In advance of the webinar at which Layla Moran will speak about Palestine this afternoon at 17.30, we wanted to give you an update on the situation as we see it.
Twenty-five days after the slaughter of 1,400 people in southern Israel and the start of the Israeli response we are still being told by Israel that it has no choice other than to wipe out Hamas, and that the massive loss of civilian lives in Gaza is justified as unavoidable collateral damage. In the immediate aftermath of the October 7th attack, western leaders queued up to express their outrage, and their sympathy for the victims. Understandably from Israel’s perspective, this was interpreted as unqualified support for whatever Israel chose to do in response.
World leaders have been lamentably slow to correct that assumption, not least our own Prime Minister and leader of the opposition, both of whom have refused to back the call for an immediate cease-fire, and have left Benjamin Netanyahu free to tell the world that the UK stands with Israel while they bomb defenceless civilians. The death-toll stands at around 8,700 (c.3,500 of which are children!), with an unknown number still buried under rubble. The figures quoted in this Newsletter are published by OCHA, the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Israel is holding thousands of Palestinians in prisons who have never been tried in court, and has have arrested more than 1,800 since the start of the current conflict, but this does not in any way justify the taking of hostages by Hamas, which is illegal and inexcusable. They should be released immediately. In addition some 128 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since October 7th, including 35 children. UN’s Human Rights Office (OHCHR) has received consistent and credible reports of widespread cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees. Two Palestinian detainees have died in Israeli custody since 7 October. Israel holding so many in custody and mistreating them has attracted very little attention by Western politicians and media and fuels the Palestinian belief that double standards are being used: many see them as hostages taken by Israel.
The idea that Israel has no other options is manifestly untrue. Israel’s leaders have many options, and have chosen the worst. They seemed to have learned nothing from the attempt to wipe out the PLO in Lebanon in 1982. Then, bombing Beirut and cutting off supplies of food, water and electricity gave them a kind of victory, but forty years later Lebanon is again a threat to Israel, and very probably more of a threat as a consequence of Israel’s display of military might in 1982. Palestinian resentment of Israel is not going to go away, even if Israel succeeds in killing every single Hamas fighter, and we will simply see a new generation of fighters being fuelled by the events of 2023.
When UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the attacks didn’t happen in a vacuum, he was reminding Israel’s leaders that its past treatment of the Palestinians needs to be taken into account. It would take a monumental effort by Israel’s leaders to admit that trying to annex the rest of what was originally Mandate Palestine was the wrong policy, but that is what it is going to take. In effect, by asking Israel to reflect on what led up to the current war, Guterres was saying there is another option; recognising that the Palestinians have the same human rights as anyone else, and that Israel ought to be cooperating in the establishment of a Palestinian state.
In the UK, we have seen the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition fail to challenge Netanyahu’s narrative, and ignore the message given to the government by the hundreds of thousands who have marched in support of the Palestinians. In contrast, the Lib Dem leadership has been listening – to us in the LDFP and to other advocates of peace. The leaders of Labour and the Conservatives reject dissent or divergence from the party line. The link at the top of this message will give all of us a further opportunity to hear from Layla Moran in the webinar at 5.30 this afternoon.
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The people of Israel and Palestine want peace, but poor leadership has left them trapped in a war which is doing no-one any good, and is killing thousands of innocent people. Whether or not there has been too little criticism of Hamas’ attack, as Israel claims, it is Israel’s decisions which now dominate, and it is Israel which has the power to end the conflict – by agreeing to an immediate cease-fire, and then entering peace talks. The rest of the world cries out for it, horrified by the needless loss of life. Even after the shocks they have suffered, Israelis should know that showing mercy blesses both the giver and the receiver. For the sake of all those who are otherwise going to die, we urge all of you to keep reminding Israel and its supporters that raining death and destruction on Gaza will solve nothing.