Dear Sir,
Approximately 2,900 children lived on each square kilometre of urban space in the Gaza Strip in the past October. Escaping Israeli hostilities, many of these children have migrated southwards to Rafah, causing an incredibly high child density of nearly 8,700 children per square kilometre in southern Gaza, as compared to Dublin’s 240 children per square kilometre, which is 36 times lesser.
In the wake of absent peace treaties, Israel’s plans to remove over a million civilians from surrounding Rafah areas before staging any assaults, leave the fleeing refugees devoid of any safe or feasible place to seek refuge. Predictably, any Israeli offence in this dramatically congested southern region could result in a disaster, overwhelmingly augmenting the child mortality rate well beyond the present figure of 13,000.
To express their apprehensions regarding this matter, the EU and other global governments should initially insist on excluding Israel from significant family-centric events such as the Eurovision and the Olympics.
Yours faithfully,
Brian Flanagan,
Blackrock,
County Dublin.