It must be a long time since such a brazen flouting of international law was announced simply in an “In brief” paragraph in the print edition of the Guardian (Israel green-lights 19 new Jewish settlements, 22 December). Already Palestinian Christians describe living there as like being in a small prison inside a larger one. When will the international community wake up to the fact that Israel will continue to flagrantly face down international law until serious sanctions are brought to bear?
Rev David Haslam
Evesham, Worcestershire

Thank you, Jacqueline Noble, for reminding us that “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” (Letters, 17 December). Shelley’s line, from Ode to the West Wind, was quoted by Alan and Marilyn Bergman in their lyric for You Must Believe In Spring, to music by Michel Legrand. I recommend the recording by Tony Bennett and Bill Evans – an utterly convincing vocal, and a solo piano evocation of a frozen stream, melting and skipping down a mountainside.
Tim Sanders
Leeds

Regarding the anonymous letter about those who don’t do Christmas gifts (19 December), for some of us, a gift carries real meaning; my gifts are always my time, and my ears. Listen to others and give them your time to do whatever it is they wish to do.
David Wheatley
Ramsgate, Kent

Comparative weights are so hard to imagine. Thanks, Guardian, for giving us a reference point that we have all experienced, and can relate to, in reporting that a fatberg was “a third more than the heaviest of the British army’s battle tanks” (Fatberg weighing 100 tonnes discovered in east London sewer, 22 December).
Ian Saville
London

Years ago, when I was driving in Clackmannanshire, the road sign for the village of Crook of Devon had this written underneath: “Twinned with The Thief of Bagdad” (Letters, 23 December).
Catherine Waterson
Bishopbriggs, East Dunbartonshire