Originally posted in August 2022, but now slightly amended
Many months ago I signed a petition asking the UK Government what it was doing in response to the issue of apartheid in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. I got a copy of the official reply from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. I’m sure there are many diplomats and civil servants well aware of what was done to Palestine in 1948, the further tragedies of 1967, and many reports of the persistent and continuous traumas inflicted on its people ever since. However, those who replied ignored this and merely re-iterated the standard UK governmental view.
They began by saying that ‘we are aware of these reports, and do not agree with the terminology used within them’. The sticking-point, possibly, was the word ‘apartheid’.
Spokespeople for the Israeli government have claimed that this interpretation is ‘fictional’. Yet, whether or not the term ‘apartheid’ is used, it is difficult to deny the facts on the ground which give rise to that interpretation: of invasion, military occupation, extrajudicial killing, banishment, ethnic cleansing, the expropriation of property, colonisation, the destruction of infrastructure and livelihoods, barriers to physical movement and the denial of human rights.
Two-state ‘solution’?
The FCDO’s letter claims the UK government’s ‘clear and long-standing’ aim of ‘a negotiated settlement leading to a safe and secure Israel living alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state, based on 1967 borders’. ‘Long-standing’ this aim certainly is. The question of the partition of Palestine has been raised continuously, at least since the Nakba of 1948, and the subsequent UN Partition Plan, which was never agreed. During and since that time, whatever negotiations have taken place, they have been undermined by the Israeli government’s single-minded colonisation of all of the land between the River and the Sea.
The so-called ‘two-state solution’ has never been a ‘solution’, but has in effect been a delaying tactic covering this inexorable takeover. The UK government, despite its words about a negotiated settlement, continues to abet this takeover, politically, economically and militarily. George Orwell would call this ‘doublethink’.
Democratic values?
The FCDO’s letter stresses the idea of Britain as a ‘friend’ of Israel, though not, so far as I can see, of Palestine. It says the government is ‘appalled by recent terrorist attacks’ against Israel, but does not seem equally appalled by Israel’s 77 years of terror tactics against the indigenous people of Palestine.
It also claims that ‘Israel’s long-standing commitment to democratic values is one of its great strengths as a fellow democracy’. Yet in Israel only ethnic Jews have full citizenship. Palestinians living in Green Line Israel, the land of their birth, have limited rights, and those in the West Bank or East Jerusalem or south Lebanon or northern Syria have even fewer, while those in Gaza, it emerges, have no rights, not even to life. It takes a big leap to recognise this regime as a ‘fellow democracy’.
The Israeli government’s aim appears to be continued expansion, to the Jordan and beyond, until the present situation, costly in every possible sense, becomes normalised. Palestinians lose their lives and livelihoods, Israel loses its soul. Pious words about a ‘negotiated settlement’ and blind adherence to an always unacceptable and now impossible ‘two-state solution’ are irrelevant, as long as Western doublethink helps to keep this injustice in place. At least from 1917, the UK government has been heavily involved in creating this mess and now seems to be doing its best to help perpetuate it. A real ‘friend’ of Israel, would be facing - and stating - the truth. It would be working energetically to look for alternatives to this destructive dystopia.
Photo: FCDO building in Whitehall - Artofit
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