The US and UK governments repeat the mantra “Two-state solution”, knowing full well that the idea is dead, killed years ago by Israel, which is determined to have a one-state solution, all Palestinians having been driven out or killed, leaving the territory  for Jews alone. That has been the principle of the Israeli government’s policy for many years.

That is why Israel created the Gaza concentration camp. That is why the vicious, armed settlers are protected by the police and IDF, no matter what they do. That is why Israel has been made an apartheid state, in the Hope that more and more Palestinians will get the message and go.

In other blogs I have commented on the leaderships of the Palestinian people. Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian National Authority, is now an insignificant figurehead, overtaken by events. Hamas, which has a dictatorial grip on Gaza, is lead-footed and inflexible.  It is attacked for denying the right of Israel to exist, although the western powers deny the right of Palestine to exist, by consistently refusing to recognise a State of Palestine. Hamas should dump that position, because it is crazy. Israel obviously does exist and is the fourth largest military power in the world. Only an even stronger military (which Hamas patently is not) could end its existence.

In any case, what does “right to exist” mean? It is a meaningless concept, because the denial of existence would entail obliteration, which Hamas dogmatists may propose for Israel (where 20 per cent of the population are their fellow Palestinians), knowing they could do nothing to bring it about. 

So stop saying it.

Yesterday, 22nd May, I joined the London demonstration in support of the Palestinian people.

It was a totally peaceful exhibition of sympathy with the people of Gaza, support for the Palestinian people, their right to have their state recognised, their right to be protected from the settlers and the IDF and the right of the refugees  to return to their homes in Israel. These aims were best summed up in the slogan, FROM THE RIVER (Jordan) TO THE SEA (Mediterranean) PALESTINE WILL BE FREE.

We come to the end of another Intifada.  Israel, armed to the teeth by the US and Britain, has again blasted Gaza and the US and Britain will now contribute to the necessary reconstruction work, which will not be completed by the time Israel decides again to provoke Hamas into an exchange of deadly attacks. Such a waste of blood and treasure.

The US government dares not break this  murderous cycle for fear of their Evangelical bigots and the all-powerful Jewish Zionist lobby.  Britain will not break the cycle, because it is in the embrace of its permanent intercourse of the special relationship with Washington.

If the Labour Party were not a clue-less, gut-less waste of space, it would demand:

Recognise the State of Palestine, with a seat in the UN,

Stop all arms exports to Israel,

Impose sanctions on Israel until it stops oppressing its own citizens who are Palestinian.