Britain’s Palestine Problems

October 20, 2023November 9, 2023 ~ Urban Dandy London ~ Leave a comment

Palestinian culture emphasises Sumud ( صمود) or steadfastness in the face of hardship and injustice, a quality that has enabled Palestinians to survive an existential assault by Israel for 75 years. Throughout this period, Britain has matched the Palestinians’ Sumud with its own steadfastness in enabling Israel’s domination over the Palestinian people and land. These two Sumuds are at odds with each other, meaning Britain, across its political spectrum, has a serious Palestine problem, albeit one that is easy to solve, should the country ever decide to take up the cause of justice.

Problem one – Refugees

The Palestinian refugee crisis is so extreme and so integral to current events in the Middle East that it requires a certain level of genius to miss it. Judging by their proclamations over recent weeks, the whole British media and political class possess this type of genius. They have managed to avoid the obvious fact that the refugee issue is the key to resolving the Middle East conflict.

It is useful to consider the refugee crisis in the context of the broader demographics of Palestine and Israel. The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) estimated the worldwide Palestinian population to be just over 14 million in 2021.

The PCBS estimates that at least 5.3 million Palestinians live in the Occupied Territories (West Bank and Gaza Strip) constituting 38% of all Palestinians worldwide. Inside Israel, 1.7 million Palestinians reside, 12% of the global Palestinian population.

Over 50% of Palestinians, at least seven million people (possibly as high as nine million according to the PCBS), live in the Diaspora as refugees. Of these, Jordan hosts the largest number with 4.5 million, while 1.8 million are in other Arab countries, including Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and the Gulf states. Around 750,000 are estimated to live in non-Arab countries, with a particularly large number in Chile.

The total global Palestinian population is notoriously difficult to calculate, but 14 million is a good conservative estimate. If translated into a state population, it would make Palestine the 75^th biggest country in the world, and drop Israel one place to 99^th in that list, with its population of 9.5 million (that figure includes the 1.7 million Palestinians living inside Israel who would probably claim their Palestinian citizenship given the option).

All Palestinian refugees have an inalienable right to return to their land, guaranteed under international law in UN General Assembly Resolution 194 of December 1948. Yet, with the help of Britain and other powerful allies, Israel continues to block the fulfilment of the refugees’ right of return and seeks to further diminish their presence in their homeland. As a result, many Palestinians live in appalling conditions with few rights. If the refugee crisis had started in 2023, rather than in 1948, it would shock the world and feature heavily in the news. Instead, it is largely unknown to Western news consumers.

In the Gaza Strip, most of the 2.2 million population are refugees and descendants of refugees (descendants have the same status and guaranteed right to return) from Israel’s initial ethnic cleansing of 1947-48 when Jewish terrorist gangs forced Palestinians into exile. Many in Gaza have been made refugees multiple times over by Israel’s wars against the Strip.

In the occupied West Bank, Palestinian refugees live in camps under strict military occupation, suffering daily humiliations. In Lebanon, conditions at some Palestinian camps are not fit for human habitation, and in every nearby country in which they have sought refuge, Palestinians have suffered further displacement, war, and oppression. This includes Jordan, Syria, Libya, and Iraq. Upheavals in countries across the region have frequently seen persecution of the Palestinian refugees with no state yet established to protect them.

Burj al-Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut. Graffiti of the iconic Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, where these refugees are unable to visit

Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp, near Tripoli, Lenanon, 2011. The camp was destroyed by the Lebanese army, displacing tens of thousands of refugees. The international community was not forthcoming with funds to reconstruct the camp

To resolve the Middle East conflict, Britain could support the fulfilment of the refugees’ right of return. This would provide justice, regional stability, and reduce the chances of regional conflict or nuclear war. With the return of the refugees, Israel’s Zionist project, which seeks to form an exclusively Jewish state in the holy land, would be defeated, and Israel would be forced to live in peace with its neighbours as a normal country instead of the garrison state it currently is. Resolving the refugee crisis would also go a long way to allaying the crisis faced by Muslims and Christians as their institutions and holy places would no longer be threatened by a colonial project that violates the sanctity of mosques and churches and abuses worshipers. Sunni Islam’s third and fourth holiest sites are in Palestine (Jerusalem and Hebron) as is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (Jerusalem.) This barely scratches the surface of the religious significance of Palestine.

As an aside (!), it is another remarkable fact of the conflict that Britain, a Christian country with a large Muslim population, does nothing to defend the holy sites. Analysis, even passing mention, of Israel’s targeting of sacred religious places is largely absent from media and political commentary of the conflict. The day after Israel bombed a Christian hospital in Gaza, killing an estimated 500 peole, the leader of a Christian nation, US President Joe Biden, hugged Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and claimed the Palestinians had bombed themselves. Within two days, the leader of another Christian state, our own prime minister, did likewise, telling Netanyahu and the World, “We want you to win.”

If this “win” is even possible, can it be achieved without the destruction of both Islam and Christianity in Palestine? It certainly cannot be achieved without the continuation of an epic injustice against a stateless people.

Problem two – Democracy

The consensus across the political-media spectrum in Britain is that Palestine has no right to be a democracy. Like with the refugee issue, we see impressive discipline from politicians and journalists as they avoid mentioning the last Palestinian general election. Commentators incessantly tell the British people that the winner of that election, Hamas, is a terrorist group, plain and simple.

Ignorance and cowardice pervade parliament over the issue of Palestinian democracy. In 2006, Hamas won the right to form a government in the Occupied Territories. Realising that they would be sabotaged by the US and EU, Hamas formed a coalition with the defeated Fatah party. The US and EU, with Britain prominent, plotted to cancel Palestinian democracy, backing a Fatah-affiliated group to overthrow Hamas in a violent coup. Hamas, based in Gaza, but having won a higher percentage of the vote in the West Bank, got wind of the plot, pre-empted it and took control of Gaza’s institutions. This move sealed the current division of the Palestinians into two separated geographical areas. The Gaza Strip is de facto ruled by Hamas but maintained as a concentration camp by Israel. The West Bank has a Fatah government headed by Mahmoud Abbas, recognised as representative of the Palestinians by Western governments, but operating as an arm of the Israeli security forces in suppressing Palestinian dissent.

Britain, under a Labour government at the time of the election, simply pretended that Hamas hadn’t won, and continued to support Israel wholeheartedly as it repeatedly massacred Gazans and tightened its oppression and theft of land in the West Bank. Hamas generally maintained ceasefires and kept Gaza quiet, signing multiple reconciliation agreements with Fatah, but the geographical division combined with Fatah’s aversion to resistance made true unity impossible. In 2018, when Palestinian refugees marched bravely and peacefully in the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi to the Israeli border, they were massacred. Hundreds were killed and thousands injured. Britain’s support for Israel continued.

Britain and others’ refusal to deal with Hamas consigned the Palestinians to political impotence. By retaining two governments in two small, besieged territories, influential states that could potentially advocate for peace and justice are unable to do so with confidence. The result is Palestinian presence in the so-called Axis of Resistance to US domination (Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, and perhaps Turkey and Qatar) and 17 years of political drift for the Palestinians.

The Left

Elite commentary in Britain during Israel’s current intensified ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip is revealing. As expected, the right generally backs Netanyahu’s violence. Parliament’s official opposition has done likewise, and the Labour Party now lacks backbenchers able to speak with conscience and clarity about Israel’s war crimes.

The British left more generally, needing to speak but with little to say about ending the conflict and providing justice to the Palestinians, has largely limited its response to calling for humanitarian aid to be allowed into Gaza and calling out racist sentiment in the media. Part of Israel’s calculation in causing mass destruction is that Westerners will quickly fall into two chattering camps: Zionists and those appalled by the violence. Both camps are kept busy as, day after day, Israel – from a safe distance – pummels the refugees of Gaza.

Many on the left lack a real grasp of the issues and history outlined above – refugees and democracy – so they perpetuate a stale old routine. There’s no mention of the refugees, or the fact that the conflict could be quickly resolved based entirely on international law and UN resolutions that Britain is a signatory to. And no mention of democracy, because that risks validating Hamas, its political wing now proscribed by the Conservative government without protest from Labour. This also means silence over the Palestinians’ right to self-defence, including by violent means.

It is as if the conflict started on October 7^th and is being fought between two equal sides. Both right and left advocate a return to the pre-October status quo, a living nightmare for the Palestinians. The British left seems to only support the Palestinians on condition that they remain victims, recipients of aid and pity.

This lack of political impetus risks leaving the Palestinians no further forward than they were before they briefly broke out of their prison. It risks condemning another generation of refugees to misery and dispossession. It leaves Israel as an anachronism, unable to move towards peace while the West encourages it to covet the destruction of the Palestinians, Islam, and Christianity in the holy land. And it leaves Britain adrift, a weakening state with a political-media class that lies relentlessly to sell us a Middle East policy that is devoid of hope, mere cover for ethnic cleansing, racism and dictatorships, alongside increasingly repressive domestic policies.

by Tom Charles @tomhcharles

photos by the writer

Complicity Felicity’s Simplicity

March 1, 2023 ~ Urban Dandy London ~ 4 Comments

On Friday, Kensington MP Felicity Buchan attended a series of events locally to commemorate the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Dressed in the colours of the Ukrainian flag, Buchan smiled like a friend to refugee children and their parents, but the words she spoke revealed a simplistic view of the conflict and no appetite for doing anything to stop the death and destruction.

Virtually all 650 MPs in parliament have been in lockstep to prolong the Ukrainians’ agony as they lose both territory and population in the war against their far stronger neighbour. As Ukraine is crushed, our politicians virtue signal from a safe distance. Diplomacy is a dirty word, and we’re repeatedly told that peace is impossible. Sir Keir Starmer has banned Labour MPs from questioning NATO’s provocation of the war and Boris Johnson intervened to prevent Presidents Zelensky and Putin from holding peace talks last April, as reported in Ukrainian media (the British press ignored it).

From 2014 to February 2022, over 14,000 were killed in Ukraine’s civil war following the US-backed coup that overthrew a president who favoured close ties to Russia. In the coup, the ensuing civil war and now the war with Russia, Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups and army battalions have played a prominent role.

The situation is intensely complex and dangerous, yet Buchan pledged Kensington’s and the UK’s unwavering support for the people of Ukraine. Her platitudes and clichés masked the ugly reality: Britain will support the Ukrainians on the condition that they keep fighting the Russians in an unwinnable war.

Slava

Buchan wrote about her experience of the anniversary: “I was honoured to attend the very moving remembrance service at the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral. Tragically, more than 450 children have died in the conflict. Paper angels were suspended from the ceiling in their honour. Ukraine will prevail. Slava Ukraini.”

Slava Ukraini – Glory to Ukraine. But where is the glory? And what right does a British politician have to declare glory to a country they are, knowingly or unknowingly, sacrificing?

Outside the Ukrainian embassy, Buchan declared “We will not tire, we will be there to the end.”

These words are almost unfathomably vacuous. But soundbites are all we hear from our leaders as they mindlessly provoke Russia and China, two countries that needn’t be enemies of Britain.

“We will be there to the end” of what? Ukraine as a functioning state? Or are our rulers really set on decades of existential wars to impoverish and terrify us as they play brinkmanship over nuclear annihilation?

Outside the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain on Holland Park Avenue, Buchan told the assembled refugee children that the war against Russia “isn’t just about Ukraine. It’s about western values, good values.”

We emailed Felicity Buchan asking her to clarify what she meant, given that Ukraine is an eastern country, but at the time of writing, she had not replied.

Complicity

Dubbed “Complicity Felicity” in North Kensington due to her part in voting down the fire safety recommendations of the Grenfell Inquiry, Buchan enjoyed her moment posing as a liberal humanitarian. But her words were loaded with the complacency, fanaticism and racism of the British political establishment. Ukrainian lives mean so little that Britain sends enough weapons to keep them hanging on in the war, guaranteeing humanitarian catastrophe. This is justified through profound Russophobia and the puerile demonisation of Putin as the epitome of evil. It’s a familiar tactic, most recently used against Bashar al-Assad in Syria, a country illegally occupied by both the United States and Israel – western values? Before Assad, it was Gaddafi, sodomised to death by our allies in Libya. “We came, we conquered, he died!” squealed Hillary Clinton in delight – western values.

All this recent history, including Russia’s intervention in Syria to prevent its fall to ISIS and al Qaeda; the Ukrainian government’s role in persecuting ethnic Russians in the Donbas; the Ukrainians’ own values, traditions and their intrinsic value as humans, is all swept away with simplistic concepts like “Western values…good values.”

Like most MPs, Kensington’s “Complicity Felicity” frames the war in babyish terms, Good West v Bad East. By shunning diplomacy but acting as a friend of the Ukrainian people, Buchan is adding duplicity to her complicity and simplicity.

By Tom Charles

@tomhcharles

Breaking Water : MSF Exclusive

October 23, 2016January 21, 2020 ~ Angel Lewis ~ Leave a comment

The sea section

Within just a few short months, the world’s concerns have gone from refugee to presidential. Makes me question who’s doing the choosing inside the old noggin? I, in defiance of the directive, am watching a documentary on the plights of Medicines Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders) and I’m so moved by it that I feel as though I’m actually in the Mediterranean onboard the rescue boat – Bourbon Argos.

So enlightened by the whole ordeal, I find myself wanting to join the team. For me, the safe delivery of the worn-out refugees is better appreciated by comparing it with the area of obstetrics. The uncertainty, the anticipation and danger of the breaking water creates a contradicting consternation, followed by the sheer satisfaction of delivering those people. People who had already decided to let their outright need overcome their utmost fear for the potential of entering into a new, safer, unfamiliar world; or not.

14550693_10154431344200575_215265644_o — *The Bourbon Argos (the delivery room) intended as a medical supply ship. Photo: Lindis Hurum*

Inspired by this, I contacted Lindis Hurum, one of the humanitarian workers featured in the documentary, directly who told me that she wasn’t actually a recruiter and advised me accordingly. As luck would have it, or maybe fate, this led to an incredibly beautiful conversation, ending with the following communication of rare insight.

Rare because there aren’t really many words that can explain the emotions exchanged between the deliverer and the delivered but if we must seek out words to elucidate this fervour, let us not try guessing and experience them first hand.

Lindis Hurum is the field coordinator for Medecins Sans Frontieres, an organisation founded four decades ago by a group of doctors.

The emergency medical aid organisation was set up to provide care for people facing natural and man-made disasters, epidemics and war, regardless of race religion or ideology. In the last forty years, an unfathomable amount of lives have been delivered through the safe hands of the organisation.

Continue reading →

A BOAT COMES IN

January 15, 2016August 29, 2016 ~ Urban Dandy London ~ Leave a comment

A refugee boat lands on Lesvos

by Bradley Middleton

It’s dawn in early January on the Greek island of Lesvos. A brisk breeze sweeps in off the wintry Aegean Sea. Small waves break on the dark carpet of water, flaring and dying like liquid stars all across the surface of those freezing depths, a sea that expands from my view all the way to the beaches and rocks of Anatolia just under twenty kilometres to the east. There lies Turkey. Another country. Another continent. Its hills and mountains backlit by the barely risen sun. Pink and burnt orange unspun clouds hang above it in the magnificent deep blue sky. My friend Pawel has already seen the boat. He leans forwards squinting, almost pressing the binoculars to the windscreen of our hired van. He hands me the binoculars and points out to the edge of the horizon. ‘A small black dot. Look. It’s flat, very flat, down in the water.’ I see nothing. Why can’t I see it? I open the door and step into the freezing wind. Pawel is already in the back of the van checking on our supplies; gloves, socks, children’s clothes, emergency blankets. He’s a relative veteran on the island and has been part of the emergency team many times before, spotting and greeting refugee boats in this inhospitable and rocky part of the coast. A tall blonde blue-eyed Polish guy who’s spent time in Nepal and the West Bank and as such speaks pretty good Arabic, a much sought after skill in the camps and landing points of Lesvos. I still can’t see the boat. The other members of our team, Iker and Andrea, can see it. The Spanish Bomberos, volunteer firefighters from Castile and Leon can see it and are now preparing their equipment for landing. Where is it? I start to doubt myself. What’s wrong with my eyes? I ask someone to point to the boat. I follow their direction and eventually see a tiny, almost invisible shape very low in the water, too low. I see the flat line of the dinghy and tiny little orange dots that are the life vests worn by the people sitting up high on the sides of the vessel.

The minutes pass. The sun brightens the sky. The boat comes slowly, battling the torrents in fits and starts, almost as if the motor is struggling to keep a straight course. I know that there’s anywhere between eighty to a hundred refugees crammed onto the tiny boat. A rickety barely sea-worthy dinghy. I look through the binoculars and see each wave crashing over the bow soaking the people on board with every hit. I also know that the refugees have organised themselves so the men are on the outside and the women are towards the middle huddled and cuddling the children and babies to protect them from the freezing water washing over the dinghy with every strike. I’m struck by an acute feeling of helplessness. I find myself talking out loud. ‘Come on…come on…slowly…easy…easy. Just keep it steady.’ The sea is too rough, and the boat looks so unstable under the weight of people. I know the pilot of the boat has never done this before. He’s a refugee who’s paid a little less than the thousand euros asking price to cross the sea, his reduced ‘ticket’ is reward for taking on the duty of driving. I do the sums quickly. A hundred people at a thousand euros each. That’s 100,000 euros per boat in the coffers of the Turkish people smugglers, no doubt cuts going to the mafia and the local government officials turning a blind eye to the operation. As I stand on the edge of the western world watching these people escaping the warring factions, the brutal regimes and the western bombs now littering their homeland, the helplessness ferments into anger. Anger at the unnecessary risks these people are forced to take. Anger at the inactive European Union. Anger at the dormant Greek and Turkish authorities. There is no reason why these people aren’t granted safe passage. No reason why they must make this perilous journey across these dangerous waters. The EU makes its rules. It grants asylum or not, but that’s not the point I’m making here. Safe passage should be a right granted to all refugees fleeing conflict in their own countries. Continue reading →

Unknown Hell – Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon

September 4, 2011February 2, 2019 ~ Urban Dandy London ~ Leave a comment

In February 2011 a group of British Labour MPs joined a Parliamentary delegation to Lebanon, home to 400,000 Palestinian refugees. They live in hell, but it is never mentioned in the mainstream media. Click here to read the findings of Gerald Kaufman, Michael Connarty and Jeremy Corbyn.

Unknown Hell