Abbas needs to eliminate Hamas before he can be a peace-partner

When Commandant (retired) Greenway criticises me for being ‘misleading and incorrect’ in my analysis of the terrorist attacks in Jerusalem (Letters, December 2), it is on the basis that Yoram Cohen, head of Israel’s internal security service, the Shin Bet, told the Knesset these were individual acts ‘and Abbas and the PA were opposed’.

Yet nowhere in my letter did I so much as mention Abbas and the PA, my focus was on the insidious, long-term ambition of Hamas to destabilise Israel by supporting internal terrorist attacks on Israeli Jewish citizens. Despite the fact that Mr Greenway’s experience in Gaza gives him an insight the vast majority of commentators on Israel-Palestine lack, it does not absolve him of the responsibility to quote accurately and inclusively.

In the same address to the Knesset, Cohen informed the member ‘that the Palestinian leader’s sharp criticism of Israel - notably over the status of Temple Mount - could be interpreted by some as a call to arms’. This was the overwhelming emphasis of my letter, in which I neither advocated for, or expressed support for a resumption of the hostilities in Gaza. I merely pointed out that if internal terrorist attacks continue, Netanyahu will have no choice but to respond in order to protect Israel’s citizens.