It's painful to think what so many people have been going through in Israel and Gaza since the Hamas attack on Israeli kibbutzim just over a month ago. Opinions seem dangerously polarised not just in the region but also here in Britain.
But apparently that's not entirely the case. I was encouraged to read in the Sunday Times that many Brits have sympathy with both sides. Among those with sympathy for the Israelis, 84% also sympathised with the Palestinians. Even among the most vehement pro-Israel supporters 77% had some sympathy for the Palestinians, with 45% showing them a "great deal" of sympathy. Those that felt most strongly about one side were not necessarily more likely to feel ill of the other.
I've was trying to hold that thought in mind when I watched the news coverage of the pro-Palestinian protests in London on Saturday 11 November. I'm far from alone in thinking that the timing of that protest was deeply disrespectful of our national Armistice Day also known as Remembrance Day. The fact that the protest was not planned for Remembrance Sunday wasn't, to me, a valid reason for finding it acceptable. There are plenty of other days in the year available to protest. The whole sorry spectacle was made more tense by the hullabaloo in the build up to Saturday. I console myself with the thought that it was relatively small numbers of trouble makers, on either side of the argument, while the majority looked on with distaste.
Certainly the people who go out on the streets to protest seem to overwhelmingly favour the Palestinians. In contrast, Hadley Freeman reports that posters of kidnapped Israelis are routinely torn down in London and replaced with pro-Palestinian graffiti. Social media has shown a woman tearing them down because she "didn't believe" Hamas had kidnapped the missing Israelis. Perhaps this is not surprising when a senior Hamas leader has refused to acknowledge that his group even killed any civilians in Israel, saying only "conscripts" were targeted. This notwithstanding ample evidence from the Israelis and various fact check and authoritative news organisations supporting the evidence that 260 people attending a concert in southern Israel were killed on 7 October despite a video widely shared on social media claiming that to be false.
In the immediate wake of the 7 October Hamas attack we didn't see Israeli flags widely flown unlike those of Ukraine flags flown, it seemed, everywhere following the Russian invasion. The F.A. bottled it and didn't light up the Wembley arch in Israeli colours for the England friendly match on 17 October, having illuminated it in the colours of Ukraine, France and Turkey in recent times. Instead the players wore black armbands and there was a minute's silence for "all the victims of the conflict in Israel and Palestine", a Corbynite form of weasel words in the circumstances, I felt.
It's very sad, but look at the context, Freeman noted some say, arguing that sounded pretty indistinguishable from something she calls "justification". Parodying that argument she said, "the babies probably deserved it... their mere existience in Israel means they asked for it."
Freeman also contrasted the small number of non-Jews at a vigil for Israel shortly after October 7 with the diverse crowds at pro-Palestinian rallies. "Well, now we know who would have helped us, and who would have pushed us onto the trains" a friend texted her.
Freeman is a liberal Jew, a two state solution supporter who accepts that Israel and, in particular, the present Israeli givernment has done terrible things to the Palestinians. But worse than what Hamas has done? She felt, even by 15 October, that what was happening in Gaza was a tragedy. But Jews need a homeland and cannot live alongside people set on destroying them. She thought this was understood. But it's clearly not - she says that many who march for a free Palestine believe that Israel should not exist at all and sadly I fear she is right.
I don't doubt that many of the protesters on 11 November are well intentioned. But many are not. Dominic Lawson noted that a female protester in Birmingham held a placard reading "Now do you understand why the trees and rocks have to speak?" Lawson noted that the police must have thought it had a horticultural meaning, when it is actually a call to kill Jews for being Jews*.
A gamut of seemingly random special interest groups turn up at these protests. Freeman reported seeing signs reading "Queers for Palestine" and "Feminists for Gaza" and commented: "wait till you hear how Hamas treats gay people and women there, guys". In contrast, I note Israel isn't just the only democracy in the region, it's one that tolerates sexual and gender diversity more than most countries, as evidenced by the number of LGBT artists who have represented Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest: a remarkable 7 gays, lesbians and a trans woman (twice) between 1998 and 2022.
There seems a complete lack of nuance or any understanding of the intractability of the issues. Freeman noted that if the activists wanted to make a point they could print posters of Palestinian casualties of the conflict and stick them up next to those of the Israeli hostages. But no, they deny the murders and kidnapping happened in a kind of holocaust denial syndrome.
Nevertheless, I thought those arguing for a "proportionate" response from Israel to the Hamas attacks had a strong point, even after I read a Times Journalist whose rejoinder was "just exactly what is a proportionate response to genocide"? I guess from our perspective the need for a proportionate response is as much to avoid the risk of escalation from a local to a regional conflict, with all that implies. In other words, it's sometimes motivated by our own self interest as much as anything else.
Other than following the events of the years since the six day Arab-Israeli war in 1967 brought the issues to my attention as a teenager, I hadn't read much about the history of the conflict until recently. What little I have read may well be inaccurate and partial so I don't claim to have any great understanding of the issues.
I'll bookend my very limited understanding of the background with two points. Firstly, Jews and Palestinians have lived in the area now known as Israel and Palestine since, essentially, the beginning of time. Jews have lived there continuously for around 4,000 years. It's one of the three oldest religions in the world (the others being Hinduism and Zoroastrianism). Around 3,000 years ago the Jews established a monarchy in the land that now includes Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights and parts of Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. The map below is King Saul's unified kingdom of the 12 Jewish tribes:
In the following millennia the Babylonians conquered Israel, the Persians conquered the Babylonians, the Greeks conquered the Persians and then the Romans occupied Israel in the first century BC. In the meantime the Muslim religion had been established by Mohammed in Mecca in modern day Saudi Arabia. While I doubt that everything was always harmonious between the various ethnic and religious groups in the region it seems that there were long periods when, under the control of a distant empire, peace was maintained. But things started to get difficult for the Jews under the Romans and, following the first Jewish-Roman war in 66 - 73 BC in which a state of Israel was briefly declared, the Romans destroyed the main Jewish strongholds (and temples) with what Wikipedia calls "profound demographic, theological, political and economic consequences". In particular many surviving Jews were expelled or displaced.
Thus began the presence of the Jews in many surrounding and some far away states and, perhaps, some of the root causes of antisemitism and the compex history of the last century or so that we can't seem to escape from.
Secondly, the trigger for the current crisis seems to have been the rapprochment that was growing between Saudi Arabia and Israel. It seems clear that the timing of the 7 October Hamas attack was intended to thwart that thaw and prevent it blooming into a more normal relationship, such as Israel has with Egypt. And it seems to have achieved that, at least for the time being. It may not need saying when Hamas has killed and kidnapped so many Israelis but these are not people with any interest in peace and the attack was surely intended to tilt the region back to conflict. In doing so Hamas has effectively put the residents of Gaza on the front line, at least those who don't live in terrorist tunnels contructed with aid money and materials intended for other purposes.
Of course Israel, with its history of being under permanent threat, has a long track record of using force to neutralise its opponents. When many of those opponents have wanted to remove Israel and Jews from the face of the earth that is understandable but it makes long term peace difficult. Under hardline prime minister Netanyahu Israel has often been been hard to like. But is it, as some allege, an "apartheid state"?
I'm uncomfortable about the treatment of Palestinians in Israeli controlled areas but apartheid seems to me an inappropriate comparison. I assumed the tretment of Palestinians in the West Bank would be far better than it would be for Jews in, say, Iran, though having checked I stand corrected on that. There are some 12,000 to 15,000 Jews still living in Iran (or at least there were as recently as 2018). They do suffer some discrimination but are generally allowed to get on with their lives (and worship) despite living in a country whose former president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, repeatedly denied the holocaust happened. Surprisingly it's the largest Jewish population in the middle east outside of Israel. Why so?
The vast majority of the 1 million Jews who lived in Arab states in 1945 became refugees almost immediately after the creation of Israel but there were still over 100,000 in Iran until the 1979 revolution displaced the dynastic Shah with an autocratic Islamic state and so in 1967 they didn't need to move. The number of Jewish refugees in 1967 was similar to the number of Palestinians (700,000) who were displaced or expelled in the Nakba (catastrophe) on the creation of the state of Israel. One might say the displaced Jews had a homeland to go to, though they also travelled destitute. The majority had to learn a new language and get used to living in a very different culture. They were assimilated. In contrast the children and grandchildren of the displaced Palestinians, who generally moved short distances and remained in a linguistically, ethnically and culturally similar society, are still deemed to be refugees, a concept I find a little difficult after 75 years, though this perhaps shows how little progress the international community has made in solving the issues**.
The state of Israel, as originally drawn on the map and before the occupation of the West Bank and Golan Heights, seems almost impossible to defend militarily (see map below). One can understand the security concerns of Israelis in reverting to the pre 1967 borders. Personally I struggle to see how the two-state solution that is the policy of the UK government (and USA and EU) could actually work unless the prospective Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank was peaceful and the two states could live in harmony. I wonder if it is merely paid lip service and if so I can understand why that irritates Palestinian supporters.
Frustratingly, it might have worked at one time: it was proposed by the UN in 1947 and accepted by the Israelis but rejected by the Arab states. Israel declared independence and was immediately attacked by several of the neighbouring Arab states, with the Nakba and all the subsequent events unfolding miserably over the last 7 plus decades.
Of course, just because there were Jewish states in Israel in the very distant past didn't mean one had to be one created there in 1947. There are plenty of other ethnic and religious groups who don't have a homeland, the Kurds and the Uyghurs for example***. Nevertheless that was the decision of the international community in the shattered world that existed at the end of world war II. One might argue it was to assauge guilt at the Holocaust, though pogroms against Jews predated the Nazis and there had been many proponents of a Jewish state in Palestine for decades beforehand. Or one might argue that it was evidently necessary - Freeman's family literally had nowhere to go after WWII (they came from Poland where, even after the fall of the Nazis, there were still pogroms and Jew-hatred).
Some people know who to blame for it all. At a Labour party conference Pro-Palestinian fringe meeting last month one activist blamed it all on Britain. Naturally I'm not having that. One could read up on the history of the establishment of Israel in 1948 for several days. Indeed the Wikipedia entry History of Israel would take a good couple of hours to read and attempt to digest. Britain ended up with responsibility for the area after WW2. Despite the UN resolution in 1947 to implement the two state solution (with Jerusalem under an independent trusteeship) the Security Council and Britain didn't hurry to implement it. Britain continued to detain Jews attempting to enter Palestine (as was). According to the Wikipedia account Britain was wary of upsetting Anglo-Arab relations. Just like the FA recently, sitting on the fence.
Under terrorist/insurgent/freedom fighter (delete as applicable) attacks from both sides Britain pulled out in May 1948, Israel declared iself a state and its Arab neighbours attacked it.
One could blame the Brits for cutting and running I suppose, but they clearly weren't welcome as peace keepers. Who would want the job now? While all this was happening Britain was extracting itself from India, responsible for part of Germany, dismantling its empire and attempting to rebuild its own shattered and debt ridden economy in the wake of the war.
So what is the route to peace? Obviously one wouldn't start from here. I listened to part of a BBC Question Time episode recently. It came from Belfast and the various Northern Irish speakers urged the need for dialogue. I accept now that it was necessary for there to be dialogue involving Gerry Adams and Martin McGuiness, though I struggled with it at the time having been in Warrington with one of my sons only 20 minutes before the provisional IRA bomb exploded in 1993. I always admired the way Tim Parry, the father of one of the victims, emphasised the need to leave hate behind and "turning something bad into something good". I admired him for it because I knew I could not have done the same. But of course he was right.
What they didn't address was the fact that you can't have dialogue with people who implacably want to see your whole race extinguished. While Hamas has control of Gaza I don't see how dialogue is possible. A Hamas spokesperson told Lebanese TV "We will repeat the October 7 attack again and again until Israel is annihilated. Will we have to pay a price? Yes, but we are ready to pay it. We are called a nation of martyrs and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs". Egyptian journalist Ibrahim Eissa, noting that Hamas has controlled Gaza for 16 years, has built an underground city for its weapons and ammunition but no bomb shelters for civilians. "Why? Because life is cheap to them" he said.
There are Palestinians who want peace of course - probably a majority of them. The Sunday Times told the moving story of Izzeldin Abuelaish, a Palestinian doctor who has lost many family members including three of his daughters. He, like Tim Parry, says hate is not the answer. So a way has to be found to empower Palestininans who want peace to rid themselves of Hamas. Easier said than done, of course.
We now face a situation where new generations of terrorists are likely to be created, though there might be some opportunity for dialogue when the current fighting ends.
Could a two state solution work? I doubt it, personally, as I've said above. Could power sharing work as in Northern Ireland? Well it might eventually but we know from Northern Ireland that isn't plain sailing (It's not actually operating at the moment and hasn't since February 2022. It was also suspended for nearly 3 years between 2017 and 2020). But Northern Ireland shows there can be hope, if enough people want peace.
I'm not a fan of Benjamin Netanyahu. However a quote of his sums up the problem: if Arabs laid down their arms there would be peace, if Israel laid down its arms there would be no Israel.
The route to peace starts through enough people on all sides wanting it. It can't happen while Hamas still holds the unfortunate Palestinians in its malevolent grip.
* It's a reference to the original charter of Hamas which quotes from the Hadith, a collection of sayings of the prophet Muhammad, as follows: "...the day of judgement will not come until Muslims fight Jews and kill them. Then the Jews will hide behind trees and rocks, and the trees and rocks will cry out 'O Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me; come and kill him' ". A pretty clear bit of hate speech then.
** The problem of course is that the Palestinians are effectively stateless. There were also large migrations of Hindus and Muslims when India and Pakistan were created in 1947, with horrendous examples of what we now call ethnic cleaning. We don't refer to the descendants of those migrants as refugess though they, like the Israelis, had a "homeland" to go to even if it hadn't been their home. The Palestininans don't. The Arab states neighbouring Israel have not wanted to bring in Palestinians as it would reduce the pressure for a Palestinian homeland.
*** The examples of the Kurds and Uyghurs show that ethnic and religious minorities can get a really bad deal. Unless, of course, they live in a benign, pluralistic and broadly tolerant state, like the UK or the USA. Nobody expends any energy or concern over Amish, Mormons, Scientologists or the Wee Frees not having a "homeland". The problem seems to arise where a minority group is distinct from the majority both ethnically and religiously.
Other sources:
Britons despair of violence instead of taking sides. Sunday Times 5 November 2023
We Jews really thought we were among friends. Hadley Freeman, Sunday Times 15 October 2023. This newspaper column was as sad and sobering as any newspaper column I've ever read.
We're not even allowed posters of loved ones. Hadley Freeman, Sunday Times 5 November 2023
Eichmann was genocidal. Hamas is too. Israel, no Dominic Lawson Sunday Times 5 November 2023
Hamas leader refuses to acknowledge killing of civilians in Israel. BBC 7 November 2023
What we know about three widespread Israel- Hamas war claims. Factcheck.org, posted 13 October, updated 24 October 2023
History of Israel. Wikipedia
Did Jews take Israel away from Palestinians? https://jfedsrq.org/did-jews-take-israel-from-palestinians/ 8 December 2020 This source includes many maps showing the evolution of boundaries in the region.
Fact sheet: Jewish refugees from Arab countries. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-refugees-from-arab-countries?utm_content=cmp-true
Iran's Jewish community is the largest in mideast outside Israel. https://eu.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/world/inside-iran/2018/08/29/iran-jewish-population-islamic-state/886790002/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LGBT_participants_in_the_Eurovision_Song_Contest
Stateless Palestinians - forced migration review. Abbas Shiblak, FMR26 Refugee Studies Centre (part of Oxford Department of International Development), https://www.fmreview.org/sites/fmr/files/FMRdownloads/en/palestine/shiblak.pdf
Victim's father marks 30 years since IRA bombing BBC 20 March 2023
An Israeli shell killed three of my girls. But hate will only prolong the horror. Izzeldin Abuelaish, Sunday Times 5 November 2023
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