19th April 2002

The main responsibility for the appalling crimes being perpetrated against the Palestinians must be equally shared between Jerusalem and Washington, for successive American governments have funded Israel, armed Israel and used their Veto at the Security Council to protect Israel from the being forced to comply with what World opinion wanted it to do.

In defence of his brutal and cruel policy of occupation and persecution Sharon has turned on his critics and accused them of anti-Semitism, almost as if Arafat was some modern day Hitler preparing a new Holocaust against a weak and terrified people, deserted by the world.

Such a charge is itself gross and obscene and flies in the face of all the facts some of which need to be recalled, not least that America never even entered the war until the attack on Pearl Harbour, and without that might never have done so although by then the Nazis had long since been known for their persecution of the Jews.

Many of today's sternest critics of Israel's present aggression welcomed the foundation of the State, looking to the prospect of peace between the Jews and Palestinians when that was achieved and I was one of them, having been staying, on leave, as a serviceman on a Kibbutz by the Sea of Galilee in 1945 when the Germans surrendered, dancing all night with Jews from all over Europe who found their way there as refugees.

Later at a Conference, organized by Mapam, on the prospects of peace held in Tel Aviv I joined with others as we discussed how such cooperation could be built and how the Palestinians might be able to return to their homes from which they had been driven.

But of course the Suez conspiracy with Britain and France gave Israel a chance to extend her boundaries, as did the Six Day war and it was then that the UN called for a return to the original frontiers, leaving the Palestinians room for them to set up their own State in what, in law, was still land belonging to the Jordanians, but it never happened because America would not permit it.

Seeing Israel as a valuable base for the extension of US power in the Middle east, Washington put such pressure on their client states in Saudi-Arabia and Egypt that none of them was prepared to recognize a new Palestine and Israel took advantage of that to build huge towns for Israelis - known a Settlements - deep inside the Palestinian areas, while still denying exiled Palestinians the right to return to their own homes in Israel.

So hostile was Washington to Arafat himself that when the UN called him to give evidence he was denied a Visa to enter the United States and the United Nations Session had to be moved to Geneva, and the so-called Peace Process which Bush now pretends to be encouraging is a complete fraud, designed only to keep the Arab States quiet in preparation for his real war against Iraq.

The British role in all this, over the years, has been less than honest in that we have supplied arms to Israel and all too often joined the US in giving them the support they demanded but now the crisis has reached such proportions that we should be insisting that our Government act firmly and independently.

Obviously it must be for Arafat to decide how to move but if, even from his besieged bunker in V, he were to declare to the world that a state of Palestine has been set up in the territory laid down by the UN and appeal for recognition by the Security Council and all friendly nations it could transform the situation.

Israeli troops would, by that very fact alone, be transformed from being the "forces of law and order" which is how Sharon likes to present them into what they really are - an occupying army in a neighbouring state which they have attacked in an act of aggression against international law.

Britain should offer its support for this strategy by stopping all arms sales to Israel, introducing trade sanctions and a ban on all investment there together with a boycott of Israeli goods here and make it a condition for the lifting of these measures that Israel complies with these demands at once.

The massive demonstration in support of Palestine that took place in Trafalgar Square last Saturday was one of the largest that I have seen there and it must have encouraged the Moslems who organized it that so many people from the British labour and Peace movements had come to express their solidarity.

Predictably the mass media either ignored or gave the briefest coverage to that demonstration and focused their camera on the burning of one American Flag without reporting a word of what was said from the platform, when we all know that the views expressed there command the backing of the overwhelming majority of the population of the world.

American hostility to Arafat and support for Sharon is what is prolonging the tragedy as thousands of Palestinians are suffering death and injury from military action which they cannot resist in kind but can defeat by their determination and courage if we can help from outside.

Every sort of pressure must now be brought to bear on the prime minister so that he is left in no doubt of the anger that he has stirred here at his continuing subservience to Bush in this and every other policy that the president lays down and if we are to avoid a world war the Government had better re-think its own position and do so very quickly.

19/4/02