Like most people in this country, I’ve spent a lifetime listening to earnest news about peace in the Middle East. To be interested in foreign affairs once meant having to have an opinion on it. Frankly, I’m not sure I’d bother anymore, which I know goes against the grain of the British Left’s obsession with Gaza, Israel and the ‘two-state solution’.
Why is that? It’s because the two-state solution, based on Gaza and the West Bank comprising as a single Palestinian state – especially within the 1967 borders – is dead and has been, in any meaningful form, for 25 years.
Whilst Israeli settlers haven’t helped the process, the underlying reason lies in the wretched recidivist history of Palestine’s leadership, who, in the old description of them, never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Palestine’s leadership, comprised largely of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), was heavily influenced by two malign 20th century forces; pan-Arab socialist nationalism, and from 1967 onwards, Soviet, and now Russian, antisemitism.
PLO tactics, including airplane hijacking, were allegedly invented by the Soviet secret police, the KGB. The Soviets and their allies distributed antisemitic propaganda throughout the Middle East, such as the notorious Tsarist-era conspiracy tract, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
, as it was called, was designed to generate hatred for Israel – and Jews – throughout the Arab and Muslim world. In the UN, the Soviets pushed through the notorious UN Resolution 3379 declaring that “Zionism is a form of racism” – a trope that has been recently resurrected by the Western Left.
Israel is not a perfect state. But it is a law-governed democracy which has been willing to exchange land for peace.
The 1947 UN partition plan divided Palestine into Jewish and Arab states (the Jewish bit was small by comparison with Israel today). The Jews accepted it. The Arabs didn’t and went to war to try to destroy Israel and drive the Jews into the sea. They failed.
Roll on two more wars, a few – uprisings – and the end of the Cold War. Through a series of accords and negotiations from the 1990s — the Oslo Accords, the Camp David Summit, the Taba Summit, and the 2008 offers from Ehud Olmert — Israel offered nearly all of the West Bank, land swaps and shared control over Jerusalem. None were accepted.
The blunt truth is that too much of Palestinian society has festered in the past. Opportunity after opportunity has been squandered. The more they were squandered, the weaker they became. At every turn the Palestinian leadership effectively chose hope of revenge over progress. Revenge is neither a tactic nor a strategy, but an extended suicide note for your people.
Israel even pulled out of Gaza in 2005 and Jewish settlers were forcibly removed. What happened? Hamas took over, trashed what the Israelis had left, killed their political rivals and used Gaza to attack Israel, including the October 2023 attack, which left over 1,000 Israelis dead.
The Israelis have tried to trade land for peace. It hasn’t worked. Why should they keep trying?
Well, our pious Left insist they do. The latest incarnation of sanctimonious self-regard is Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, a one-man political disaster.
I read his 8 September statement on Israel. To be fair, it was thoughtful enough, on both Iran and on Israel, and I can’t disagree with the fact that the West Bank settlements are illegal. What is naïve, however, is the total lack of . Maybe that is not very moral of me, but it is certainly practical. Nations make difficult choices, sometimes bad ones, but a running commentary from us on our allies is fraught with dangers.
As Labour peer Lord Mandelson) said: since Labour took power, our policy to Israel and the Middle East has become one where we substituted “” – so grandstanding over substance. What is it about the British Left that they have always to pronounce as moral authorities?
To Israel, the Middle East’s only democracy, we apply sanctions. To the animals of Hamas, we recognised what passed for pockets of Palestinian ‘statehood’. And to China for that matter, which has run despicable internment camps for Uighur Muslims, we are all but silent.
Moral posturing in a dangerous world is for narcissists and the powerless. The blunt reality is that, on security grounds alone, we need Israel more than it needs us. Their knowledge of Iran and its proxies across the Middle East and Europe is without equal. Mossad told us about Iran proxy Hezbollah’s stockpiling of thousands of explosives in the UK.
Some on the Left call for an arms embargo, naively thinking that could amount to anything more than a hill of beans. Our current defence trade with Israel is £18 a year. In defence terms, that’s a rounding error. Worse, from Miliband’s point of view, we are actually dependent on Israeli defence tech in many of our advanced platforms. If they ever pulled the rug from us, we’d be in trouble.
Former senior British diplomat Edmund Fitton-Brown told Times Radio: “Alienating intelligence and defence partners like Israel … strikes me as extremely unwise in a very dangerous world.” I’d call it delusional.
A parallel purpose of these sanctions – and political one within the UK – is to shore up Labour’s Pakistani-led Muslim bloc vote in the UK. One of the most depressing trends in Britain has been the pandering to sectarian, identity politics. It strengthens hardline Muslim politics in Britain, and, as a by-product, will make Jews less safe. It is a gift to antisemites. The safety of Jews in any society is an indicator of that society’s health, and right now our society is ill.
Palestine’s supporters moan of the injustice of having Palestinian land seized. In reality, there were vast global population flows and border changes after World War II when nation states grew on the ashes of European empires. Why should Palestinians demand land any more than, say, Germany demand the 25 per cent of today’s Poland that was once Germany, or Poland the parts of Belarus or Ukraine that were once Polish?
What about the land and wealth forfeited by the 900,000 Jews who were expelled from Arabs and Muslim lands after the establishment of the state of Israel? Do Palestinians ever stop to consider this vast exodus? Did they even acknowledge it?
No. They are too busy being victims, festering in their hatred of Jews. ‘From the river to the sea’ is a chant to drive Jews into the sea. The ‘wink-wink, nudge-nudge’ smugness of those who chant it belies their moral vacuity.
People and nations move on. But not the Palestinians, it seems.
Personally speaking, I don’t like Israel’s current leadership. It has some unsavoury characters in it (as do many political parties). I am suspicious of Israeli settlers. But what’s happening in Gaza is not a genocide, despite the claims peddled by left-wing politicians which go shamefully unchallenged on the BBC. I feel very much for individual Palestinians who have lost relatives. War takes lives. I write this in Kyiv with – literally – the air raid sirens going off around me.
So what should we say and do?
Israel has the right to protect its people. Hamas’ use of civilians is the true evil, not Israel’s army which is making intensely difficult decisions trying to defend its people whilst staying within the laws of war.
Israel remains our ally. Our trade is important. Jews make a unique contribution to our society. Mossad is important to our security. Its enemies are our enemies, no matter what socialist like Miliband believe. Our influence is modest and declining. I’d frankly not bother funding the UN organisation UNRWA, riddled with Hamas support. If others want to seek the Nobel Peace Prize, let them. I’d focus on keeping Israel onside given our growing fundamentalist problems.
We know the end of this miserable, sad story. There will be no return to pre-1967 borders. In the coming decades, Palestinian pockets of control will become smaller and smaller. The willingness of the Israeli victors to deal with the Palestinian leadership will wither. Palestinians will become a new diaspora. Some will move on, some will fester in generational bitterness.
Palestinians were used and abused horribly by the Soviets and by Arab states. Their leadership was a model of violent corruption. Their children were raised in hatred. They said no to every opportunity. Aid was stolen in billions. They have danced to the tunes of charlatans for decades and now they face the music. Their failure is proof that actions and words matter in life. Ed Miliband take note.