Martin Linton asks the labour movement to increase the pressure on Israel to right the many wrongs it has done to the Palestinian people
ONE of the most effective lobbying organisations in the labour movement is Labour Friends of Israel, whose annual reception at the party’s Manchester conference was attended not only by Gordon Brown and David Miliband but also by half the Cabinet and dozens of MPs.
We had a much smaller gathering at the Friends’ Meeting House of the new Labour Friends of Palestine which we plan to launch at the House of Commons on November 3, but we were left in no doubt by the size and mood at the meeting that the organisation is needed.
It’s needed because the Palestinians are suffering an injustice and we need an organisation to speak up for their rights and bring pressure to bear on MPs, ministers and policy-makers.
We’ve drawn up a mission statement designed to be as inclusive as possible and appeal to a wide range of people in the labour movement, including Israelis as well as Palestinians. We support the aim of a two-state solution, although we believe this can only be achieved once Israel complies with its international obligations. We believe that aggression on both sides is both wrong and counterproductive, but we will constantly highlight the concerns of the Palestinian people and campaign for Israel to uphold human rights.
Supporting the aim of a two-state solution is not the same thing as saying it is likely to happen. On the contrary, I fear the time may have passed when Israel will – of its own volition – grant the Palestinians any meaningful independence. Massive pressure will be required from Britain, the European Union and principally from the United States before Israel agrees to set up a viable Palestinian state.
The most pressing humanitarian issue in Palestine and perhaps in the world is Gaza, but Labour Friends of Palestine will also focus on Israel’s refusal to stop the expansion of settlements on the West Bank. We know the Israelis have moved 250,000 settlers into the West Bank –-in defiance of international law, which says the settlement of occupied territory is illegal. You only have to drive around the West Bank and look around to see the utter improbability of a voluntary withdrawal.
On almost every hilltop, there is a settlement. Some are just outposts, consisting of a few containers on the top of a hill. Some are the size of towns with populations of up to 30,000. In addition to the 149 settlements, there is a huge network of settler roads, which is barred to Palestinians, and there are currently 609 checkpoints, roadblocks, trenches and earth-mounds mainly to keep the Palestinians off Israeli-only roads.
While Palestinians cannot enter Israel, Israelis can drive in and out of the West Bank at will. There’s no sign even to tell them they are entering the West Bank. As a result, many Israeli immigrants move into new houses believing them to be in Israel when actually they are in the West Bank. Palestinians, on the other hand, often have to spend hours waiting in queues to go through checkpoints on their way to and from work. This is what is strangling the Palestinian economy.
The Israelis can always claim security as an excuse for what they are doing to Gaza: for the separation wall, for the checkpoints. It may be a poor excuse and at times a threadbare one, but it would be wrong to understate the reality that Israelis live with constant fear, as indeed do Palestinians.
What they can’t claim security as an excuse for is the expansion of settlements in the West Bank. Israelis do not get more secure by expanding settlements or by building more houses on Palestinian land. On the contrary, they get less secure, because there is nothing more guaranteed to ratchet up the level of hatred among the Palestinians.
If it wasn’t for the settlements, one might be willing to agree that
Israel wants to be a model state, playing a leading role in a modern Middle East. But when you see what the Israelis are doing with the settlements, it is easy to conclude that Israel just wants more land and resources at the expense of the Palestinians.
Years ago, in a private letter to a friend, General Ariel Sharon explained his strategy for the Palestinians: “We’ll make a pastrami sandwich of them. We’ll insert a strip of Jewish settlements in between the Palestinians and then another strip of Jewish settlements right across the West Bank, so that in 25 years, neither the United Nations, nor the USA, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.” Now, 35 years later, that is exactly what is happening.
Time is running out. Israel has already taken more than 38 per cent of the West Bank and there is a danger that the world will just accept the settlements de facto. The US is unlikely to put pressure on Israel – even under a Barack Obama presidency – unless there is massive pressure on the US from the rest of the world, especially Britain.
Even then, some may say that Israel will never yield to pressure. It will dig in and ignore international opinion. That may be right. But then that’s what many people said about the apartheid regime in South Africa, yet in the end pressure changed that country.
In the 1960s, people in Britain stopped the South African rugby tour of this country. They never thought it would bring end to apartheid. They did it because they thought it was right. Yet 25 years later, Nelson Mandela became president and he said the campaign against the rugby tour had been a turning point.
We must campaign in the same spirit of hope. We must do whatever we can. So please e-mail me at martinlintonmp@parliament.uk to join Labour Friends of Palestine and campaign with us.
Martin Linton is Labour MP for Battersea and co-founder of Labour Friends of Palestine
