Dear Sir Keir

Do you not understand that the leadership of the Israeli government has selective hearing?

It hears all the words of sympathy for its losses of life and support for its right to defend its people, but it is deaf to warnings  about infringing international law.

So, when you preface your remarks about the current crisis by yet again emphasising that it is all the fault of Hamas and the Palestinians, the rest of your words are lost to the ether.

Your Labour HQ staff did their best to discourage  members and MPs from attending last weekend’s nation-wide demonstrations in support of peace in Israel/Palestine.

To whom were you showing obeisance?

Was it to the people of Israel? Or was it to their extreme right-wing government?

Was it to the self-appointed Board of Deputies?

Was it to your big donors?

Even the Prime Minister, among his remarks in the House Commons on 16th October, spoke of the necessity of a two-state solution, giving the Palestinian people statehood. You could not bring yourself to concede that much. Why not?

 

Is it because, like the Israeli government, you do not wish to see a two-state solution.  The Netanyahu government clearly wants a one-state solution, Israel occupying the whole of Palestine, the Palestinians being confined to ever smaller enclaves or forced out completely.

The recently promulgated Nation-State Law describes  the land of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people

Israel “disengaged” from  Gaza in 2005, finding it too hot to handle. It was hoped that the Palestinian authority, under the control of Fatah, would then govern both Gaza and the West Bank. However, it was Hamas, the more militant party, which does not recognise Israel’s right to territory in Palestine, that took control of Gaza.

So, we have both sides, in this long war, with recalcitrant positions.

Hamas and Hezbollah are both islamist, bogoted, paramilitary and opposed to the existence of Israel in Palestine.

Since its foundation, Israeli governments have not been entirely secular, seeing themselves as Jewish and heirs of Israel’s biblical history.

The only Israeli leader who favoured a two-state solution was Yitzhak Rabin, who signed several peace accords with the Palestinian leadership.

In 1994, he and Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

He was assassinated in  1995 by an Israeli extremist. That opened the door to Netanyahu and his belligerent racism.