Author Archives: Leon Duveen

A couple of week ago, I responded to a post in a Facebook Group trying to create a grassroots movement for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.  The post challenged us to outline our vision for peace, this was my response:

My vision for Peace isn’t a detailed plan. Simply, it is that Palestinians and Israelis, Jews and Arabs, Christians, Jews and Muslims learn to accept each other, learn that to live in that small sliver of land between the River and the Sea they must share it with people with a different background, different history, different beliefs but with a shared hope that their children can grow & thrive without the threat of war.

If we can achieve that, the details of the political solution will be easy to decide; unless we can achieve that, no solution will succeed.

There are two other pieces of writing I want to share here.  The first is an (long) article written by an acquaintance in Notts Friends of Standing Together titled There is no Magic Peace Fairy.   It tries to examine how people on both sides have become blind to the suffering of those on the other side, why good people are trapped by their own history to ignore the fact that most people on the opposite side also trapped in their history.  It is a hard read and made think about my own preconceptions and how open was I to having them challenged.

The other is a novel written by Haviva Ner-David called Hope Valley.  Set in 2000, after the failure of the Clinton/Arafat/Brak Camp David Summit, mostly around a Moshav in the Galilee that was built on the ruins of a Palestinian village cleared by the Hagenah during the 1948 war and the neighbouring Palestinian village where some of the refugees from the ruined village now live.  It looks at the intertwined lives of two artists, both with a serious illness, both with deep links to the land both who need to overcome their own misunderstandings & preconceptions.

This is a very difficult post to write.  Yet again Palestine & Israel are at war and thousands on both sides have already or possibly will die.

After the attack by Hamas on Simchat Torah (October 7th), understandably, Israel is hurting, grieving and many there are angrily demanding action against the murderous terrorists who kill so many, kidnapped nearly 200 and wounded thousands.

But as we all know, it is not always possible to make good decision when you are angry, hurting, grieving, a cooler head is needed.

Hamas is not Palestine. It has held Gaza in a destructive dictatorship for over 15 years, inviting retaliation from Israel time after time, to strengthen its grip & generate propaganda.

Israeli Governments over the last 15 years has been willing enough to play this game, to pretend that peace is impossible, to trigger another round of violence when they need to win elections, until on Simchat Torah, the monster they cultivated became too powerful and acted in a way the Israeli security apparatus failed to anticipate.

So where does the conflict go now?

It has taken me a few days to deal with the results of the latest elections to the Israeli Knesset.

To say they were disappointing is a massive understatement. Even though the popular, the Nationalist parties led by Netanyahu only gained a small majority in the popular vote: 2,397,624 who voted for parties that will support Netanyahu and 2,334, 239 who voted for parties opposed to Netanyahu). But the way the proportional representation system works in Israel, it will has gained a majority of 6 to 10 seats in the new Knesset.

For now, Yair Lapid remains the Israeli …

Last October, I wrote a piece for LDV called “Time to do away with LD Friends of Israel & Friends of Palestine” and other pieces on the subject on my own irregular blog.

After the tragic events of the last three weeks, with the three kidnapped Israeli teenagers being found murdered and now a Palestinian youth having been killed in Jerusalem, seemingly in “revenge”, I feel I need to speak out, even it is to “state the obvious”.

In addition to the murder of Mohammed Abu Khdair, the Israeli reaction to the kidnapping and killing of Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach has cost at least six other deaths of Palestinians on the West Bank & yet unknown numbers of lives in Gaza. We here in the UK need to be strident in the commendation of the extremists on both sides who, through their rhetoric, have encouraged the violence.