Letter to the Editor: The numbers we hear which describe the Palestinian conflict are difficult to relate to our lives here. 

For example, just how big (or small) is the Gaza strip? Well, imagine the road we’d take from Coleford to Cheltenham. That’s the length of the Gaza strip. 

Imagine an area 2 to 3 miles wide on either side of the Coleford-Cheltenham road. That’s the width of the Gaza strip.

Now let us imagine the 2.3 million people (almost half of them children) living in the strip. That is the same population as 18 times the size of Gloucester city, squeezed alongside the Coleford-Cheltenham road.

Then there’s the instruction that those living in the northern half of the strip should travel to the south ‘for safety’. 

So we now have 18 times the population of Gloucester squeezed either side of the road from Coleford to Birdwood, near Huntley. 

Or, put it another way, there would be more than the entire population of Gloucester along every half mile of road through the forest to Birdwood.

That’s not much space for bombs to avoid the half of those who are children.

Michael Heylings, Mitcheldean