welcome to a ceasefire proposal for Gaza today raising hopes its bloody 12-day offensive could be winding down.

FOR Palestinians hunkered down under Israeli fire in the Gaza Strip, among the most powerful symbols of the conflict are the homemade rockets militants have fired at Israel, and which Israel says it is now determined to stop.

International outrage grew over civilian deaths in Gaza tonight after an Israeli bombardment killed at least 34 people, many of them children, near a UN school.