Author Archives: John Kelly

There have been some very good articles on the tragic events in the Middle East published by the Lib Dem Voice over the last two weeks, especially those by Leon Duveen,  and Ruvi Ziegler, both Israeli/British citizens and very active members of our Party.  I want to approach this from a different angle coloured by my own experience.  I have worked and travelled in Palestine and other parts of the Middle East and have been Vice Chair and/or Secretary of the Lib Dem Friends of Palestine since 2013. I helped draft the 2021 motion on Palestine that was overwhelmingly passed by Conference.  I have friends with families affected in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel – some tragically.

Like everybody else, I was shocked and saddened by what happened on 7 October in southern Israel, and I was equally saddened by the disproportionate response of the Israeli Government, which has already led to many more Palestinian deaths than resulted from the Hamas attack, including at least 1,500 children.  70-80,000 buildings have been destroyed including dozens of healthcare facilities and schools.  Aid workers from MAP, UNWRA and other human rights agencies have been killed as well.

I have welcomed the solidarity shown to the Jewish community in this country and with Israelis more generally.  It would be nice to see some of the same empathy towards the smaller but still significant Palestinian community here, and also to the 4 million strong Muslim community amongst whom there has always been strong sympathy for the beleaguered Palestinians, who are mostly Muslim and whose holy places have been treated with contempt by Israeli officialdom.  

However, I was sickened to see the affection shown by Joe Biden and then Rishi Sunak towards Benjamin Netanyahu on their recent visits, and by Sunak’s assurance that “we hope you win”.  Biden at least reminded Netanyahu of the Geneva Conventions and other aspects of international law which successive Israeli governments have claimed don’t apply to them.  There is a very good case for arraigning Netanyahu before the International Criminal Court in the Hague – and, of course, the same goes for the leaders of Hamas.  Our leaders should keep him at arm’s length as much as they possibly can. The same applies to people like President Sisi of Egypt, Mohammed Bin Salman and of course Bashar al-Assad.

As 2021 approaches and as Trump prepares for an undignified exit from the White House, can we hope for some positive moves towards a peaceful settlement of the Israel/Palestine conflict?  Joe Biden may in due course try to get the peace process going, but nothing much will happen for a few months until yet another Israeli election has taken place in March.

There are also plans for long overdue elections in Palestine which may lead to a power shift to a younger and more credible generation of political leaders.  Even if Netanyahu loses (and all liberal democrats will surely pray for …

Is the Nation-State Act, approved by the Israeli parliament last week, really as bad as its critics suggest?  Jonathan Freedland, Guardian journalist and occasional writer in the Jewish Chronicle, clearly thinks so.  Neither he nor the Chronicle have been willing to criticise Israel very much in the past, but this has been changing in recent weeks.  His article of 27 July lays it out clearly:

“It… (the Act)…says that the right to self-determination in Israel is a right that applies to Jews only and that Hebrew is the state’s only official language, with Arabic now granted merely a “special status”. The combined effect of those two moves is to tell the one-fifth of the country that is not Jewish and whose mother tongue is Arabic that they are second-class citizens.”

Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which is always very critical of its government’s treatment of Palestinians, had an article the following day with the sub-heading The nation-state law is a sickening rejection of equality for all of Israel’s citizens. 

Many are now saying that Israel itself, and not just the Occupied Territories, now meets the UN Definition of an Apartheid State.  Article II of the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (1973) defines Apartheid as follows:

“The crime of apartheid” means inhumane acts….committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.

Reaction to the new law has of course been greeted with anger by Arabs, dismay by European governments (whose concerns are as usual ignored by Israel) and, significantly, there has been strong criticism in Israel itself.

The Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory – West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza – continues and deepens week after week.  The occupation is of course illegal under international law – as enshrined in the Geneva Conventions which were adopted after World War II.  As a reaction to Germany’s colonising activities in Eastern Europe, they specifically prohibit the colonisation/absorption of land conquered in war (in this case 1967) into the territory of the conquering country.  Just this weekend Netanyahu has confirmed his determination to continue the settlement enterprise and never to give back any land that has been stolen.  This has been reported in Haaretz, the Iiberal Israeli newspaper, which is the source of much of the information in this post.

In Gaza, the siege continues and this prevents the rebuilding of the territory after the last Gaza conflict (2014) and inflicts daily misery on the inhabitants.  In the West Bank and East Jerusalem, it is estimated that over 3500 Palestinians have been arrested this year alone.  Many of these are children and every day I read reports of new overnight arrests – children and adults taken from their beds by Israeli soldiers.  Settler violence towards Palestinians has increased dramatically and the Haaretz and Israeli NGO’s regularly report on this.  The settlers who commit crimes against Palestinians are protected by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) whose soldiers rarely intervene.  Prosecutions of settlers for such crimes are almost unheard of.

A particularly serious development has occurred these past two weeks which has really incensed some European governments.  With the start of the new school year the Israelis have decided to demolish several schools.  Some of these have been funded by the Belgian, Dutch and Norwegian governments.  This has been documented this week in an article in the Independent (also confirmed by Haaretz) which reports that 55 schools in the West Bank are currently under threat of demolition.