Simon Hoare reflects on a landscape marked by trauma, political fracture and diminishing hope, questioning whether the conditions for lasting peace are slipping further from reach
Three Labour, a Liberal Democrat and a Tory member of Parliament and a rabbi are on a promontory overlooking Gaza … it does sound suspiciously like the start of a joke. But it is far from it.
I was part of a UK Parliamentary delegation to Israel and Palestine during the Whitsun break. Our trip was put together by a Jewish charity called Yachad, which is the Hebrew word for unity. The charity supports the Two States solution – an end to the occupation of Palestinian territory by the Israeli State (as do I) – as
the only way of delivering peace, security and stability in the region. My first piece of learning from the trip is that we should stop talking about a ‘Two State’ solution, but rather a 23 State Solution, where mutual recognition of borders across the region is the starting point.
Let me first state my basic premise: I want to see a secure Israel AND a secure Palestine. The events of October 7th, when Hamas went on a bestial spree of death, torture and kidnap, has left the Israeli people traumatised and terrified. We visited one of the Kibbutzim which had been overrun, and met the mother of one of the victims. She had not one ounce of bitterness in her. She felt let down by her government, and had come to the conclusion that there was no amount of security infrastructure that could keep Israel totally safe.
A massive percentage of Israeli GDP is spent on intelligence, surveillance and hardware – but it can only go so far. It is the Occupation that causes the insecurity, not the policing of the state. We met rabbis and members of Israeli civic society committed to working for peace and reconciliation. Many took Northern Ireland and the Good Friday Agreement as their template. There is a growing frustration at the determination ‘not to speak to the other side because they see things differently’. The lesson they have learned from Northern Ireland is that you must talk to those you least wish to, in order to make progress. From my experience of Northern Ireland politics, I can only agree.
No longer the villa
But Israel is a divided society – and perhaps even more so post October 7th. The actions of Ministers Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich are either heralded as the actions of patriotic Israelis or condemned as provocation that demeans the State of Israel.
In 1996, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak described Israel as ‘a villa in the jungle’. By that he meant that his country was the beacon of democracy, free speech and the Rule of Law in a sea of autocratic dictatorships or absolute monarchies. The current Israeli government, in many people’s assessment, has decided to become an extension of the jungle rather than the villa of liberty.
The Civil Service is being politicised. The Treasury is withholding 70% of Palestinian tax and excise incomes. The legal system is under acute political attack. The police and IDF have never been more politically controlled.This all serves Israel ill. It makes it harder for the international community to be friendly towards Israel, and it creates unnecessary schism within Israeli society.
If anyone has ever read any of the histories of white expansionism across North America and the treatment of the Native American tribes, most would come to the conclusion that it would never happen again. Wrong! It is going on – and it pains me to write this – blatantly and in plain sight, across Palestinian territory.
At the end of our trip we heard PM Netanyahu declare he wanted control of 70% of the Gaza Strip – up from the current 60%, which is of course 60% higher than it should be – because Gaza is Palestine.
This is a classic tactic of US settler expansion: reduce control of land to such an extent that, for the indigenous peoples, living on it became unsustainable. Israeli Ministers are now saying, quite openly, things they would never have said just a few years ago – by whatever means they want Palestinians to have no choice other than to leave their homeland. They can go to Egypt or Jordan, we are told.
To an extent that is true, but has Israel considered the exportation of hatred, bitterness and demand for revenge they are creating? No. Because they are only thinking in the short term. And still worse, the extremist Ministers openly discuss the forced removal of people from their homelands.
Ethnic cleansing
Again, on the theme of unsustainability, with Government connivance, Israeli illegal settlement in Palestinian Territory along the principal road routes has moved up apace, from slow amble to sprint. Palestinian farmers are turned off their land. Villages torn down. We saw a British-funded school lying in rubble. Road blocks in Palestinian towns are closed randomly for no reason, making travel to work or services complicated and tortuous.
This is all done to make life so unbearable that people will feel they just have to leave. It also means that the delivery of a two state solution becomes impossible, given that there are now small but newly established Israeli settlements established across Palestinian land, making it impossible to draft boundaries. By my assessment – and I use the term not to be inflammatory or provocative – de facto
state-authored ethnic cleansing is under way.
The world did not tolerate it in Rwanda or Bosnia.
Why would we tolerate it now?
Broken, angry and devastated
The delivery of aid to Gaza has been made worse by raising NGO qualifying barriers so high as to be almost unattainable. Israel has also declared items banned if they have a ‘dual use’ – this includes shampoo, hearing aids and tent poles.
Israeli Settlers work alongside the police and IDF to intimidate Palestinian families. We heard testimony of how the threat of sexual violence is deployed. Just one example: an Israeli settler is found peeping through the window while a Palestinian woman washes. Her husband pushes the voyeur away. The husband is arrested for assault. Video testimony is lost. Blind eyes are turned.The Rule of Law is trashed.
I could go on.
An Israeli general election looms, but the outcome, whoever wins, looks like to follow broadly the same policies – maybe just at a different pace and openness.
I returned to the peace of Dorset with tears in my eyes, my soul tortured and my heart broken.
I am frustrated by the arrogant intransigence.
I am devastated by the abuse of power.
I rail against Hamas which, in that act of bestial cruelty, set back the rights of Palestinians by decades.
I saw resignation in Palestinian eyes.
I saw fear in Israeli eyes.
I saw Israel bristling with military hardware but never feeling less secure. I saw Israel secure in its borders, yet looking vulnerable.
I saw the delivery of Palestine slip further away. International relations usually find a way through. A Camp David moment. A Good Friday Agreement historic event. A Berlin Wall falling.
But I see no such immediate prospect in sight. That should worry us all.
Instability, fear, hatred.
Whatever good came from that trio?
