Israel & Palestine: Understanding "Context" is key to unlocking a solution

John Knox said we live in a world of consequences, Holy Land is prime example.

Introduction

I make no apology for being a very long read. The present Israel-Palestine conflict has its roots deep in history, a history that has moulded both peoples’ attitudes about the other, and about how they view themselves and their rights. In very few places in the world does what happened in the past continue to be such a potent factor in the present, but that is the case with Israel and Palestine.

John Knox, Protestant leader of the Scottish Reformation, said we live in a world of consequences.  That is true in spades in that part of the world that is called the Holy Land.   

The UN Secretary General’s Definition of Context Too Narrow

The UN Secretary General has argued that the attack by Hamas on 7^th. October has to be seen in context, by which he meant the 75 years since Israel’s creation in 1948; its occupation of the West Bank since 1967; and the semi-siege system by which it has controlled who and what goes in and out of Gaza.  If there is ever to be a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli problem, then both sides, and those external powers who have a share in the problem, and others in the international community, will have to get an understanding of the whole context which has its roots buried deep in history, long before what most people today tend to think was the start of the problem: Israel’s victory in the Six-Day war.   

In the context of history, there is one inescapable conclusion: among the peoples of this 20^th and 21^st century world the Palestinians are one of the most unjustly treated.   In those years since the Balfour declaration of 1917, they have experienced deception, betrayal, occupation, suppression of their rights as people, have seen their legal rights to property and land nullified by a conqueror, and suffered brutality especially after Israel took over the West Bank and Gaza.

In the context of a longer history than that of the Palestinians, persecution to the final degree – mass murder - has been the fate of the Jews at the hands of those who have been able to exercise control of them. The first recorded pogrom was in Alexandria, the city now in Egypt but then part of the Roman Empire, in 38 CE. The history of the Jews at the hands of others has not changed since then. It is little wonder that for the Jews there has only ever been one logical way to permanent security: in a land completely of their own, one that was their original base, in what was to become Palestine in Ottoman times.

Those two histories, one with a long tail of demanding an end to deadly threat, and one with a shorter time span but loaded with pain and injustice, have shaped the thinking, beliefs, aspirations and actions by  Arabs and Jews today.

What history has delivered to us

Zionism – The Balfour Declaration – British Mandate over Palestine

Zionism. Its founder Theodore Herzl (1850-1904) regarded “assimilation as most desirable” in the countries in which Jews found themselves, “but in view of the anti-Semitism impossible to realise.” Thus, he argued “if Jews were forced by external pressure to form a nation, they could lead a normal existence only through concentration in one territory.”

Balfour and the Mandate. In 1917, a key year in World War I, the British Government was anxious to  rally Jewish opinion, especially in the United States, to the Allied powers. Although numerically, the Jews could not have been significant, the underlying assumption seems to have been that they were politically important.  After discussions with leaders of the Jewish community in Britain, Balfour, Foreign Secretary,  in a letter of 2^nd November 1917,  to Lord Rothschild, expressing  “sympathy  with Jewish Zionist aspirations”  set out this declaration: “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing  shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights  of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. I shall be grateful if you will bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.” Note, Arabs are not specifically mentioned.  In 1914 at the start of the war the population of Palestine broke down as follows:

         Arab Muslims 760,000   Arab Christians 70,000     Jews 94,000

In 1917 Palestine was an integral part of the Ottoman Empire with which Britain was at war. At war’s end, with the Allies doling out the fruits of victory, Britain was, at first,  in administrative control, then in 1922  given the mandate for Palestine by the League of Nations with the declaration included in it.  The course was set for conflict between the interests of the Palestinian Arabs and Jews.  

The Beginning: Arabs betrayed right from the start

Even during Ottoman rule, Zionists encouraged Jews to join others who lived in Palestine, and land purchases for settlers was a strategic objective, one that was achievable because Arabs were willing to sell.  

Chaim Margalit Kalvarisky, Polish-born agronomist, living in Galilee since the 1890s, managing the Jewish Colonization Association, noted in a report that in his experience the Arab landholders ‘could simply be paid off,’ and that was how he had been dispossessing Arabs for twenty-five years. He tells of his first purchase of land, from Sheikh Fadul Madalika. As he sat finalising the deal in the Sheikh’s tent the Bedouin men and women ‘sang songs of mourning for their bad fortune, which forced them to leave the cradle of their birth. ‘

But it was only when the British Mandate became operative in 1922, that the land issue between Arab and Jew hit a new level of importance. The latter, before and during the 20^th. century, through various agencies and individuals, had a consistent policy of buying land from Palestinians, so that bit by bit a Jewish organised presence would increase; giving greater political power and leverage to those who, while disguising it during the early stages, intended to end up with a Jewish State, not the nebulous “national home” of the declaration.  That the British mandate authority would allow Jews to buy land was roundly condemned by the Palestinians, many of them tenants of land held by their leaders.  It is here they met betrayal.   

During the mandate Arab leaders would meet the British authorities in the morning to protest against the sales of land to the Jewish Agency, while, in the afternoon doing exactly that. Zionist officials compiled a list of Arab leaders who sold them land. A handy political tool to have. Among those on the list were Musa Kazim al-Husseini, a former Mayor of Jerusalem, and a leader of the Arab national movement.  Among eight other Mayors on the list was Jaffa’s.  The al-Husseinis, recognised leaders, were prominent in protesting while selling.   Attorney Aouni Abd al-Hadi, while negotiating on behalf of Joshua Hankin, a Jew, to buy land in Wadi Hawarat,  involving evicting Palestinian tenant farmers, was one of those  demanding prohibition of  land sales to Jews.   They were the first but not the last to line their pockets at the expense of the Palestinians people they claimed to represent.  

In a pamphlet Truth From Palestine published in 1891 by a Jew, Ahad Ha’am,  he wrote that  Jewish settlers ‘treat the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, trespass unjustly, beat them shamelessly, for no sufficient reason, and even take pride in doing so………We are used to thinking of the Arabs as primitive men of the desert, as donkey-like nation that neither sees nor understands what is going on around it. But that is the great error. The Arabs, like all sons of Shem, has a sharp and crafty mind…..Should the time come when the life of our people in Palestine imposes to a smaller or greater extent on the natives, they will not easily step aside.’  

Ultimately as the years went by and land sales to Jews increased, with the Jewish community gathering in political strength and organisation, and Arabs seeing where this could lead, Ahad Ha’am’s prophesy came true.  So emerged the other common factor in Palestinian-Israeli relations: the use of violence and atrocity.  It came with the Hebron massacre by Arabs of Jews in 1929, when atrocities were committed of young men castrated, babies murdered, old people tortured, women raped.  Sixty-seven Jews were killed and many wounded. Terror had entered Palestine. It was not to be one-sided.

The 1936-39 Arab Revolt

For the British government Palestine was seen as a difficult problem offering no solution, and, anyway, it paled in significance with what really had the attention of government, opposition and media – the emergence, rise and threat of Nazi Germany. When Palestine was considered, the Zionists had what the Arabs never had: an inside track in British politics.

The leader in this was Chaim Weizmann, a brilliant politician skilled in cultivating friends in parliament at the highest levels, with Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee, Lloyd George and Sir Archibald Sinclair leader of the Liberal party, among them.  There were no Arabs at the intimate dinner parties. There was also was more than a bit of contempt for them in general.  Tom Negev records that in a London play, an actress asks “What do they really want, those Arabs?” with the audience laughing at the reply “All I know about Arabs is that a piece of soap would do no harm to each and every one of them.”

In 1936, there was a six month long Arab general strike. In response the British Government set up the Peel Commission, which recommended partitioning Palestine between Arabs and Jews. The Arabs rejected it: they saw no justice in part of their country being hived off to a Jewish state, which, and the Peel commission admitted this, would require the transfer of thousands of Palestinian Arabs from their homes, as they would not be allowed to live in the proposed Jewish state. That meant not just humans moving, but leaving behind the basis of their livelihood, their citrus trees and olive groves.  The Zionists rejected it, not on principle, but because the territory offered to them was too small.

However, the Jews say it as a first clear political step towards a State. Ben-Gurion, the leader, saw it not only its importance in proto-state terms, but also that forced transfer of people was regarded by the British mandate authority as legitimate. The Palestinian saw that too, and rebelled.  As well as murdering British officials, the Arabs applied terror to the Jews. In the Jewish area of Tiberias an eyewitness came upon a scene strewn with bodies where “The naked bodies of women exposed the evidence that knives had been used in the most ghastly way, and that in a nursery the burnt bodies of children were still smouldering, having had gasoline poured over them and set alight.”

The British crackdown was hard and harsh. Over 25,000 police and military were immediately drafted in. A specialist centre was set up in Jerusalem to train interrogators in techniques of torture, which were applied: beatings, hitting on the soles of the feet and genitals, and the water-can which we now know as waterboarding. In two years 1938-39 more than one hundred Arabs were sentenced to death, with thirty actually executed.   Collective punishment was standard. Here is a description: in the village after the men were put in an improvised cage. “The soldiers then went from house to house searching for weapons. They would break down doors, smash furniture, and ransack pantries, ripping open sacks of rice, flour and sugar, and strewing the contents all over the floor.” When they didn’t find arms “They deliberately mixed the flour and oil and poured it all over the beds” There was an added collective twist on occasion when whole houses were burned down.

The man in charge of the British army in Palestine charged with crushing the revolt was Maj. General Bernard Montgomery. Among his officers was Orde Wingate, in the intelligence section, who later became famous and celebrated as the creator of the Chindits in Burma, fighting the Japanese. Wingate adopted Zionism, and despite being under British military command, operated Night Squads against the Arabs in concert with Jewish activists.

As the UK fought the Nazis in Europe Both Sides Saw Opportunity

The Arabs had no chance against the British and the rebellion was over by 1939, by which time Germany had invaded Poland and WWII had started.  Both sides saw opportunities.  Palestinian leader the Mufti of Jerusalem viewed Hitler with his anti-Jew policy as a potential ally, met the Fuhrer in 1938, and during the war helped establish Muslim SS troops in the Balkans. A section of the Jewish community, seeing what appeared to be a weakening British occupying power, saw it as a chance to   break its will to remain in charge of Palestine, and started a terror campaign which began with the assassination by the Stern gang, in Cairo, (outside of Palestine) in 1940 of Lord Moyne, the UK Minister for the Middle East.  Another active terror unit was the Irgun. Key in these organisations were Menachem Begin and Yizhak Shamir, who both later became prime ministers of Israel.

When war ended, with Britain’s Labour government struggling to restore the economy and build the welfare state, relying heavily on an onerous United States loan, Palestine emerged again as a serious problem.  German industrialised mass murder of Jews had been revealed, President Truman was urging the British to allow very large numbers of Jewish concentration camp refugees to enter Palestine, further upsetting the balance between Arab and Jew, with the latter unleashing Stern and Irgun terror against British soldiers, police, and civilian officials to drive them out of Palestine.

This is a period of its history when Israel muddies the waters.  The main Jewish organisations did not approve of Stern and Irgun, which were on the Right, whereas the main Ben-Gurion leadership was centre-Left Labour.  But there was cooperation, and what the openly terrorist groups were doing was effective in breaking the British will to remain.  Just how effective was made plain in 1946 when Irgun blew up and destroyed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the headquarters of the British administration. Ninety-one people were killed and many injured. 

The British did seek to quell the Jewish terror, and hung two Jews. Irgun retaliated by kidnapping two British sergeants, hung them and booby trapped their bodies. But the UK, even with 1000,000 troops in Palestine, could not deal with the problem it faced.  Bernard Montgomery, now a Field Marshall and Chief of the Imperial General Staff, told Prime Minister Attlee that given the situation it was better to get out. The matter passed to the United Nations. It proposed a two-state solution with Jerusalem remaining under international control, and appointing a mediator, Count Bernadotte, a Swedish diplomat. The Arabs rejected the plan. For Jews the territory on offer was not sufficient. Bernadotte got his thanks for trying to mediate - assassination by the Stern gang in 1948.  As the historian Tom Negev notes ‘No one believed in the U.N.’s map; everyone knew there would be war.’ 

The State of Israel born: Nakba for the Palestinians

And there was war.  Israel declared itself a State on 15^th May 1948. Its defence forces consisted of Haganah (in being since 1920 when it stood in defence of Jewish areas), Palmach (Commando style units), Irgun and Stern. Ranged against them was a Palestinian Arab force.  The Israelis were organised, well equipped, long-prepared, and well led.  The Palestinian Arabs were poorly organised, poorly equipped and badly led. However, they were joined by five surrounding Arab States with professional armies: Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt (with a Saudi Arabia contingent attached) and Jordan, which restricted itself to action only within the territory designated as Arab by the UN proposal, mostly the West Bank.

War had its inevitable horrors, but one such was decisive: in the Arab village of Deir Yassin where,  in coordination with Haganah, Irgun and Stern committed a massacre of civilians, men, women and children.  Once known about, it created a wave of terror and panic that led to the Nakba (catastrophe); the mass exodus from their homes and land of some 750,000 Palestinian Arabs who became the refugees, and their descendants in the camps, whose situation has never been resolved.  Israel won, with more territory than had been allocated by the UN.   Jordan was in possession of the West Bank and Jerusalem.  

Israel entered the United Nations in 1949, recognised by the great powers on the UN Security Council and others, but not by the Arab states and non-Arab Muslim ones.  That still applies to many of the latter, while key Arab states now have diplomatic relations with Israel, and others have below the political radar relations. For many years the Arab states operated a boycott of trade with Israel.

For Israel in 1948-49, while it formalised and built up its armed forces into the IDF, political and diplomatic action was perhaps at that stage even more important. The aim was to cement its legitimacy and build support in western governments, their political parties, and public opinion especially in the United States and United Kingdom (still then a major power).  Israel had advantages.   It was now a State, a democratic one, its leadership was Labour which enabled it to meet socialists in Europe as part of that broad brotherhood. Poale Zion, a British organisation, was affiliated to the Labour party. In the United States was a Jewish diaspora, able to mount a strong lobby with Congress on Israel’s part.  

Among British MPs Labour, Tory, Liberal Friends of Israel groups were formed.  Their members made frequent visits to Israel. In the USA pro-Israeli groups were formed finally emerging as AIPAC (American Israeli Political Action Committee) which became, and is, one of the most powerful lobbies of Congress. Not until recent years have the Palestinian Arabs had voices raised in that forum.

These were advantages the Palestinians lacked.  They also lacked leadership, and any sense of direction. But Israel had even more advantages.  Much of its leadership at that time came from a western background, understood the west intimately, again the US and UK, and talked the same language.  No one more epitomised this than Abba Eban, Ambassador to the United Nations from 1950-59, then deputy prime minister, and, finally, and at a crucial time, Foreign Minister from 1966-74.

Born in South Africa, he moved to the UK as a child, was schooled there, and went on to Cambridge. He was one of us, or more accurately one of our elite.  Later he spent time in the USA.  He “sold” Israel to western politicians and people. Even as a young person of around 16 years old, I was aware of this eloquent man (and others) explaining how the plucky young state of Israel, after the terrible experience of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis, had fought off five invading Arab armies, and was now making the desert bloom; and founding itself on the same democratic principles that underpinned my own British society.  

 Israel’s leaders were at home in the sophisticated western political sphere. No door was closed. Formal and informal networks were established.  Israeli public relations were equal to the challenge of presenting the state as an oasis of freedom and democracy in a sanded sea of Arab dictatorships and authoritarian Sheiks. That picture of Israel remained the standard in the west until after the Six Day war of 1967.

Meanwhile, the Palestinians, in permanent mourning were stuck in refugee camps in the West Bank under Jordanian control, and Lebanon, with some able to escape to western universities, and others to work in the Arab states. Kuwait, for example had 357,000 Palestinians in its workforce until Saddam Hussein invaded in 1990. Arafat, their declared leader, then sided with Saddam (another gross error of Arab judgment) and they ended up expelled from Kuwait after its liberation. There are now only 80,000 working in that small Gulf State.

Onward to The Six Day War and Its Aftermath

The background: unremitting hostility to Israel by most Arab States, with Jordan in a fix

Between 1948 and 1967 resistance movements developed and there were incursions into Israel, that were celebrated by Palestinians. But while minor in comparison with what was to follow in the years ahead after 1967, they confirmed in the Israeli mind that their State faced Arab determination to eliminate it.  They were not wrong.

Israel’s main problem was not the Palestine resistance, but the unremitting hostility of the surrounding Arab states, especially Egypt and Syria which, if they acted together, would form a formidable military pincer.  With Jordan the position was different.

Jordan, like Iraq, was a State whose formation had no roots in history, or practice (unlike Syria which was recognised as a distinct part of the Ottoman Empire) and was an invention of the British to assuage the disappointments of the Princes Feisal and Abdullah, when the former renegaded on its promises of a large independent Arab state as the reward for rebelling against the Turks in the 1914-18 war. While promising the Arabs an independent state, the British and French signed a secret deal, Sykes-Pico, to carve the region – Syria (then encompassing Lebanon), Palestine and Mesopotamia (what we call Iraq and Kuwait) – between them.

Feisal, knew nothing about the secret deal. Lawrence of Arabia knew but kept silent in order to maintain the Arab rebellion. Feisal did actually declare himself King of Syria at war’s end, but was unceremoniously evicted violently by the French, in accordance with the deal. Feisal was made King of Iraq, another invention by the British. He had never visited the new Kingdom before becoming King.  The British were, of course, in  control. Abdullah was given Jordan in 1921, dependent upon British cash to remain solvent.   In 1946 Jordan became Transjordan with him as King. In 1949 he annexed the West Bank, a move with which Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia were not happy. On the side, there was a needle match between Abdullah, a Hashemite, a direct descendant of the Prophet, and Abdulazis al Saud, of Saudi Arabia who had conquered and annexed the Emirate of Mecca, Abdullah’s father’s patch.

Given its artificial creation, the need to start building a national identity, and its dependence on external British and then US aid, both supporters of Israel, Transjordan was not in the same secure position as Egypt and Syria; meaning it required a necessarily different relationship with the new State of Israel.  Abdullah engaged with the Israelis in seeking a peace accord. For that he was assassinated in Jerusalem in 1951. His son Talal succeeded, but he was clinically mad (tried twice to murder his wife) and bumped aside. His son, the man we knew as King Hussein took over.  The assassin Mustafa Shukri Ashshu, was an associate of the ex-Mufti Amin al-Hussseini.  Arab politics is in a class of its own.

The 1956 Suez Crisis: A Stage Towards 1967

The Suez Canal waterway itself was owned by the Egyptians. But the Suez Canal Company, jointly owned by British and French interests, had monopoly rights in taking ships through it, and it was also of strategic importance for world shipping.   To outrage in Britain and France, President Nasser nationalised the company overnight. The British and French responded by concocting a secret deal with Israel.  Israel would attack Egypt, and the other two pretending to be neutral would intervene with their own military forces to “save” the canal, and keep the company in their hands.

Israel did attack. The British and French did invade Egypt, but it became a fiasco when the United States not only showed its displeasure, but threatened the British currency, and brought its government to heel.  Israel stopped fighting. British and French forces withdrew from Egypt.  Nasser had won, and now exercised total controlled of a major shipping lane with the potential to strangle Israeli trade, which relied upon open access to the Gulf of Aqaba.

On the ground Israel and Egypt still faced each other, a circumstance that caused the United Nations to create the UN Emergency Force drawn from a number of its member states, inserted between the protagonists. Israel refused to have UNEF on its side, but Egypt agreed.

1967: The Seminal Post-1948 Event In Israeli-Palestinian Relations

The years between 1956 and 1967 saw no change in the Arab states’ hostility to Israel’s existence. There was an increase in activity by Palestinian guerrilla groups with the inevitable Israeli reprisals, and a death toll mainly among the Palestinians.

There was a distinct rise in tension in 1967, more incursions by guerrillas using bases, and funding, from Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. At a higher miliary level Israeli and Syrian fighter jets clashed with six Syrian Soviet supplied MIGs shot down.  Jordan signed a defence pact with Egypt and put its military under Egyptian command. Syria and Egypt were known to be collaborating.

Egypt then took three steps that triggered Israeli pre-emptive action.  First, mobilising its armed forces; second requiring the UN to withdraw UNEF; third  closing the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping.  Facing a three-point pincer of Egypt, Syria and Jordan, Israel struck first.  Some 90% of Egypt’s aircraft were destroyed on the ground on day one, and a similar attack was carried out against Syria. Israel advised Jordan to stay out of the conflict, but it was already committed to Egypt.

Between the 5^th and 10^th of June Israel dealt a comprehensive defeat to all three Arab states. It occupied the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, West Bank and Jerusalem.   

It was an astonishing feat of arms. But among the consequences that came into play over time, subtle changes were taking place in how Israel viewed itself and, in a short space of time, how the world viewed it. 

No more was it seen as a small stout state defending itself. Israel had become a conqueror, an occupier of lands and people, particularly Gaza and the West Bank.

Israel, in the flush of triumph, came to see itself as invincible. Occupation requires oppression. Invincibility spawns arrogance. Israel was now going to be seen in a different light and held to a set of different standards.

When the fighting stopped, the United Nations stepped in with the famous resolution 242 agreed by the Security Council on 22^nd. November 1967.  It is the foundation for the Palestinian claims made to justify their guerrilla and terrorist attacks launched from the surrounding Arab states, the two intifadas and other resistance activities within the West Bank and Gaza.

Below is an extract the main parts of the text, with other final parts calling for a just settlement of the refugee problem and freedom of navigation. 242 came under Chapter VII, which made it compulsory for all States to comply.

 “Expressing its continuing concern with the grave situation in the Middle East. Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security. Emphasizing further that all Member States in their acceptance of the Charter of the United Nations have undertaken a commitment to act in accordance with Article 2 of the Charter.

1 Affirms that the fulfilment of the Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East which should include the application of both the following principles:

(i)             Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.

(ii)            Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognised boundaries free from threats or acts of force. “

To the lay person 242 is quite clear, Israel should quit and go back to its own borders. But in the world  of diplomacy where words unused often matter more than those used, 242’s text had wriggle room for Israel. Look at the text:   (i) said “territories” and not “the” territories. So, was some of the territory OK to maintain in occupation, such as Jerusalem which Israelis see as their “eternal capital”?  Also, the author, the British UN Ambassador and his staff (and everyone else at the UN) had in mind that the West Bank would revert to Jordan.   A two-state solution was not in anyone’s mind then.  I know this to be true, because when I went to work with the Arab-British Chamber of Commerce in London, the Chairman was Sir Richard Beaumont, formerly of the Foreign Office.  He had been one of the British drafters of 242, and told me of the underlying assumptions and how it had been constructed, including  exclusion of  “the,” which was deliberate in order to get a text the United States would not veto.

Despite 242, Israel did not give up an inch of territory of the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights. Inevitably occupation was maintained by Israeli violence and Palestinian internal resistance, also violent, and external terror incursions.

That long trail of manoeuvres, events, decisions, actions, betrayals, miscalculations, not just the past 75 years, is the context in which we should try to understand why the Israeli -Palestinian issue has been so difficult to resolve.  Each side has helped dig and fill deep wells of hatred.  Sadly, in the relationship nothing has changed since the first savage violence erupted in Hebron in 1929.

The idea of a two-state solution came after years of insecurity for Israel as the Palestinians became more organised and used terror incidents to re-focus world attention on the grim situation of the refugees and the conditions imposed by occupation.  Diplomatic efforts by Norway, later followed by the United States, brought Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) together in the Oslo Accords in 1993, dubbed as the beginning of a “peace process” that would eventually lead to a Palestinian State as a neighbour of recognised Israel. It never happened.

Why Two-States Never Happened

The two-state solution never happened for a number of reasons: deep hostility to the Accords among many Israelis.  Netanyahu one of the most vociferous opponents, helped create a climate of visceral hatred towards the man who signed them, Prime Minister Rabin, assassinated by a Zionist fanatic; realisation among many Palestinians that the negotiations had not been between equals, that Israel still dictated the process, demonstrated by its strategic placement of illegal Jewish settlements making a contiguous West Bank Palestinian state impossible. In addition, the PLO signatories, led by Yasser Arafat, who were enabled to “govern” as the Palestine Authority by the Accords, were corrupt. Their credibility eroding year by year, they were finally opposed by a new group called Hamas, utterly opposed to Israel’s existence, who went on to win the 2006 Palestine election (the last one held to date).  One scholarly comment was “the complexities that underlay decades of hostilities ultimately derailed the process and left the most challenging issues to smoulder in the 21^st. century.”

From smoulder to set on fire on 7^th October, with the consequences that a two-state solution in reality is probably the most obvious non-starter to be found anywhere in world politics. An increasingly isolated Israel is encompassed in fear and insecurity that will increase its resistance to a Palestinian State.  And Hamas, the living proof of why Israelis feel insecure, has changed not one word in its diatribe against the Jews, or its intention to repeat the 7th October in future.

The United Nations General Assembly voting to give full recognition to Palestine as a State, with Spain, Ireland and Norway doing so, is a political victory for the Palestinians over Israel, as is the interventions of the ICJ and ICC.  

But none of that changes the fundamentals: Israel remains in occupation with a settler movement dug in, the war being waged is not so much digging deeper the wells of hatred but creating an ocean of it, with no external power or powers able to intervene and impose a two-state solution.

That does not mean we are frozen in horror. No events such as we have witnessed on 7^th October in Israel, and in Gaza, can go without consequences.  What those will be no one can tell at present.  Whether out of bloodshed and destruction, and the gross indignities suffered by people, will emerge the level of leadership required we can only hope.

If such was leadership is to emerge, then the respective peoples will have to be told to swallow and accept bitter unpalatable truths.

On the Israeli side that their State was built on the dispossession of Arab land and property, causing great harm and inflicting great misery on the Palestinians, that the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has been illegal and brutal; and that the Palestinians have a basic human right to freedom in a land which is their own and which they control. On the Palestinian side a leadership will need to tell its people that whatever ill-fate fell upon them with the creation of Israel, they will never return to what was their land, that the State of Israel will not be eliminated and will remain one with which they have to live. A tall order on both sides.  But until those truths are stated and acted upon, the tragedy will continue to unfold in more violence and deaths.