1. Background
 
One of the longer-lasting disputes of modern political history, there have been numerous peace proposals over the years. This 'framework' draws unashamedly from some of those past proposals, in particular those which have come closest to achieving peace between Israel and a proposed future Palestinian State, most notably the Camp David Summit of July, 2000 and the Taba Summit seven months later.
 
Some guidance has also been gained from past independent initiatives, such as the Geneva Initiative and Lieberman Plan (in many ways polar opposites), but the main framework has been built on Camp David and Taba. The areas where these were successful in achieving accord will not be re-examined here, but keen focus will be on the key areas where accord failed, in particular that of Palestinian statehood and right of return.
 
This will also be titled a 'framework' document rather than proposal, to make it clear that it is just that, a 'framework' to be built upon and shaped and modelled further by interested parties on both sides. 
 
2. Core framework
 
Apart from failure to agree on the right of return being cited as one of the main reasons for the failure to reach agreement at Camp David and Taba, an increasing concern since then has been the rising number of settlers in the West Bank, and that this might therefore impede future peace by creating a 'facts on the ground' situation which would make the final drawing of a border close to the '67 lines difficult if not impossible; a factor mentioned only recently by US Secretary of State, John Kerry, in Middle East resolution discussions.
 
This proposal would seek to address both of these key issues in a way that would not only facilitate effective resolution, in effect cancelling each other out, but would allow both issues to be looked upon in a far more positive light not only by both involved parties, Israelis and Palestinians, but by the world outside. In essence what has so far been viewed as an impasse between the two parties could be turned around to create the basis of more harmony and accord between them.
 
To this effect, where this proposal differs radically from past proposals is that the settlers would be allowed to stay - as long as double that number of Palestinians were allowed right of return (split between 'permanent residency' in Israel and citizenship within the newly formed Palestinian State). Both parties would continue to vote for their national elections (Palestinians for Palestinian elections and Israeli settlers for Israeli), but their vote would count in the local elections of where they lived.
 
This then would bypass the problem Israel has historically had of allowing right of return within Israel because it might sway voting in the Knesset towards an Islamic leaning radical-style government. But in essence a Palestinian's main interests should be in their nation's ruling party in Palestine and likewise an Israeli's in Israel. Neither side should have interest in trying to influence the other's ruling government.
 
The numbers that would return either to Israel itself (within close to the subsequently drawn '67 borders) or beyond to the West Bank would be a matter to be determined and negotiated between the parties. But as as an initial guideline the number allowed within Israel itself should aim to be within 20%, plus or minus, the number of Jewish settlers remaining the Palestinian side of the border; so it was seen that there was some reasonable 'reciprocation' between the two. The remainder then would be settled in the West Bank. This total figure between Israel and the West Bank, based on the estimated number of settlers, would be 1,000,000-1,100,000 Palestinians.
 
The rate of such an influx of people would have to be carefully monitored and managed to ensure reasonable integration and decent housing and social conditions, so the suggested rate at which this should take place would follow the guidelines established by Madeleine Albright at Camp David of 150,000 people per annum. 
 
Since the number of Palestinians originally displaced is estimated at 720,000, a right of return and reintegration of some 1,050,000 would seem just and fair (45% more than originally displaced). However, if - after a period of establishment of the Palestinian State and successful reintegration of the original quotas of Palestinians and peaceful and stable relationships between Israel and the newly formed Palestinian State over that period (for sake of example, seven years) - the Palestinian State wished the return and reintegration of further Palestinians, then the issue could be re-examined; since in effect by then such absorption would be a predominantly Palestinian State issue. But the numbers returning to Israel itself would be capped at point of the original agreement.
 
3. Benefits to both sides

The increase in West Bank settlers over the past twenty years has been viewed by the Palestinian side as one of the biggest impediments to peace. Similarly, right of return has been viewed as a prime obstacle by Israel. By linking these two factors to advantage, this then allows Palestinians to view the issue of settlements in a far more benign light, in particular because it will have been pivotal to their right of return, something sought from the onset of the conflict.
 
If the initial aim of the settlers was to create 'facts on the ground' to impede peace and a workable two-state solution, then it would be seen that they had failed in this endeavour; in particular because there is no legal framework by which simply because one party occupies another's land it automatically becomes theirs.
 
But the main advantage to Israel is that there would be no need to dismantle settlements and move settlers to other areas and a possible repeat of the fraught scenes witnessed when the IDF helped remove settlers from Gaza. Nor a requirement to swap other land in compensation, since the absorption of a large number of Palestinians to match and exceed the quota of settlers over the border would be seen as the 'trade off' (as obviously land would need to be designated to absorb those Palestinian returnees).  As a result, the border division could be made swiftly; though there would obviously be required changes in security arrangements for this over-border zone, addressed in point 5.  
 
4. Aid and reciprocation
 
There would be an accompanying substantial aid package for the reintegration of Palestinians both to Israel and the West Bank to provide decent housing and adequate social and work conditions. The figure suggested for this at Camp David in 2000 was $30 billion, though this might now need re-evaluating.
 
When in the past the subject of Palestinian right of return has been discussed, Israel has also raised the issue of the many Jews who either left or were expelled from Arab nations in the years after 1948, with their land and property also lost. Rather than some reciprocal compensation on each side, perhaps these nations could be prime partners with Israel (and other leading nations and funds) in financing the resettling of Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank.
 
It would be pointless though to solve the Palestinian refugee problem as it relates to Israel and the West Bank without also addressing it in other Arab nations, so this same system of comparable decent housing and 'residency' conditions should also apply in these regions. In other words, no refugee camps and decent housing replacing all, with the Palestinians having the choice of where to live. Either where they were now or returning to regions of the West Bank and Israel.  
 
However, the same system of 'residency' might also be ideal in these instances. Lebanon in particular has voiced in the past that the absorption of Palestinians as citizens would unbalance the delicate religious-aligned demographics of their nation, and the same situation exists in some other Arab nations to a lesser extent. 'Permanent residency' for Palestinians would therefore provide the ideal solution; it should also not be viewed as diminishing their rights in any sense, as they would have the same rights as any citizens, except on the issue of national elections. In this regard their vote would count in Palestinian elections, as obviously they cannot vote in the national elections of two governments.
 
In the context of Israel, the same would apply, and indeed returning Palestinians would be little different to the Palestinians offered Israeli citizenship after 1967, yet a number declined it on the basis that it might be seen they were 'legitimizing' the State of Israel. They were offered instead 'Permanent residency', which they accepted.
 
In turn Israeli settlers the other side of the newly drawn Palestinian border would vote in Israeli elections yet be 'resident' in Palestine, with some economic benefits also derived from their presence there. Furthermore, this reciprocation of residency makes perfect sense in light of the fact that 21% of Israel's current populous are Arab; indeed, the insistence that every Israeli Jew should be expelled to the Israeli side before peace can be agreed might be viewed as equally apartheid as the suggestion the other way that every returning Palestinian shall remain their side. This 'reciprocal integration', along with the avoidance of the disruption of a large mass of people before the border can be defined, therefore offers a far faster route to reconciliation and peace.
 
5. Economics and security
 
Aside from political initiative and goodwill on both sides, two crucial elements which will make such a plan work in practice are economics and security. In addition to the aforementioned sizeable contribution to provide decent housing and conditions, work infra-structure will be a vital factor.
 
More projects along the lines of the Valley of Peace Initiative should therefore be put in place; a joint co-operation project between Israel, Jordan and West Bank Palestinians, Israel's Economic Minister Natfali Bennett reports that the area has over 50 factories where Jews and Palestinians work successfully together. This role model could be expanded, and of course with recognized peace between the two parties there should be no lack of willing foreign investment from Gulf Arab states and the international community. With peace will also come increased tourism for both parties and related income.
 
While the cost of re-housing such a large number of Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank is substantial, it should be remembered that a large part of this funding will come from outside and will during that process generate strong activity in the building industry, with numerous Israelis and Palestinians involved in the building process and a wide range of companies involved in the supply of building materials, fixtures and furnishings. This activity in itself will create something of an economic boom.
 
Adequate housing for young Israelis and families has also been an issue raised increasingly in Israel, so perhaps this programme could also be partly designated to alleviate that problem with 20% of all these new building programmes within Israel earmarked for Israeli-Jewish inhabitants, along the lines of 'social housing' models adopted in many European nations (thus at reduced cost and with special incentives for first time buyers, essential workers and families in need). Improved road and water supply infra-structures for these new communities will generate further economic activity and jobs.
 
Because a number of Israelis would be remaining the Palestinian side of the border drawn, by necessity many security arrangements would need to remain in place, at least for a 'transition period'. However, there should be a move away from what is seen as an 'occupying force' by one side and a 'necessary stringent security force' by the other.
 
The suggestion would therefore be for a new combined force of Israelis and Palestinians working side by side to ensure security. A 'Peace Cooperation Force' is one provisional name. This is not too far removed from the current situation where there is regular dialogue between Israel's security services and the PA's own security forces in the West Bank. This combined force would be responsible for all border security and in areas of high security necessity, such as areas where settlers remain in the new Palestinian territory.
 
Again the creation of such a force moves away from a 'them and us' situation and helps forge better integration and harmony; not least because at that point the shared interest in maintaining security, for the continued well-being of Israelis and Palestinians alike, will be keener than ever before. It also then immediately removes the tag of an 'occupation force', because this will be seen as a collaborative effort with Israelis and Palestinians working side by side. There would also be an extended benefit in creating such a combined force and the way in which it would address possible future threats, as detailed in point 7. 
 
6. Political will and implementation  
 
Though the initial implementation of such a plan could commence quickly, the implementation of all its stages with 150,000 Palestinians per year being absorbed and re-settled would take 6-8 years. A project worth referencing here because of its political time-scale sensitivity is nuclear fusion, one instance where Europe will lead the USA simply because of the time-scale of the project, 30 years. It was considered that with the enormous funding required, it would be difficult to guarantee that successive US administrations would be willing to continue approving its funding; whereas in Europe the project is led by non-political functionaries. 
 
Very much the same applies here. Also we have the lessons that past peace initiatives have shown us. At Taba in 2001, Ehud Barak reported that if he'd had a few more months in office, he'd have been able to conclude talks and reach a resolution. Then the tragic example of Yitzhak Rabin, where peace hopes were shattered by a lone extremist gunman.
 
In short, the issue of long-term peace is too vital (and controversial) to both the Israeli and Palestinian people for any one political party or Prime Minister to take sole responsibility. The suggestion would therefore be for all parties to convene and agree, then a working committee established representing all Israeli parties concerned to roll the plan forward. This would then bypass any and all political sensitivity of changing parties which might scuttle the process, and would also remove blame from any one party or individual.
 
The same would apply to the Palestinian side. The main political parties Fatah and Hamas would need to agree on the plan, then appoint a joint working committee to implement it alongside the Israeli 'peace plan' committee.
 
7. The new Palestinian State
 
The obstacles and challenges that such a fledgling state would face should not be underestimated. However, hopefully the close working associations forged over the past decade between the PA and Israel's own security services will aid that process, with further transitional aid and progress through joint security forces such as the proposed PCF (Peace Cooperation force). And indeed economic and work initiatives with more 'Valley of Peace' style projects and increased tourism.
 
But the creation of the PCF and joint security initiatives between Israel and the new Palestinian State could have extended benefits for Palestine's overall security. In a recent TV interview, leader of the opposition Isaac Herzog commented that the new threat of the region was extremist groups threatening the security of more moderate nations, which has come to the fore all the more with the threat of IS and its territorial expansion.
 
Also in the wake of the Arab Spring, we have seen political turmoil in Syria, Libya and Egypt. This raises not only the factor that there are fewer surrounding Arab nations to serve as ideal role models for the new Palestinian state, but that such a fledgling state might be seen as an opportunity by extreme groups to try and usurp power. In either case, a strong security partner would be needed, however ironic it might be that such a partner would be Israel.
 
8. Background rhetoric and blame 'acceptance'
 
There has over the past years been an increasingly lamentable rhetoric with terms such as 'apartheid' and 'occupation' used with abandon (in the view of many, incorrectly). However, the move towards such a peace plan, with its integration of both Palestinian and Israeli-Jewish citizens on both sides of the divide - along with a joint collaboration security force replacing Israeli soldiers - should immediately quell such terms. In this new situation, they would not be seen as appropriate definitions by any yardstick.
 
But the other factor which has impeded peace over the years has been the inclination for one party to blame the other either mostly or wholly. It is therefore necessary for both parties (and those outside observing the conflict) to accept that there has been blame on both sides and cast aside what has so far been a 'footballer supporter' mentality when debating this conflict; not only because such a stance is factually flawed, but because it works directly against any peace hopes and initiatives.
 
While it is true that stringent security divides remain in place, restricting freedom of movement for Palestinians, it is also true that before the waves of suicide bombings 12-15 years ago the society was more open and the divides were not there. There has throughout this conflict been an extension of Newton's 'Third law of motion' at play –  that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction – which needs to be recognized by both sides in order to learn from that history and move forward.
 
Both parties therefore need to accept that there have been faults, omissions and atrocities on both sides - and embrace and accept blame for those - yet with the firm conviction now not to repeat them in the future. 
 
9. Crime and application of law
 
For minor crimes, each resident body – Palestinians in Israel and Israelis in Palestine – would usually be dealt with in the nations of residence by local criminal courts. However, in serious cases or where it was considered the punishment might be more extreme than in their nation of citizenship, extradition would be applied for and normally granted.
 
There would have to be correlation between the courts in Palestine and Israel on certain crimes, but particularly acts of terrorism; and where there remained any doubt, then joint courts would be established. The reason for this is that at this stage acts of terror would be seen as an attack on both States, since the principles of both States would be closely aligned and have a joint goal: peace, stability, security and prosperity for all its inhabitants, Palestinian and Israeli.
 
Gone therefore would be the dark days of the past where suicide bombers were rewarded and glorified on street posters, or extreme Jewish groups were let off lightly for their actions (the attempt on the Dome of the Rock is one such example). Cross border rocket and mortar attacks would also be dealt with severely by the PCF and these courts. In short, there would no longer be a 'them and us' mentality. 
 
10.  Geography and priority of entry
 
Suggested geographical formulas for Palestinian returnees are to extend areas which already have significant Arab communities or build fresh communities adjacent or near to these; or to create entirely fresh communities adjacent to the proposed 'corridor' linking Gaza and Hebron.
 
This corridor might also be an ideal location for fresh light industrial zone activity, along the lines of the Valley of Peace initiative in the West Bank. 
 
Priority of entry to Israel for Palestinian returnees would be given to those who already have close ties or family in the area, or their family had past property there. Also those who it was considered were under political threat in their current nations of residence.
 
In part linked to point 9, 'Crime and application of law', prime consideration should also be given to those Palestinians who felt they might be unevenly treated in a new Palestinian state: minority groups, gays, and women of a certain persuasion (women's rights activists, for example).
 
Though of course an overriding factor in all of these considerations would be those who would not pose a threat to internal security.
 
11. Residential exchange flexibility and possible 'Peace camp' involvement
 
A crucial question here would be if 1,650,000 Arabs can live in peace in Israel, can 500,000-550,000 Israeli Jews do the same in Palestine? Given that the settlers presence would have facilitated right of return for so many Palestinians, allowing them to be viewed in a far more benign light, most Palestinians would probably answer, yes.
 
But given that a number of settlers have historically represented the more extreme elements, some Palestinians might still baulk at their presence; and those settlers, as the reverse side of that same coin, might not feel fully comfortable staying the Palestinian side of the border.
 
In these instances, one suggestion would be for exchanges of property to be arranged with Israeli Peace Camp members, who would normally feel far more comfortable with such a move, especially given the new light of what that 'exchange of residency' had come to represent. A hope for peace for all. Some financial incentive might also have to ride alongside such an 'exchange package', say 20% of the property's value, but still far less than the cost of demolishing property and relocating entire communities.
 
12. Flexibility in final Israeli-settler and Palestinian-resident figures
 
Finally there should be flexibility in the number of Palestinian returnees absorbed within Israel, guided by three key factors: the number of Israeli settlers remaining the Palestinian side might naturally reduce of its own volition prior to the border being drawn; the number of Palestinians that Israel felt it could realistically absorb, even on a 'permanent residency' basis; and finally the fact that a far higher proportion of Palestinians might wish to settle in the West Bank rather than Israel (indeed the Palestinian negotiating team at Camp David in 2000 indicated this would generally be the favoured option).
 
These three combined factors could reduce that final Palestinian 'residency in Israel' figure to within the range of 300,000 – 375,000 people. Though incumbent with this, the number of Palestinians settling in the West Bank should then proportionately increase so that the same overall approximate targets were met.        
 
13. Overall aims and objectives
 
This 'framework' peace plan would completely about-turn the way settlers and settlement-activity are currently viewed: from being seen as an  an arch impediment to peace to facilitating peace, along with allowing a working plan for partial Palestinian right of return. 
 
It would create an additional living and working community of Israelis side by side with Palestinians to help forge better understanding between the two parties and generally move away from the past 'them and us' situation, which has generally increased suspicion, misunderstandings and hostilities. 
 
14. Other key issues
 
As initially outlined, this 'framework' proposal focuses mainly on two key issues which have caused the failure of past peace initiatives: right of return and settlers/land swaps. In essence coming up with a radical formula not tabled in any past peace proposals and combining these to advantage; then dealing point by point with connected issues which might resultantly arise.
 
Other past key issues have been that of Jerusalem, but since agreement on that issue was close at Taba – in essence an open city with Palestinian sovereignty over Arab neighbourhoods and Israeli sovereignty over Jewish neighbourhoods, with Yerushalaim as the Capital of Israel and Al-Quds the Capital of Palestine - there would be little need for further comment here.
 
Or indeed additional deliberation on other issues, levels of military, connectivity from Gaza to Hebron, water and civil aviation rights - which had already been agreed in principal at Camp David and Taba
 
 
 

So what has changed over those years? Has it been due to a shift in my values and perspectives, or those of the left-wing? 

To more accurately gauge that requires going through a quick check list: do I believe in equal rights for all? Yes, absolutely. Am I against discrimination of any groups or races? Yes. Do I believe in equality of the sexes? Yes. Am I homophobic? No. Do I generally believe in fair play and stand up for the down-trodden? Very much so. Do I speak out when I see any of the aforementioned rights abused? Yes, indeed often probably too much so.

So how does the left-wing fare on that same check-list? I’m sure they would proclaim they hold true and firm on all of the preceding. However, in a couple of areas – discrimination and standing up for the downtrodden – the lines have become blurred over the years, and on occasion have gone directly against their other core values.

But to fully explain how and why this has come about requires going back some years – in fact to 1969 and the state of Israel, when Golda Meir became Prime Minister. At that time – hard to believe when you consider the state of affairs now - Israel was beloved and championed by the liberal left. It ticked all the right boxes: a brave new nation of only 4 million people surrounded by numerous hostile Arab nations, with a combined total of two hundred million, vying for its destruction; one of the first ever female Prime Ministers in a male-dominated political landscape, at a time when women’s lib was on the rise; and the kibbutz, a particularly idealistic socio-economic endeavour and the model for many farming co-operatives to follow. In fact, such was the level of the love affair between Israel and the liberal left that a favourite past-time of British students throughout the late 60s and 70s was to spend summer breaks on a kibbutz – whereas now they’d more likely be found demonstrating in front of the Israeli embassy.

Finally, that this was a people who had survived the holocaust. Indeed, with the advent of the 1967 war two years previous, it had been unthinkable that the surrounding Arab armies might be victorious and the Jewish people would face the same again – massacred and cast to the wind to return to being simply an ethnic group in other nations. Another diaspora, if you will. Such was the level of fear and outrage, particularly amongst the liberal left, that many protest groups begged the USA to intervene to protect Israel. The USA didn’t – partly because at that time Russia was backing the Arab camp and that could have led to direct conflict with Russia – though the USA did provide arms, as indeed the Russians were supplying the Arab armies.

Then the war came, and went. In six days! While Israel could be applauded for fighting such a speedy, strategic war with resultant low losses on both sides, the downside was that it caused a serious dent to their status as ‘underdogs’ with the liberal left. Still, though, the surrounding Arab nations massed against them were much larger, and six years later made a more concerted and organized assault with the Yom Kippur war – which at one point came dangerously close to success – before finally throwing in the towel.

This six-year period also saw the first seeds of Palestinian nationalism – before that it had been purely a Pan-Arab battle, and if successful Israel would no doubt have been divided up equally between its surrounding conquerors of Egypt, Syria and Jordan, with little thought of developing an independent Palestinian homeland. Indeed, that hard truth was demonstrated by the fact that Jordan, who held the West Bank and East Jerusalem between 1948-1967, made no moves whatsoever towards the formation of a separate Palestinian state, they simply annexed the entire area as part of an expanded Jordan.  

In the decades following, there was an uncomfortable courtship between the left-wing and the Palestinian cause, mostly due to how it was pursued during that period. After all, however righteous that cause might be, what self-respecting left-winger could, with a clear conscience, support plane hijackings, killing half an Olympic team and blowing apart men, women and children in cafés, hotels, clubs and shopping malls. Paradoxically, it wasn’t until the security divide to protect against this was built between 2002-2006 that the Palestinians were seen as a fully-entrenched and disadvantaged group, and so in turn were perceived by the left-wing as fully deserving of the ‘underdog’ crown previously held by Israel.

In Gaza – where with the withdrawal of settlers, Gazan women gave flowers to Israeli soldiers in thanks – that initial hope faded as Hamas gained control and with continual rocket fire into Israel, the situation became even more entrenched.

In retrospect, one can’t help wonder whether Palestinian leaders – having viewed the reaction in the West to that thirty-year largely civilian-targeted terrorist bombing campaign – helped shaped how they would fight their cause in the future. Certainly with the divide built and future bombing plans seriously hampered, propaganda was probably the only remaining strong option – so it’s easy to see why the Palestinians would make as much of their future civilian losses as they could. As a result, those losses were strongly exaggerated or bent out of shape, and pictures of injured or dead infants displayed at every opportunity. ‘They’re killing our children,’ became a favoured headline. And who can blame them? Having seen their own bombing campaigns against Israelis have a reverse effect and raise nothing but horror in the West, why not dip their bread in some of that same gravy – or in this case, blood – and plumb Western liberal sensitivities as best they could. Perhaps they even thought at one stage: the holocaust helped the Jews gain Israel, playing the victim card might work in a similar way for us too.

So it’s easy to understand why the Palestinians and part of the Arab media pursued this course; after all, with the odds against them in a conventional conflict, what other choice was there? But the position of the liberal left and much of the Western media is not so easy to comprehend. Where were the voices questioning these statistics or this strategy, or indeed stating the obvious: ‘You can hardly complain about civilian losses on your side when for the past thirty years you’ve pursued a terrorist bombing campaign against Israel which has targeted almost exclusively civilians.’ But this sort of reality-check was rarely if ever aired.  

And as this one-way Palestinian-plight-propaganda-machine gained momentum, any remaining semblance of reality or balance was also lost. The security wall was suddenly dubbed an ‘apartheid wall’ (neglecting the fact that if that had been the main aim it would have been built in 1949, not 55 years later in the wake of one of the worst terrorist bombing campaigns any nation has suffered); the Palestinian plight was sometimes compared to the holocaust (neglecting the fact that they were several million lives lost short, with the only remotely comparable recent conflict, Syria, where 5 times as many Muslims have died in 5 years than with Israel in 65 years). The term ‘ethnic cleansing’ bandied about, when indeed the population in Gaza and the West Bank now stands at almost 5 million, four times that of the Palestinian population in 1948. And within Israel itself – something often conveniently forgotten by the left-wing – you have a further 1.7 million Muslim Arabs residing, almost three times that of Palestinians originally displaced.

By the time you get to the stage of liberal left-wingers and students marching alongside Palestinians chanting ‘Palestine shall be free, from the river to the sea,’ in essence calling for the removal or eradication of all the Jews in between, hardly different to the stance of an ardent racist or latter-day Nazi – the polar opposite of all the left-wing has historically stood for – you realize just how out of control things have become. I’m sure that if any of the students involved in demonstrations in support of Israel in the 60s and 70s were looking on, they’d shake their heads in disgust. ‘Don’t you realize you’re demonstrating for the very thing that we strived to avoid all those years ago – the removal of all Jews from the area. Don’t you appreciate how abhorrently racist that is? Indeed, directly against all left-wing principals we’ve ever held dear.’

Of course, when these ardent left-wingers are called out on this apparent racism, they often reply, ‘Oh, I’m not anti-Jewish at all, it’s just Zionists I’m against.’ But even this doesn’t stand up to even a basic litmus-morals test. It’s a bit like saying, ‘Those pesky Jews are bearable I suppose when they’re living in other nations – but for God’s sake don’t let them have a nation of their own.’ Or how would it be if the remark came (I often feel you get more clarity on an issue when viewed from the other side), ‘Oh, I’m not anti-Muslim at all, it’s just the Palestinians I’m against.’ And while no doubt the many Israeli infractions and wrongdoings would be raised in support of an anti-Zionist stance (and yes indeed, there have been many), as many infractions and wrongdoings could also be pointed at the Palestinians with the waves of suicide bombings, rockets, kidnapping tunnels and knife attacks.

Thankfully, many of the Muslim and Palestinian contacts and friends I have, don’t think this way at all, and indeed you’d be hard pushed to slide a playing card between my view and theirs – perhaps not surprising for a Labour-Herzog and peace-camp supporter (in the same way that regrettably today you might have trouble discerning between an arch-left and Islamist/jihadist view on the Middle East). So while I’m critical of Palestinian suicide bombing campaigns and rocket attacks, I’m equally condemning of many Likud-led actions by Israel: the heavy-handed military actions in Gaza, and the fact that they often stay mute – or in some cases support – expanded settlements in the West Bank, which I feel are an impediment to peace.

As for the seemingly endless ‘occupation’, most Israelis don’t wish to see it continue in any shape or form, but are stuck for a viable alternative. They’ve handed over as much of security in the West Bank to Fatah’s PA as is sensible, and Hamas are in complete control in Gaza. Further, if the Palestinians were offered independent statehood tomorrow, the majority wouldn’t wish it under the current leadership. They find Fatah largely corrupt and Hamas little better, an arch-Islamist group in the pocket of foreign proxy paymasters intent on continued conflict with Israel, with little care or regard for the Palestinian people caught in the middle.  

By the same token, I’m sure many of my Palestinian friends and contacts would also like to shake some sense into today’s left-wingers: ‘Don’t you realize that with your ‘Palestine-river-to-sea free’ chanting you’re simply igniting a harder-line protective policy within Israel, ensuring that Likud get voted in yet again and further bolstering them? Effectively pushing peace and a solution away another five to ten years. Ensuring that more protective walls, fences and check-points are built. And that with each rocket fired, suicide bombing or knife attack, very much the same is achieved?’ 

Of course, the situation is far more complex than that, but while the left-wing point to America’s support of Israel, they tend to overlook the tremendous support Palestinians also have, particularly in the Arab world. Abbas’s Fatah party receives support from many Arab nations, the EU and USA, whereas historically Hamas’s support has come from Syria, Iran, Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood in various Arab nations. And with the advent of Hamas losing Syrian and Iranian funding due to their support of rebels allied against Assad, the Muslim Brotherhood and Qatari funding has increased, and there is now talk also of Hamas links with ISIS.

The underlying issue with this funding is that a hundred percent of the Hamas funding (and a degree of the Fatah funding from Arab quarters) is provided on the understanding that it be used primarily to undermine and ultimately destroy the Jewish state rather than make peace with it. So in that regard the Pan-Arab battle against Israel of forty years ago has hardly changed – except that now it’s fought primarily on a proxy rather than open basis. So that on the surface the Palestinians appear isolated and vulnerable (so that they garner Western sympathies and support), yet in the background they are still fully supported.

The problem with this type of support is that it shows little regard for the actual plight of the Palestinian people. The undermining of Israel is put first and their own welfare second; in that regard, they are seen as mere pawns in a much grander Pan-Arab battle against Israel. So rockets, mortars and cement for incursion and kidnapping tunnels take precedence over schools, hospitals and trade parks – things which might actually improve the welfare of the Palestinians. Of course, there’s also an underlying motive in all of this – because you can hardly recruit the next band of ‘freedom fighters’ when things are stable and the economy quite good. Which is no doubt why a number of surrounding Arab nations have kept the Palestinians in refugee camps throughout, without integrating them into their societies. Do we in the UK still have Ugandan Asians in refugee camps forty years later? Do we intend to put the current influx of Syrians into refugee camps and keep them there? No. So why do we tolerate numerous Arab nations doing that with the Palestinians?

There is it appears a need to keep them ‘lean and mean’ so that all their ills can be blamed on Israel. And of course with the response to suicide bombings, rocket attacks and random knifings – with increased barriers and security and often heavy-handed and OTT reprisals – those ills and injustices come to the fore even more (especially by the time they’ve been put though the media-and-online propaganda mill), and the cycle continues.   

When it comes to the attitude of today’s left-wing liberals to Muslims at large, their fault-lines are even more acute. Yes, I fully understand their motives in defending a seemingly put-upon minority in Europe and the USA, as indeed Jews and Afro-Caribbean’s were similarly defended by the liberal left in those regions in years gone by. And, yes, Islamophobia is a problem in some quarters, particularly with the far-right and UK groups such as the EDL. But in the rush to defend that minority, left-wing liberals seem to have forgotten that many of these Muslim groups (and this is particularly true of Hamas or any ardent Islamic group) are intolerant of gay rights, equality for women, democratic rights and freedom of speech (particularly when it involves the Prophet Mohammed). All the core tenets that any self-respecting left-wing liberal holds dear. So in that respect they face a tremendous dichotomy, with one part of their aims directly at odds with all the others.

These are all, I might add, values that Israel embraces probably more than any other nation in the Middle East. Indeed, I recently posted a link to a New York Times article about the Palestinian Arab community in Haifa, where a more liberal lifestyle is enjoyed, embracing secularism, feminism and gay rights, as propounded by Palestinian café owner, Ayed Fadel: ‘We want a gay couple to go to the dance floor and kiss each other, and nobody to even look at them. This is the new Palestinian society we are aiming for.’ A lifestyle that no doubt would tick all the right boxes with left-wing liberals, yet that 1.7 million Palestinian-Arab community within Israel is so often ignored.

The issue of ‘minorities’ also becomes a moveable feast, as that tag changes with geography. In the UK, America and Europe, Muslims are still very much a minority – though entirely the opposite case in the Middle East. In that region, Christians, Jews, Druze, Yazidis and Baha’i’s are in the minority. So that ‘minority-status-vulnerability’ felt by a number of Muslims in the West is not too different to that experienced by these other minority groups in the Middle East. Indeed, with Jews numbering just sixteen million worldwide – versus two billion Muslims – they carry that ‘minority status’ in both the West and the Middle East. Something for left-wing liberals to consider while waving the banner for ‘minority groups’.

Of course, perceived prejudice against Muslim minorities in the West now has a label: Islamophobia. In some instances, I think this is openly practiced and is a real problem, especially amongst far right groups. But recently on a leading UK Muslim message board which carried a banner headline proclaiming their battle against ‘Islamophobia’, I couldn’t help noticing how many of their posters openly displayed Judenphobia, Zionophobia and Big-Bad-Westophobia. The irony appeared somewhat lost on them of complaining about prejudice against Muslims while openly practicing the same against so many other groups.  In fact, Mehdi Hussein, a prominent UK Muslim journalist – and not normally known for his pro-Jewish stance – chaired a debate last year which discussed antisemitism within Islam.

However, it’s not just with the left-wing that the lines have become muddied over the years. On a message board not long ago, an EDL member suggested that my defence of Israel on various fronts must surely mean that I was anti-Muslim? I quickly put him right that I was strongly anti-prejudice on all fronts, and indeed was deeply suspicious of the EDL’s motives and overall stance, since their forerunners of the National Front and Mosley-ites have by turn had Jews, Afro-Caribbean’s and Asians/Indians in their cross-hairs. All they’ve done is shift their ‘ethnic group to target’ over the years.

That left him as baffled as the Palestinian supporter involved in the same debate, so I felt I owed them both an explanation. I elaborated that while I was pro-Zionist (a hang-up of the 70s left-wing ‘brave-new-nation’ supporting, if you will), I was also very much pro-Palestine (cue more raised eyebrows of surprise on both sides). I went on to explain that if you believed in the rights of a people to have their own nation, then it was the only rightful and correct stance to take. Further, that favouring one people’s rights over another could be seen as somewhat prejudiced. I accepted that that’s how the conflict had come to be seen by many over the years – that being pro-Zionist automatically meant you were anti-Palestinian and vice-versa. But did that indeed need to be the case? That one had to be at the expense of the other? Surely if you took an independent-nation-rights stance, you could support both equally.

It might be that events have gone too far over the years for that sort of open-minded and even-handed stance to be adopted readily by some, but I do feel that’s at the heart of where left-wing liberals have gone wrong and strayed from their core values. That through time they’ve taken a stance purely from one side and one viewpoint, then cherry-picked information to back up that stance (some of it pre-packaged for them by propaganda groups), so in the end they appear more like a one-way-view football-supporting rabble, rather than the more balanced, open-minded intelligentsia they used to pride themselves on being.   

And, following that same ethos, perhaps a more open and even-handed view on other fronts: that if concerned about human rights abuses, these should be focused upon equally (not just when Israel are responsible). That if atrocities and civilian losses are the issue, these again should be given equal consideration (yet time and again we see losses where Israel or the Big-Bad-West are involved focused disproportionally upon, even though these are a fraction of the Muslim vs Muslim losses of the region). Same again for free speech and abrogation of rights of any group or nation. In other words, put the issues first, not the people or ethnic group involved.

Thankfully, there are many who do adopt a more open and even-handed stance. Polls show that 79% of Israelis and 68% of Palestinians support peace and a ‘green-line’ border solution. And indeed, before the current wave of knife attacks and reprisals which started last October (largely religious inspired), things in the West Bank were reasonably stable and good. Palestinian losses from security conflicts averaged only four a month for the past 5 years (about a quarter of the inter-person Palestinian murder rate), unemployment is less than in Spain, trade and welfare quite good, shops well-stocked and restaurants busy. Gaza is a different matter, and unity between West-Bank Fatah and Gaza-run Hamas is in fact part of the hold up with the $5 billion foreign aid for Gaza, which leading Palestinian human rights advocate, Bassem Eid, writes about here.

Indeed, Bassem Eid has for a long while been one of the main Palestinian voices of hope and unity coming out of the region. A leading human rights campaigner for thirty years, he has developed a strong reputation of pulling no punches and being openly critical of abuses on both sides – whether by Israelis or Palestinians. As a result, he has become respected by each side, and in some instances feared: his views are simply too honest and forthright for some. But one thing becomes clear, he’s one of the few strong voices to clearly have the welfare of the Palestinian people at heart, rather than simply be washed along with the flow of some nearby proxy-interest Arab nation (in these two articles he talks about the lack of clear Palestinian leadership as they put those proxy interests before the interests and welfare of the Palestinian people). In that regard, today’s left-wing liberals would serve themselves well by taking a leaf out of his book. And perhaps ask themselves the same hard and fast question: do they also wish to serve those same remote Arab-proxy interests, or those of the Palestinian people?

And if in turn I was asked the hard and fast question of whether I still considered myself left-wing, I’d answer that if it involved targeting one race, nation or ethnic group, then cherry-picking any and all facts to back up that stance – so that in essence I became no better than a mirror-image of a right-wing supporter targeting a similar ethnic group or religion on the reverse side of that coin – then count me out. But if it involved a return to grass-roots ethics of defending human rights, atrocities, discrimination and prejudice on an even-handed basis wherever they may occur – then count me back in.

   ​​4 Comments
Betty Schwartz( No email )
11/1/2016 15:05:47Well thought out but have you seen how beautiful Gaza is? What is shown in the media is not a true reflection of how they really live. You are right. I feel Israel is fed up with the constant missile firing and attacks. 
The Druze Arabs are friends of Israel and the majority of Arabs who live in Israel are happy and get on well with the Jewish people.
It's very sad that the so-called Palestinians cannot live in peace with their neighbours.

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John Matthews( Scribejohn@aol.com )
11/1/2016 15:37:09Hi Betty, Must admit I haven't been to Gaza. But the West Bank I see is doing very well. Shops well-stocked, restaurants full and as many Mercedes on the streets of Hebron as Tel Aviv. What began to annoy me was the voraciousness of so called anti-Zionist Palestinian supporters. Don't they realize that every attack just makes matters worse? Even more annoying is that many of these are simply keyboard warriors from Luton or Warrington, who have never been to the region and have little knowledge of it.

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Grizz( LrdGrizzly@AOL.com )
11/1/2016 15:30:49As a Jew who of course is sympathetic to Israels cause and empathetic to the plight of the women and children of Palestine: it is good to see you have gained a more balanced appreciation of both.
Now John this right winger wants to know when you will come more fully to an understanding of why we so stoutly defend our second amendment :)

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John Matthews( Scribejohn@aol.com )
13/1/2016 14:34:21Hi Grizz, hope you're keeping well. I daresay I might come across as a bit of a hypocrite if I let it slip that my Uncle was a 'sharpshooter' with the Irish Guards and my first cousin Pat Matthews at one time owned the largest antique gun collection in England... kept in his converted 'gun room' attic in Hampstead. No wonder he never got robbed!

But my stance is more a Canadian one of allowing guns in the home rather than getting rid of them. I just think they don't mix well on urban streets... though I'm sure that in the Midwest or wilds of Colorado they make a lot more sense. Just I recall living in Canada and something approaching paranoia when they crossed the border. Vancouver (where I lived at the time) to Seattle wasn't so bad - only a 3 times higher murder rate. But Toronto to Detroit was an 8 times higher rate, which gave many Canadians pause for thought.

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Niteshlink( hackerboy12370@gmail.com )
13/1/2016 05:52:38Didn't read all of them but as it is said first impression is last impression.
I read the first paragraph and it was really great!!!!
Good luck for your next post

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Nadiya( kandamsjourney@gmail.com )
13/1/2016 13:20:37Assalamualaikum. I am a Muslim and until the past few years, I thought I was a liberal. But the left has lost sight of its original values and now can be as hateful and delusion as the right. To the left, there is the Oppressor and the Oppressed, with no room for nuance or complexity. Much like you, I still believe in equality and the like. But to call myself a liberal now seems too radical, too... wrong.

Being Muslim, everybody expects me to be anti-Israel, or even anti-Jewish in general. I'll admit I used to be blinded by the left wing propaganda against Israel. But I have come to learn that the suffering of one group does not negate or lessen the suffering of another. I have learned that compassion doesn't have to stop at ethnic or religious boarders. Each life matters. I stand with Israel, and I stand with Palestinians suffering under Hamas and extremism. I support peace, not incitement from either side. I wish that the left could understand that.

Thank you for this article. Jzk.

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John Matthews( Scribejohn@aol.com )
13/1/2016 14:27:16Many thanks, Nadiya. I have seen of recent more Palestinians adopting a mid-stance, but still the extremists tend to grab the main headlines. I have a good friend and contact in London, Fiyaz Mughal, who heads up an organization called Faith Matters... and he does a good job of trying to forge cohesion between Muslims and other religions and groups. Part of this stemmed from him being a lib-dem MP for Haringey, a very mixed district for both Jews and Muslims. 

I commented to him that indeed the first Jews of the region occupied the very same fashion sweat shops and market stalls as Muslims there now - many still do. And they both shared much the same immigrant experience in London with prejudice against them. So if they looked at that factor, they would see they have much in common. 

The same is true in Palestine and Israel, and indeed most Palestinians on the West Bank find far more kinship with Israeli Arabs/Palestinians than they do with Palestinians in Gaza. Although speak to some people in Gaza and they're afraid to speak openly against Hamas. So there are different levels of divide at play in the region. 

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Neville Roach( No email )
14/1/2016 07:56:49Hi Jonn, I must say I do like your way of thinking.
But it's a shame the situation has got this far.
I can tell you the reason why the average person on the street, leans to an anti Israel stance!
The world media have taken it upon themselves to show an anti Israel agenda.
The people at the top that let this carry on are anti- Semitic bigots that have no thoughts of peace but lies. As soon as that starts to change then we can start having a more even debate.
You have the intelligence to look at facts for yourself, a lot of people aren't educated enough or just don't care.
Keep up the good work.

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John Matthews( Scribejohn@aol.com )
14/1/2016 09:56:28Many thanks, Neville. It does seem that over the years the far-left in their anti-Israel stance have made some strange bedfellows of late, and find themselves allied with a motley collection of: 1 Islamists (who are against equality for women, gay rights and freedom of speech -- all the values that left-wing liberals hold dear. 2. Neo-Nazis and holocaust deniers (who have never really stopped hating Jews, but find it more PC and acceptable now under the cover of bashing Zionism and Israel). 3. Various other far-righters and racists, who are still stuck on hating Jews and haven't yet shifted their 'latest ethnic group to target' to Muslims. 

I'm not sure how the liberal left manage to juggle all this with a straight face or appreciating the total hypocrisy of their stance. But I suppose desperate times (combined with a lack of foresight and knowledge) often makes for strange bedfellows -- which the USA learned to their cost when they sided with Bin Laden against the Russians in Afghanistan.

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Sheri Ozlink( oz.sheri@yahoo.com )
15/1/2016 11:25:26Respect! This is a wonderful post. I especially like how you tease out the difference between the left that supports values and issues from the left-that-has-lost-its-way by ignoring their own values and issues regarding the Israel-Arab-turned-Palestinian conflict.

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John Matthews( Scribejohn@aol.com )
16/1/2016 10:50:07I think part of the problem, Sheri, is that in defending the values in the West we hold dear - freedom of speech, equal women's right, gay rights, general equality and democracy - all the issues the liberal left values in particular, all too often we find ourselves having to defend those values with defensive or offensive actions. Things are then automatically associated with the right-wing. So in a strange way, normally associated right-wing actions are doing more to protect the values of the left than any other factor,

Conversely, factions with issues normally associated with the right-wing or dictatorships - lack of women's rights, persecution of gays, lack of equality, no democracy - are often pursued in a manner normally associated with the left-wing, by playing either the minority or victim card, or both. So that the left-wing therefore get tricked into supporting factions or groups with largely right-wing values. It's such an obvious and simple trick, you'd have thought some of them might have been intelligent enough to spot it... but that's another issue :)

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Ted( tedflaum@aol.com )
23/1/2016 23:58:20I appreciate your article. I too used to be a left-wing like you and like you I began to shift because of the left's positions on Israel. I remember Israel's Peace Now demonstrations and their supporters. But I wondered, where is the Arab/Palestinian equivalent? Where were the Arabs and Palestinians who claimed the PLO, Hamas, Hezbollah, Black September, PFLP, Islamic Jihad did not speak for them when they were not only attacking Israelis but Jews around the world? Ad then there BDS, the darling policy of the left which is simply the continuation of Nazi policies and the Arab states after the founding of the State of Israel. And while it is nice that most Israelis and Palestinians may agree on a Palestinian state with Green Line borders, borders are not the main issue. As you said, the Palestinians have had plenty of opportunities to have their own state, in 1948 if they would have agreed to the partition and between 1948-67 when Jordan controlled the territory. Ask how many Arabs and Palestinians are willing to forgo Right of Return which would in essence destroy the State of Israel as a Jewish State and I believe you will get an entirely different response. But the left will not recognize this or if they do, that is their ultimate goal anyway.

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John Matthews( Scribejohn@aol.com )
24/1/2016 17:45:27There was a test on the subject of right of return a while back (although an inadvertent one, because it didn't start out as a test). I was involved in a draft peace plan with various parties (I used to be editor of European Brief, the main magazine for the EU Parliament). This plan was based on a type of 'exchange of settlers/residents', if you will - whereby out of the 300,000 settlers in the West Bank, whatever proportion elected to stay (the final figure was thought to be about 180,000), then double that number of Palestinian refugees would be allowed right of return within Israel.

However, for both parties, they would be designated as 'residents' - so they had the perfect right to reside and could vote in local elections, but not national elections. So returned Palestinians within Israel would vote in Palestinian elections (of the new state, when formed... which made sense, because this is where their main political interests should reside), and Israelis would vote in Israeli elections. This then would prevent either party interfering politically in the other's affairs. This concept was largely based on the enormous British resident population of Spain before it joined the EU, whereby they were permanent residents without being citizens. 

The other advantages of this were that the border could be drawn quickly and without fuss, as there would be no need to remove X-number of settlers. It was thought in fact that the more hardline protest settlers would choose to return back to Israel, not wishing to remain in a future Palestinian state, and those remaining would be more liberal and of the peace-camp mode; or indeed simply those who'd made the move for cheaper housing. Security would be provided by a collaborative PA/Israel/UN guard effort... so that the blame for any continued security wouldn't be tagged as some form of Israeli 'occupation'. 

Indeed, Bibi made just such a suggestion a while back, saying that if 1.7 million Arab-Palestinians lived quite happily within Israel, then why not a number of settlers within the new Palestine? Those who wished to stay, and with reasonable security provided.

This proposal was immediately rejected by Fatah and Abbas, stating that they would not accept 'one single Jew' residing the Palestinian side once the border was agreed. This cry of in effect a 'Judenrein' situation, not dissimilar to Nazi Germany, gained strong recrimination, not least from Ha'aretz, generally known for their liberal Palestinian supporting and anti-Bibi stance. They felt that on this one occasion Bibi had a good idea, and were alarmed at the Palestinian response.

Unfortunately, I found the same with this peace proposal. It was either rejected offhand by the main Palestinian parties, or ignored completely - whereas a number of Israelis either warmed to it or at least were more open-minded.

If indeed, the main Palestinian interest was right of return, combined with getting the border drawn quickly and peace agreed -- they'd have jumped at the chance. But the fact that this extra contingent of Palestinians could not effect Israeli voting unfortunately underlined that their main intention was to undermine Israel -- with little or no interest in that return itself. It also underlined that it was far more important to them to have the area rid of every Jew than indeed see right of return -- which in turn put an uncomfortable (and perhaps unintended) focus on just which party was more guilty of apartheid.



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Adam( No email )
4/7/2017 20:22:48Interesting. I am a bit surprised to no offense, but see a liberal who realizes that many liberals are indeed very hypocritical

In any situation, particularly that of war, the prevailing ethos is to protect children. But could it be that events have conspired so that the liberal left find themselves unwittingly aiding and supporting the death of children in war situations?
 
Surely not? While views might differ between the left and right as to right and wrong, aggressor or victim, in any war situation – on the subject of children both sides roundly agree: children must be protected at all costs in conflict situations. And the left, as usually the stronger defender of the weaker, more vulnerable parties in any conflict situation – though some might argue that claim – would as a result be the stronger defender of children; though a close call, and the one area where left and right views often correlate. So how could this terrible anomaly have arisen?
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The first part of that puzzle came to mind when I recently viewed a programme on Nicholas Winton, who saved several hundred Jewish children from the holocaust in Czechoslovakia – often referred to as ‘the English Schindler’. There were many poignant moments in the programme, but one that stuck strongly in my mind was how these Jewish parents had sacrificed everything to save their children: queuing for countless hours, filling in forms, getting papers stamped, raising the necessary money, then finally the tearful goodbyes – knowing that they’d probably never see their children again and their own lives would soon be lost. The ultimate sacrifice.

At the time, I was also involved in debates regarding the growing number of knife attacks in Jerusalem and the West Bank, with defences and retaliations leading to a number of teen deaths, with the father of one 16-year-old Palestinian boy who murdered a young Israeli mother boldly proclaiming, “I am proud of him”. The stark contrast stuck in my mind – that one party would go to such lengths to protect their children, while the other would so readily sacrifice their lives. If it was just one isolated incident, it could be put down to the strange aberrations of one parent, but there are numerous videos online of fathers at Hamas rallies proclaiming how they’d happily sacrifice their children for ‘martyr’ actions against Israel.

Thankfully, that isn’t the entire picture, with the Palestinian father of the gunman who killed two in a Tel-Aviv bar expressing his horror at the incident: “I am an Israeli citizen, a law-abiding citizen. I heard what my son has done, and I am sorry. I did not educate him to act in that way.” The father was no doubt aiming to be the voice of the 1.7 million Arab-Muslim citizens of Israel – largely ignored when anti-Israel protestors try to portray a purely them-and-us situation and dishonestly sell the ‘apartheid’ tag – who are peaceful and support unity rather than conflict.

But we hear in his voice a sense of plea. In the same way that many parents in the west, upon learning that their kids have become drug addicts, decry that they’d always warned them strongly against drugs, yet in the end the prevailing influences – the streets, pop and rock culture, fellow teens and peer groups – had won out. The prevailing influences in this instance come from the countless Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders praising the attacks, with even the usually moderate Abbas lending his support: “We welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem. This is pure blood, clean blood, blood on its way to Allah. With the help of Allah, every martyr will be in heaven, and every wounded will get his reward.” Only weeks later when an Israeli couple were killed, PLO official Mahmoud Ismail went on official Palestinian television, PBC, proclaiming their murder to be a fulfilment of Palestinian “national duty.” Faced with that level of encouragement and incitement – running all the way to the top of Palestinian leadership – it’s easy to understand the despair of any parent trying to push back against that tide.

It brought to mind that classic quote from past Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir: “We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.” Surely the last thing Fatah and Hamas leaders would want is to make the words of Golda Meir bear fruit and appear glaringly true thirty years after the event? Surely too, Palestinian supporters in the West, realizing that much of the current wave of attacks involves incitement of under-age Palestinian teens to attack innocent civilians and in the process often lose their own lives, would shy away from lending their support to such actions? But, sadly, that hasn’t been the case.
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Go on social media and you’ll see any number of sites glorifying the deaths of these teens as ‘martyrs’ – though all too often the full details of them being involved in knife attacks prior to being shot and ‘martyred’ are conveniently avoided. The picture painted is that the IDF or Israeli check-point security have killed these teens in unprovoked assaults. Predictably, this then gives rise to righteous outrage and further chants of ‘evil Israelis’ and calls for their destruction. 

So while on the face of it, Palestinian teen lives lost will have served little purpose, by the time they’ve been put through the - Al-Jazeera-Electronic-intifada-Palestine-free-river-to-sea – one-way-view editorial machine, they will at least serve a purpose in propaganda terms: Israel will have been further demonized and another victim chalked up on the hate-wall of ‘Palestinian children killed by Israel’. No thought given to the fact that it was various Palestinian leaders – safe in their villas or hotel rooms, their own children safely at school - who incited these teens in the first place to take such drastic actions. But neglecting to mention that fact – along with painting a one-way picture of Israeli aggression and Palestinian victimhood – also serves a purpose: the next Palestinian teen to read these accounts might be sufficiently outraged to take the same action, thereby providing useful cannon fodder for yet another Israel-evil-Palestinian-victim incident report, and the cycle continues.    

If it was only western journalists who had picked up on this, I daresay it would hold less credence for Palestinian supporters. But tellingly this is an issue which has also raised concerns in Palestinian circles, with a number leading intellectuals and journalists speaking out, including Hafez Al-Barghouti, former editor of the PA daily and a Fatah Revolutionary Council member. He voiced that these teens were a particularly vulnerable and easily influenced age group, and that their childhood should be protected. He accused a number of Palestinian leaders of "trading in the blood of children" by praising and glorifying these attacks. Palestinian journalist Ihab Al-Jariri of Radio 24 held a similar view: "Those who write theories on Facebook, from behind the safety of a computer monitor, supporting the idea of children carrying out stabbing attacks and encouraging them to do so – should first do it themselves and only then ask the young ones to follow in their footsteps."

The fact that this current wave of renewed violence has been largely fuelled by social media has also been commented on by many newspapers, from Haaretz to The Guardian and New York Times. While four local dailies and eight TV stations give a blow-by-blow account of Israeli-Palestinian violence, the main source of news for Palestinian teens is via Facebook groups that pump out a continuous stream of bloody images and pro-violence slogans. As this cycle of life reflecting-social-media-distorted art/death reached its zenith, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commented, "We are seeing a situation in which Osama Bin Laden meets Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder). The incitement on social networks is what is causing the wave of terror."

Israeli citizens too have taken this issue to heart, with more than 20,000 Israelis suing Facebook for "facilitating and encouraging" violence against Jews by allowing Palestinian users to post and share how-to videos on stabbing attacks, as well as violent messages and videos glorifying killers as martyrs. Certainly, the power of the internet and social media should not be underestimated, with it being cited as playing a major part in the ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria. But its value then was for militia groups to organize and coordinate – some of it using the ‘dark web’ – not to inspire teens to carry out ‘lone wolf’ attacks. So how and why did this use of young people and teens as a useful and valued spearhead take root in Palestinian society?    

To get the answer to this, you have to go back over forty years – to the attack by the PLO on Israeli athletes at Munich. While this certainly gained the Palestinian cause worldwide media attention, it was not in the way they wished. They learned from this that killing non-involved athletes was considered an abhorrent act and as a result had lost them international sympathy. The second series of actions which alerted them to what would gain or lose sympathy in the international arena was the wave of suicide bombings launched against Israel between 1995 and 2006.  These targeted mainly civilians, blowing apart men, women and children in cafes, hotels, shopping malls, and on buses. Particular horror was attached to the number of children killed, with one bombing at the Delphinarium Disco specifically targeting young teens: of the 22 killed, the youngest were 13 and 14. These bombings caused outrage in Israel and internationally, alienating many to the Palestinian cause, and shortly after the dividing security wall was built.
 
Possibly this action was the main kick-start for the largely media-led Palestinian propaganda war that followed – after all, with the divide built and conventional terrorist and suicide-bomber attacks thwarted, what other option was there? Also, since the main banner headline of that propaganda campaign often read, ‘They’re killing our children!’, they could hardly voice that protest – at least with a straight face or without appearing grossly ironic – when their own bombing campaigns were proportionally killing far more children the Israeli side.

But the international outrage caused by the Israeli children killed in these bombing campaigns – even though, out of respect for the dead, Israel rarely if ever showed photos of these corpses – had obviously gone deep into the Palestinian psyche, because it then often played at the forefront of their own propaganda campaigns. Alongside the prerequisite ‘Killing our children’ headlines, gory photos of the victims were displayed, and if the horror of these wasn’t enough, often a blood coated teddy-bear or doll would be strategically placed by the bodies. And as this one-way Israel-demonizing campaign gained momentum, ‘apartheid’ started to be used as a tag for the security divide – even though the suicide bombing campaign had not long finished and so its main purpose should still have been blatantly clear – and the term ‘Nazis’, genocide and comparisons to the holocaust quickly followed. 

It was almost as if a conversation had taken place in some electronic intifada or Hamas-central backroom whereby it was felt that labelling Israeli-Jews as ‘child killers’ might not on its own be enough. ‘What else would upset the Jews to be labelled? Racists! Yes, that’s good; having been the victims of racism for so many years, they wouldn’t like that. Ah, Nazis, genocide and holocaust. Brilliant! Comparing them to their main past aggressors and their attempted annihilation… they’ll hate that!’ What probably amazed this back-room bunch was that this rather obvious and infantile name-tagging exercise would ever gain wings outside. “I’m sure that most western journalists, academics and students will see through it and won’t be stupid enough to repeat it.” Most journalists, yes, but not all, and go on any social media site on any given day and you’ll see countless students and supposed academics repeating the same trite name-tags with abandon, not far different to kids – and with the same required intellect level - hurling playground insults. And on some choice days, you’ll even find some politicians stupid enough to repeat the same – particularly if they’re campaigning in Bradford!

But the final component which aided this ‘Child-killer’ labelling campaign came from an unlikely source: the UN. In the eyes of the UN, a ‘child’ is someone under 18 years of age, and it was probably not lost on both Hamas and Fatah that in a number of conflict showdowns, many of those on the front line jeering and throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers were in the 12-18 range. It’s one of the by-products of disaffected youth, particularly in an area of high unemployment in an on/off conflict zone. All that was needed was a tilt on that rudder for those teens to become more involved and aggressive, and they’d become a useful component in the war against Israel. Hamas would never admit to recruiting under-age militants, but there are numerous accounts of youths making up a jeering and rock-throwing front line while adult snipers shoot past them at Israeli soldiers. This provides a dual purpose: cover for their main militants and snipers, and if the young teens got caught in the crossfire, they added to the child-kill statistics aiding the propaganda campaign.

 The way in which this was played to advantage can be seen from the statistics of the Gaza war of 2014 and Hamas’s announcements about losses. In this conflict (from UN figures) a total of 2,104 Palestinians died, of which 253 were women and 495 children. Downplaying their own militant losses, Hamas went instantly for the child-killer angle, claiming that the IDF had killed more children than they had militants. At the end of the conflict, Hamas admitted to 500-600 militant losses, whereas Israel claimed it was more than a thousand. So which one of them was right? There were a number of newspaper reports about the high number of male 19-39 year olds amongst casualties which threw doubt on the Hamas claims, but none of these were conclusive.

There’s an old saying in crime investigations, ‘follow the money’. Well, as any seasoned war-journalist will tell you, replace ‘money’ with ‘women’ to properly gauge civilian losses. Mainly because most nations comprise 50% men/50% women, and women generally are not involved in front-line combat – particularly true in Gaza. So by doubling the number of women, 253, you have the likely number of non-involved adult civilian deaths: 506. With the children, from a related Palestinian report, 183 of the 495 killed were female. Double 183 to get the total of non-involved civilian child deaths: 366. Which leaves 129 males unaccounted for, thus ‘involved’ to some degree, no doubt many of them in the aforementioned 12-18 range, since it’s likely those under 12 would have been kept away from the conflict wherever possible.

Deduct the 495 child deaths from the 2,104 overall and you have a total of 1,609 adult deaths. Then take away the 506 non-involved civilian deaths, and you have a total of 1,103 involved in the fighting – indeed, slightly higher than the original figure claimed by Israel. But then on top we have the aforementioned 129 males listed by the UN as ‘children’ (mainly 12-18) involved in the fighting. All this aside from the Israeli claim that Hamas often fired from heavily residential sections, thereby increasing the overall civilian death-toll, and used their tunnels - which could have been used to shelter civilians - solely to protect their munitions and their leaders.

The high number of male casualties can also be seen in the statistics from this current wave of knife attacks. Of the 284 attacks since last September, which has left 31 dead and 348 injured, only 7 of the perpetrators have been female. A number are males in their twenties, but a higher proportion are under 18, with the youngest knife attacker only 11. The one-way-demonizing posts on Facebook are certainly taking their toll, not only in Jewish lives lost, but in the larger number of young Palestinians losing their lives during these attacks – which are then duly published on Facebook to further demonize Israel and incite more attacks. The fact that so many of the attacker-victims are young males has been reported by many journals, with a Haaretz (usually more left-leaning) editorial a month ago commenting, “What kind of a national movement unleashes 13-year-olds to do its dirty work? How does a child sacrifice, or at the very least an after-the-fact justification of child sacrifice, bring honour to the Palestinian cause?  Once again, the leaders of Palestinian nationalism have led their people down the long, cruel path of violence, suffering and death.”

Bassem Eid, a leading Palestinian human rights activist, in an editorial at the end of last year, lamented about the lack of good Palestinian leadership in inciting this current wave of violence. And an op-ed tagged to Amnesty International went a step further by looking deeper into the history of child-recruitment for the Palestinian cause, even going as far back as a LIFE magazine cover depicting tiger cubs of 8-11 in full assault gear and armed with automatic weapons at a Jordanian training camp, with a supporting explanation from a leading Palestinian newspaper-illustrator: “I saw for myself how afraid the Israeli soldiers were of the children. A child of ten or eleven had sufficient training to carry and use an RBG rifle. The situation was simple enough. The Israeli tanks were in front of them and the weapon was in their hands. The Israelis were afraid to go into the camps, and if they did, they would only do so in daylight.”

I’m sure that Hamas and the harder-line elements within Fatah might argue that if male youths between 11-18 are keen to be out on the streets at the forefront of conflicts, what can they do to stop them? But the lack of leadership voices urging them to desist – in fact, quite the opposite, urging them to partake and become ‘martyrs’ – tells a different story. And the reverse side of that coin is equally disturbing: if this is largely as a result of disaffected youth in an on/off conflict zone, what incentive is there to improve the lot of that youth, particularly when they can be used as such a worthwhile tool in the conflict against Israel; direct cannon fodder on one level, child-kill statistics to further demonize Israel on another. Which I suppose might go some way to explaining why much of the aid and concrete hasn’t yet found its way into re-building Gaza, it has gone into building more supply and terror tunnels.

The other archly dishonest element in this current wave of attacks is that their founding held no substance in the first place. This originally stemmed from the request of Jewish religious groups to increase the currently restrictive hours that Jews were allowed on the Temple Mount, and that some prayers should also be allowed (on the grounds only, where prayers by non-Muslims are currently forbidden); on the face of it not an unreasonable request, since this is holy ground for Jews also, being the original site for the First and Second Temples. Some radical Muslim groups took exception and called for protesters to heckle Jewish visitors during their existing allowed visiting times. This then led to more widespread protests and the current wave of knife-attacks. However the Knesset and Prime Minister Netanyahu had from the outset made it clear in announcements that they would make no alterations to the existing visiting times or prayer restrictions for Jewish worshippers - but this was roundly ignored by Muslim radicals as they spread the word that the 'Al-Aqsa' was under threat.   

But where does the left-wing stand on all of this? That bastion of protection for the innocent and underprivileged, with children – and with good reason – at the pinnacle. If these observations and linked accusations were coming only from Western journalists, you might expect them to do the usual of sticking their fingers in their ears while chanting a repetitive mantra of ‘Hasbara’. But many of these accusations are coming from the core of Palestinian society itself. So now keenly aware of that fact, are they shrinking back from the fray: “I’ll support many things in the name of the Palestinian cause, but I won’t support the use of children in conflict… particularly when it might lead to the death of those children.”

Yet on numerous ‘Palestine-Free’ Facebook sites, amongst the Arabic-named posters talking about the latest young ‘martyrs’ – often linked to a gory image or video - you’ll see any number of Susan’s, Elsa’s, Steve’s or Jose’s, all reading/chanting from the same evil-Israel hymn sheet. Go on their profile pages and you’ll see links to universities in Southampton, Stockholm, Amsterdam or Oakland, while others might be business consultants, computer analysts or health or socialist party workers. A broad spectrum.  

Palestinian journalist Ihab Al-Jariri’s comments about those writing on Facebook from behind the safety of a computer monitor start to hold a more callous resonance, as those writing from cities in the West are not only far removed from the conflict zones geographically, but from reality too by the very one-way-information nature of these sites. Most of these sites are private or group membership, so only those who sign up can comment. Make any comments that fall outside of a pre-set party line, and they’ll quickly be deleted and your membership revoked. Through this, a constant barrage of one-way-anti-Israel hate messages can be maintained. So they remain hermetically sealed from the reality of the situation or any balance.

All of this could be viewed as harmless banter on Facebook under the umbrella of ‘open debate’ if the only readers to get incensed by this one-way hate barrage were Israelis and their supporters. The left might shout that it was equal dues and served them right for being pro-Israel and so ‘Hasbara’. But when the recipient of those one-way hate messages might be Palestinian teens – arguably the most impressionable and easily influenced group both in terms of their age and being at the geographical heart of the conflict – who might be only a key-stroke away from taking up knives themselves, then it takes on an entirely different meaning. How would one of those left-wing supporters feel if a 14-year-old Palestinian teen they’d made a particularly bold anti-Israel comment to one day on Facebook – had the very next day lost their lives while engaged in a knife attack?

I daresay that true Palestinian supporters, concerned about the impact of their messages, would pause for thought or at least temper their posts. But the problem is that amongst this number are a collection of die-hard anti-Semites – as evidenced by the number of Rothschild-banking, Jews-in-control, blood-libel and holocaust denial posts – whose care for the Palestinians is minimal beyond the common bond of their shared hatred of Jews.

As a result, it will be interesting to see how these Facebook sites evolve and change over the coming months, especially in the face of a 20,000 strong law-suit. I think the first thing for Facebook to tackle will be the one-way nature of these sites whereby moderators censor out any opposing viewpoints which might level the playing field. Their main role should be to ‘moderate’ any inflammatory, hate-filled or racist messages – not give carte blanche to those messages and edit out or block anything which might run against that and give some due balance; ergo ‘moderation’.

​But with many Palestinian leaders having made use of this under-age army in their fight against Israel for so long, and with the additional benefit of being able to use their ‘martyr’ deaths in their ‘child-killers’ demonization of Israel – I see any change slow in coming.   
 
​

  
Before you get too excited, no, veteran actor Daniel Day-Lewis is not planning to star in a film of the 1930s Aldous Huxley classic. But Huxley’s book title would have been an aptly-titled description of Daniel Day-Lewis’s visit to Gaza seventy years later in 2005; at least, according to ‘Honest Reporting’ and other media-monitoring journals, who felt that Daniel DL’s report ‘lacked balance’, since he hadn’t bothered to also report on conditions in Sderot, just the other side of the Gaza border in Southern Israel.
    So I thought it would be an interesting exercise to have an article, as if Daniel DL had in fact made good on that suggestion by returning to the area years later to give an account of findings in Sderot. (Let me repeat that, because it could be missed on a quick read: this is not an actual report from Daniel DL himself, merely a projected article, as if he, or his alter-ego, or a fellow actor (or writer, like myself) had visited Sderot – to give more balance to his earlier article).
    However, the details provided here are accurate for the period concerned, many of them taken from existing reports and eye-witness accounts from Sderot and Gaza; and in many ways, because it gives a view of both sides of the conflict in the area, might be seen to be more accurate than his original report; or certainly more ‘balanced’, which has been the main aim here.
    The article is written in the same first-person, observant style as the original article (which can be read on the link below):

www.ngo-monitor.org/_inside_scarred_minds_/
 
My guide is Gerry, originally from Dublin, who has been working with Christian Aid for many years in Sderot. One of the first places we visit is a home on the southern edge of the town, a modest bungalow which was hit by a Kassam rocket just a month ago.
    The owners of the house, Morris and Sara, point to the dining-room roof where the Kassam hit. It has been patched up now, but the damage-area is clear, a hole seven-foot-wide – although the flying shrapnel, plaster, masonry and glass from the blast spread far wider.
    Their son, Ben, only eight, points to the wound on his arm from some of the shrapnel. He smiles uncertainly; proud, but not proud. His younger brother, Avi, only four, wasn’t so lucky. A flying chunk of masonry crushed his left leg. After three months of operations, doctors were left with no choice but to amputate the leg beneath the knee joint. A wheelchair stands in the corner as testament to his injury. Morris casts his eyes down.
    ‘We were outside when we heard the rocket alert. We weren’t able to get the boys to a shelter in time.’
    It’s as if Morris blames himself as much as the people firing the rockets. Morris was also hit by shrapnel, but he shrugs, doesn’t want to make anything of it, take anything away from Avi’s more serious injury.
    Gerry tells me that many minor injuries in Sderot go unreported. But even with the number that are reported, the total injured in Sderot and the surrounding area from rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza now reaches almost 2,000 – on top of the 44 killed from attacks.
    Gerry informs me that the population of Sderot is only 19,000, dropped from 24,000 a few years ago, mainly because of the constant rocket attacks. I do a quick calculation: that’s one in ten people injured due to rocket attacks! A staggering proportion.
    We see that painfully evident as I visit other families with Gerry. Nearly everyone knows someone who has been injured by rocket attack, many of them family or close friends. Then we visit Ben’s school, followed by two more local schools. Another boy in Ben’s class lost an eye from flying shrapnel in a rocket attack last year, and at the second school visited a boy was killed eighteen months ago. In line with that one-in-ten ratio I’ve calculated, we are availed of numerous other horror stories in each school ranging from minor disfigurements to lost limbs. And, of course, deaths.
    At the last school on our list, the red-alert sirens sound before we’ve hardly started our discussions with teachers, pupils and invited parents. Everything is suddenly pandemonium. A mad rush, children first, as we’re all shepherded to the bomb shelter at the far end of the playground. 
    Everyone’s silent inside the shelter, expectant, as if holding collective breath, the continuing siren outside smothering our thoughts. Then finally we hear a distant boom and bang, then one far sharper, closer – no more than a couple of hundred yards away. Then nothing except the siren again. The children look terrified.
    The siren in fact continues for another twenty minutes before finally stopping and we all emerge.
    As if in apology for the sudden rush, one of the teachers comments, ‘We only get fifteen seconds warning, I’m afraid. Often it’s not enough to get all the children rallied from the classrooms and into the shelter in time.’ She shrugs helplessly. ‘But what can you do? The rockets are being fired from so close by.’
    ‘How often do you get siren warnings?’ I ask.
    ‘Five or six a week. Sometimes that many in a single day.’
    One of the parents complains that many of the rockets are aimed at schools, ‘And often at school-run times in the morning or afternoon. It’s as if they purposely want to catch the kids and parents on the hop, unable to get to shelters on time.’
    The children’s fear stays on my mind. Uncertain looks punctuated by uneasy smiles, wondering whether they might be next to lose an eye or a limb, or their lives.
    The clinical psychiatrist I meet the next day, Elena, explains that it’s not just the fear of possible injury or loss of life, ‘But the daily noise of the sirens as a reminder, along with the pressure to get to a shelter in time. All of that takes a terrible toll on the people of Sderot, but particularly the children.’
    Elena has worked for the past five years attached to Sderot’s Medical Health Center. She passes me some statistics to read. They’re truly shocking: 65 percent know someone who was physically injured by a rocket; 48 percent know someone who has died in a rocket attack; 74 percent of children between the ages of 7 and 12 suffer intense fear; 86 percent of children between the ages of 12 and 14 suffer from post-traumatic stress.
    ‘But it’s not just the young who are very vulnerable, but the elderly too. Let me show you an example.’
    We go in Elena’s car to see an elderly couple two miles from her office. Ivan and Lena survived the holocaust to settle in Israel, and moved to Sderot ten years ago to be near their daughter, an administrator with a local kibbutz. Their house is modest and basic, few frills.
    Elena goes on to explain that many people on minimum income, such as Ivan and Lena, can’t afford either bomb shelters or to have their whole house fortified. ‘All they can afford, and even that with government assistance, is to have one room fortified.’
    Ivan holds a hand out helplessly. ‘With the sirens going off constantly, we end up living in just that single room.’   
    Elena elaborates that this is the reality for fifty percent of Sderot residents. ‘They end up living in just one room, and hardly venture out on the streets for fear of not being able to get to a bomb shelter in time.’
    As we drive away, Elena informs me that Sderot has become the bomb-shelter capital of the world. ‘There are more bomb shelters in Sderot than any other place since world-war two.’
    And, as if in support of that statement, an ambulance overtakes us, siren wailing; possibly in response to the red-alert sirens on the far side of the town ten minutes ago. Sirens wailing – whether from rocket alerts or ambulances, fire brigade or police – are omnipresent in Sderot. Of course, I’ve already heard the accounts from the other side that the rockets are homemade, inaccurate, and rarely kill anyone; but now seeing directly the terrible impact they have on a community, those come across as hopelessly lame excuses.
    We pull over and start talking to a young taxi driver, Raul, waiting by his cab. Raul laments that Sderot is becoming like a ghost town through people’s fear to go out, and it’s hard on his business. He has three children who his wife stays home to take care of, but some months he admits it’s hard to put food on the table for them. Their house has devalued 25% in the past few years due to the rocket attacks, and they were already at the bottom of the price chain when they moved to Sderot. That was one of their main reasons for moving there; to be able to afford somewhere to live. Raul would like to move, ‘But where do we go?’ Everywhere else is more expensive, so that’s even further out of reach now for them.
    There’s an underlying desperation in Raul’s tone. He’s in fact sympathetic with the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza, and doesn’t agree with the heavy military incursions from his government when they come, but points out that for people in Sderot it’s different. ‘The Gaza incursions when they come might be heavy-handed, but they last no more than a few days or a week. Here in Sderot we have the attacks day in, day out, every month and every year.’
    Elena adds that feelings are often mixed in Sderot. Local people protest endlessly, why isn’t the government doing anything about this? ‘Don’t they care about us?’ Then when finally something is done, often they don’t agree with the action taken. And for the government, it’s a double-edged sword. ‘If they do nothing, they get the condemnation of the people in Sderot – but if they do something they risk international condemnation.’
   Raul admits that he’ll probably in the end leave for the children’s sake, for the psychological damage that staying is having on them. ‘They try to hide it, but many days I see the fear in their eyes. It’s a constant pressure.’
    But I see now that Hobson’s Choice in Raul’s eyes: on one hand alleviating that cloak of fear from his children, on the other wrenching them away from neighbourhood and school friends, plus the daunting prospect of meagre housing elsewhere or no roof over their head at all.
    My next stop with Elena is a nearby coffee-bar. ‘Someone I’d like you to meet.’ We’re apparently early for them, so while we wait, she brings up a YouTube video on her laptop to show me. ‘And this is what Hamas feel about their rocket attacks.’
    The video shows a Hamas leader on a rostrum, giving a speech to a large crowd in a square, forty-thousand plus.  ‘The rockets are the way’, say the translated sub-titles. ‘Striking Sderot, Ashdod and, Allah willing, Tel Aviv.’ As he indicates the rockets flying over each time with a straight-armed thrust, it reminds me uncannily of a Nazi salute, the chanting crowd saluting back.
    ‘And while Ivan and Lena are stuck in their one room with the sirens wailing outside,’ Elena adds, ‘This is what they’re seeing on the news. You can imagine the psychological effect. Hamas know what they are doing.’
    I’m tight-lipped, but privately my thoughts are raging: Possibly the most frightening message that could be sent to a nation built largely on holocaust survival. Akin to threatening a claustrophobic that you’re going to lock them back in the cupboard. I realize then that I’ve been terribly naïve with my report of a few years ago, have been guilty of only showing one side of the story.
    The man who joins us for coffee minutes later, Adli, himself a Palestinian and a leading human rights advocate for his people, was previously attached to B’tselem. Elena informs me that he’s become respected by both sides of the conflict for his unbiased, yet searingly accurate reportage of events.
    Adli is a good-looking man in his late-forties, the first shades of grey at his temples. Amiable and with an easy smile, but the burden of what he must have witnessed over the years is evident from the shadows in his eyes.
    Adli has harsh words both for Israeli politicians and those in power in Gaza, Hamas. ‘Both parties are guilty of leading my people astray… and the people of Gaza and here in Sderot find themselves caught in the middle of this mess.’ Adli goes on to explain that one of his main complaints from his early days with B’tselem was regarding the accuracy of information, and often the guiltiest of ‘massaging’ information were his fellow Palestinians. ‘Very often I’d go to an incident where I’d heard that forty people had been killed, only to find that it was seven or eight. Or sometimes ten would become a hundred. Why exaggerate, I would admonish.’ Adli looks at me levelly. ‘And in my time with B’tselem, I heard many horror stories from fellow Palestinians about Israelis, particularly soldiers, which ended up not being true.’
    I realize he’s talking about my account of Israeli soldiers occupying a house in Gaza and mistreating its Palestinian owner. I do a quick mental self-reprimand: it’s true, I hadn’t been there to witness any events. I’d taken the house-owner’s account – someone with a strong vested interest and axe to grind – entirely on face value.
    ‘Do you think the story I related of that Arab family might have been embellished or over-stated?’ I venture.
    ‘It might well have been. I think you should have checked first, possibly spoken to others. The account of olive groves and farm fields being bulldozed also seems a bit extreme. Little point in them doing that, and it’s also at odds with other accounts I’ve heard. You’re aware that when the settlers left Gaza, they left behind half of their greenhouses, almost four thousand in total, for Gazans to continue farm production and bring in much-needed income. Funds for which were provided by Jewish-Israeli agencies. But many of the greenhouses were damaged by Palestinian looters and militants, and became unusable.’
    I’d heard some stories, I admit, ‘But I didn’t know the full extent of them.’
    Adli smiles understandingly. It’s clearly not easy to take in all aspects of this conflict, as he has learned to do over the long years. I see then that Adli has my earlier report in his hand. He indicates one paragraph. ‘This figure of 120 homes a month demolished in Gaza, where did you get that from?’
    ‘From MSF and the ‘information adviser’ who accompanied us.’
    Adli nods sagely, checking a detail in another file. ‘The actual figure is more like 120 in an entire year – closer to ten a month.’ He then methodically goes through and corrects all the remaining errors. The numbers killed were less than half the figure I’d stated in my report, and included many internal killings, the ‘infritada’, as it became known; plus many of the quotes from past Israeli politicians and military figures were also inaccurate or taken out of context.
    I was incredulous. ‘Why would an organization like MSF pass on incorrect figures?’
Adli enlightens that they wouldn’t intentionally do that. But information out of Gaza is strictly controlled by the ‘information ministry’, and of course they have a great interest in amplifying those figures in their favour as much as possible. ‘MSF would have taken those figures in entirely good faith and passed them on to you.’
    ‘Rest assured, you’re not the first to have been caught out like this,’ Elena cuts in. She elaborates that one Jihadist web-site she’d recently come across claimed that 720 Palestinians were killed for each one Israeli killed. ‘And their claims regarding PST amongst children were as bad, which is why I showed you that earlier document.’ Elena passes across a page from a website claiming that 70% of the children in Gaza had been subject to ‘genocide’ by Israeli actions. ‘When I dug down, I discovered this referred to the actions of jets flying low over Gaza as a warning response to rocket attacks. This was without any firing of any sort, yet resulted in PST amongst a number of children in Gaza – which then became ‘genocide’ by the time it made it to this website.’
    ‘Demonizing Israel wherever possible has become a huge business,’ Adli adds, ‘and these terms – genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing – become the stock in trade of that. That’s not to say that Israel does no wrong, far from it – but in my opinion these terms don’t help. They just make matters worse for the Palestinian people.’
    ‘In what way?’ I ask, now somewhat concerned. I realize I’ve been guilty of bandying about some of these terms in my earlier report, and without even troubling to look at the other side of the conflict – the aim of my visit now to Sderot.
    Adli explains that such terms are highly emotive and strike a strong chord, particularly among Palestinian teens. He shows me articles from leading Palestinian journalists decrying Palestinian leaders in both Hamas and Fatah for ‘trading in the blood of children and teens’ in order to further their cause. ‘This habit of our leaders to urge young teens to take martyrdom actions has to stop. It brings no honour whatsoever to our nationalistic cause.’
    ‘Palestinian teens are a particularly vulnerable group,’ Adli points out. ‘Often they’re urged by radicals to take up a rock-throwing front line against Israeli soldiers, some of them as young as twelve. Then older snipers concealed behind – callously and without any care – fire through that front line at the soldiers.’ Adli closes his eyes for a moment.  ‘The outcome is predictable. The deaths are put down to the Israeli soldiers – cold-bloodedly killing children for doing no more than throwing rocks.  Even those children catching bullets in the back from militant sniper bullets in the crossfire are put-down to the Israelis. It’s a one-way information war, with the intent of demonising Israel as much as possible. Sometimes they’re also urged by our leaders to take part in lone-wolf stone and knife attacks against sentry points or Israeli civilians – again with predictable results. News of their ‘martyrdom’ and more talk about Israeli ‘apartheid’ and ‘genocide’ urges the next young teen to take similar action and follow in their footsteps. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle.’
   This time it’s me closing my eyes momentarily, as if in penance. I realize that apart from showing only one side of the conflict, I might have been complicit in fuelling the flames which has led to some Palestinian teens taking up such martyrdom actions. That hadn’t been my intention at all; it had been to raise awareness in the West so that pressure might be brought to bear on Israel from outside.
    As I explain my initial aims, Adli consoles that, however misguided or unbalanced, my report along with others might have had some positive effect, ‘Because not long after Israel ceased their practice of destroying terrorist-family homes, and also disengaged from Gaza completely.’ He gestures towards the Sderot streets outside the café window. ‘Not that it did much good. Look at the rockets raining down. And right now there’s no Israeli occupation or presence in Gaza, so that can’t be used as an excuse.’
    I nod solemnly, realizing the extent to which I might have been foolhardy in portraying only one side of the conflict.
    ‘Fair exchange is no robbery,’ Adli comments, and he passes me a transcript of an interview with a Hamas leader in which he openly admits that rockets indiscriminately target Israeli civilians, including many schools in Sderot. Clearly, it’s in answer to my earlier transcript from IDF sentry points. Elena has meanwhile cued some YouTube videos for me to watch. The first shows the death and destruction wrought by various suicide bomb attacks in Israel. I cringe. The Dolphinarium disco bombing photos are the most vivid and brutal, claiming the lives of 22 teens, some as young as 14.
    ‘You might have been guilty in your report of minimizing the brutality of these attacks,’ Elena suggests. ‘You mention simply that they’d happened, then appear to focus solely on the response of terrorist-suspect homes being bulldozed in response to such attacks – as if that was the more heinous act.’  
    Next Elena plays me videos from Palestinian children’s TV with bunny-rabbit figures instructing children that all Jews are evil, then jihadist sites with instructions of how to kill Zionists and Jews at every opportunity. I can’t help thinking of Ivan and Lena and others like them as I watch the videos. Escaped from the holocaust and now they must feel they’re once again surrounded by people who hate them and are intent on their destruction.
    The final video Elena plays is an interview with Ahlam Tamimi, organizer of the Sbarro pizzeria bombing, which killed 15 people, including 8 children. As Tamimi talks in gloating terms about her joy when she learned that the death toll was higher than she’d first heard, a chill runs through me. While the reactions of the Israeli soldiers involved in the shooting of a girl on my earlier transcript were mixed – one pleading ‘don’t shoot her’, another later obfuscating and making excuses for his action – none of them came even remotely close to this level of gloating and joy at killing.
    Picking up on my abject countenance, Adli comments, ‘If it’s any consolation, you’re not the first to be fooled like this, and you won’t be the last.’
    As if to elaborate, three days later, Adli takes me on a tour of Gaza. It’s a very different tour to last time. We see shops and shopping malls full of quality goods, market stalls full of fresh produce, high-end fashion and jewellery, the restaurants full.
     Yes, there are still many underlying problems, Adli explains, and many of the products are black-market goods or smuggled in from Egypt. ‘But despite reports of a blockade, Israel still does its bit, with up to eight-hundred trucks a day full of food and provisions passing through the Sufa and Kerem Shalom crossings, including a number of luxury goods. The only restrictions are on explosives or potential bomb-making equipment. In addition, over 40,000 people pass each day into Israel through the Erez and other crossings.’ He shrugs. ‘And if you’re going to point the finger at Israel for the blockade, why not Egypt as well? The Rafah crossing was completely closed through most of the problem periods, and still is now. Or are we not allowed to criticize fellow Muslims, the blame always has to be put on Israel?’
    I nod. There’s a side to this that perhaps I hadn’t previously appreciated. ‘So you’re saying that there’s an intended one-way slant to many of these critiques?’
    ‘Precisely. As with your last visit. You were shown certain things, one view of all the problems here, to show the suffering and support the ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid’ epithets. As with all the other visitors given the same ‘tour’ – the Galloway’s, David Ward’s and Mia Farrow’s. Certainly, that side still very much exists. But why not show this side too?’ Adli waves one palm towards the shops full of goods and busy restaurants. ‘It’s a bit like taking people just on a ‘Ripper’ tour of London and its grizzly down-trodden areas with homeless tramps sleeping rough and drug-ridden council estates – but not showing them anything else. Visitors would be left with the impression that there’s little more to the city than mass-murderers, starving tramps and drug addicts. And I find that imbalanced, dishonest.’
    As we pass some derelict buildings that have been the result of past Israeli missile or drone strikes, Adli gestures helplessly. ‘These should have been re-built years ago.’ Adli goes on to explain that enough aid and raw building material had been poured into Gaza to regenerate years ago, but reports were coming in that much of it was being used to build terror tunnels to bring in even larger rockets to attack Israel. ‘And I fear that Hamas’s hell-bent mission of constantly attacking Israel can only end badly for my people. The money should be used for building their welfare and future, not constant war which can only add to their suffering.’
    My eyes linger on the half-bombed out buildings. The contrast to the buildings struck in Sderot, invariably re-built or patched up within days or weeks of rocket strikes. The need of Hamas’s ‘information ministry’ to keep the evidence of their suffering on display as a badge of honour, when in fact these buildings could have – from the vast influx of aid for building materials related by Adli – been repaired or rebuilt ages ago. An uncomfortable afterthought hits me: with the constant rocket attacks on Sderot, how much longer will the Israeli government stand by without intervening? I look at Adli.
    ‘You fear there might be worse to come?’
    ‘I do. I despair for my people – as I do the lack of balance and reason on both sides which has brought much of it about.’
    I nod solemnly. ‘If I can write a more balanced article upon my return to London, one which shows both sides of the conflict, and more like me do the same – hopefully that will be avoided.’
    ‘Hopefully.’
    But I can tell from Adli’s tone that he’s not holding his breath.
 
 

 

In a week where the main talk has been about immigration being one of the main reasons for a Brexit majority vote, it appears the message of one of Britain’s much-loved TV series has been conveniently forgotten.

​Telling the story of a group of builders who went to work in Germany, a number of them from the North-East of England, it appeared on British TV in the 1980s and went on to enjoy several series and re-runs, in the process making household names of many of its stars: Jimmy Nail, Tim Healey, Timothy Spall and Kevin Whateley.

Many I’m sure watched the series purely for its entertainment and comedy value without knowing the full background and history of the series, myself included – until years later when I embarked on a ‘Grand-Projects’ style self-build, and a couple of the builders on site did happen to know, because they’d been part of that wave of builders travelling to Germany for work in the late 1970s and early 80s.

Both at the time working in Surrey, one of them in fact was originally from the North-East, Sunderland, and had been a master-bricklayer for some 30 years, telling fond stories of building for various celebrities, including Tom Jones for his house in Weybridge. They also talked of what led to them both working in Germany for several years in the late 1970s and early 80s. The British building industry had fallen flat – many of its various slumps both before and since – and work for British builders was scarce. But there was work in Germany, with particular demand and good pay for bricklayers; and the main reason for that, ironically, was due to us bombing them in the war.
​
What happened after WW2 was that with extensive bombing of German cities, they needed rebuilding – quickly. Building in bricks was seen as too slow a process, so breezeblock and prefabricated-section building became the order of the day. But after thirty years of this post-war, as a result the skill of bricklaying in Germany had all but died – or indeed the generation that had been skilled in that pre-war had themselves died or were aged.

However, as Germany recovered in grand style and became more affluent, home-owners and many businesses did want buildings in brick again, and so they were forced to look outside to where those skills were still prevalent, mainly Holland and the UK. That call for labour from Germany in fact kept many British families clothed and fed over a vital period of a slump in the British building industry lasting almost a decade. My highly-skilled and industry-savvy bricklayer originally from Sunderland openly admitted that this ten-year work stint came as a godsend, and without it he didn’t know what he’d have done. We should also remind ourselves that this migrant labour force was welcomed into Germany with open arms, despite their virtually nil-German language skills (though I’m sure they arrived with a John Cleese style pamphlet reminding them: ‘Don’t mention the war’).

It’s a sober reminder that immigrant labour doesn’t always work one-way. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the other day that there could be no access to the EU free market without also accepting the free passage of labour, and rightly so. After all, without it, the Auf-Wiedersehen Pet style migration of labour which had helped so many British builders during the 1970s and 80s wouldn’t have been allowed to take place. 
A focus on the North-East in the TV series – and from the personal accounts shared from my pet-builder from Sunderland – became particularly ironic when I picked up the newspapers the day after the Brexit vote and saw headlines announcing: ‘Sunderland, the epicentre of the earthquake,’ with pictures of jubilant supporters held shoulder high and cheering wildly as the ‘Leave’ vote was announced. It makes one wonder if they’d be cheering so jubilantly if we were in the midst of yet another building slump and the announcement meant that their breadwinning-bricklaying partners would soon be on their way home to join the dole queue. Ironically, with a plunging pound and British business losing billions in the last week alone, that day might be closer around the corner than we think.   

 
 
                                                                                                       
Much has been discussed these past few days in regard to a fresh Brexit/Remain EU referendum: (a): that any call for change should insist on a 60% majority (along the lines of ‘working’ majorities within government); (b): Scotland would not wish to simply carried along on such an exit from the EU, so would call for another vote on cessation from the UK, or would aim to block an exit vote in the UK Parliament; (c): Northern Ireland might wish to declare a similar position too, because of possible fresh border issues with Southern Ireland; (d): A number of Brexit voters have declared that they feel they have been misled about the ‘realities’ of such a vote; (e): The thorny issue that right now there are 350 remain MPs in Parliament vs 149 leave, so in essence they would be required to vote against their own beliefs in order to carry a Brexit bill through Parliament and trigger Article 50; (f): David Cameron has made it clear that he is unwilling to be the person to invoke Article 50 – which officially starts the legal process of extricating Britain from the EU – and so this will be left to his successor.
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While much of the foregoing might give valid reasons for concern, they do not individually give rise to a call for a fresh referendum; however, as a combination they do, which would not only be in the interests of the rights of the British people, but also in observation of democratic principles, as follows (headline proposal and supporting grounds):
 
The British public have voted in a referendum on 23rd June, 2016, by 52% to 48% that ‘in principal’ they wish to leave the EU. The British Government takes heed of that vote, and Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty will be duly invoked by a new Prime Minister to be elected within the coming months and upon a vote by MPs in Parliament. Article 50 entails a two-year process to delineate exactly the terms and conditions of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU. At the end of which the British public will be given the opportunity of a final vote on cessation from the EU, once those terms are clear. Given the following provisos:
 
1. A ‘buffer’ margin to protect the interests of future electorate. There is no previous guiding principal by which a referendum can insist on a 60% majority (as per a leading petition now past the 3 million signature mark). However, there is something unique about this particular referendum which does give rise to a pertinent legal principal: the ratio of those voting ‘Remain’ amongst 18-25 year olds was 65-66%%; conversely, amongst over 55 year olds, those voting ‘Leave’ was the same proportion. This means that in essence with each passing year, there would be a shift of 1.2% towards ‘Remain’. Article 50 is a two-year process alone, on top of which many of the laws and regulations determined would take another 4-5 years to take full effect. Over this 6 to 7-year period, this shift of 7.2-8.4% would far exceed the current 4% margin – thereby meaning that an outgoing generation in essence would be imposing upon the upcoming generation something against their wishes; and by that stage not supported by popular vote, which in principal is undemocratic.

Therefore, a ‘buffer’ margin would be proposed to protect the interests of the future electorate on a 5-year projected basis. If the proportions amongst 18-25 year olds for ‘Remain’ and over 55’s for ‘Leave’ stay the same, then a 6% buffer margin for ‘Leave’ would be required to carry the vote. If by then the proportions are 50-50% in each age sector, then there would be no required buffer; and if it was halfway between the two, only a 3% buffer margin would be required.

2. Exact terms and conditions of Britain leaving the EU to be delineated. At present there has been much speculation as to the benefits over the disadvantages. Many feel that false promises and expectations have been tabled, such as benefits to the NHS and curtailment of refugees. Boris Johnson has aired that he sees a continued passage of free trade with Europe, whereas others hold reservations on that front. Certainly, there is the case to be argued that the EU can’t simply make Britain’s withdrawal from the EU overly-advantageous with numerous upsides and few downsides (as Boris Johnson and Michael Gove might suggest), otherwise they risk a rush of other EU partners pushing for the same.

Norway is often cited as a nation outside of the EU which at the same time maintains various ‘free-trade’ arrangements with the EU. However, the quid-pro-quo of that continuing free trade (under EEA conditions) is that it also maintains a ‘free movement of people’ from the EU, ergo: immigrants. One of the main planks of the Brexit campaign, control of immigration, would therefore not be satisfied using a Norway/EEA model. Norway’s contribution to the EU under their EEA arrangement is also still sizeable.

It may well be that Brexit campaigners will be able to negotiate excellent trade terms outside of the EU and thus make good on a number of their promises. But this two-year buffer period will allow them to negotiate any and all such terms and lay them out clearly for the British electorate to take a final vote. At present, at the time of the initial EU referendum vote, such terms and conditions – the advantages over the disadvantages – are not clear.
 
3. Any new terms of Britain remaining within the EU to be delineated. There has also been a lack of clarity on the other side. Part of the whole process of calling for a EU referendum was based on dissatisfaction amongst the British public with immigration control, the cost of EU contributions weighed against the return benefits, and the sense of a lack of control and ‘voice’ over decisions made in Brussels. A number of these issues still remain unclear. David Cameron in pre-referendum TV debates talked about ‘indicators’ in regard to Turkey possibly joining the EU (an added concern on the immigration front), but could give no firm timelines from Brussels.

Boris Johnson too (a former pro-EU supporter) talked initially about the threat of Brexit being used as leverage to try and improve the conditions upon which Britain remained part of the EU. While considered a somewhat hopeful stance by some fellow politicians, there is some substance to this. Certainly, the threat of Britain leaving the EU should get Brussel’s policy-makers to focus sharper on the root causes of such a move, and therefore where possible to offer remedies. Again, as with the Brexit camp, this two-year buffer period will allow the ‘Remain’ camp to negotiate any fresh terms and delineate clearly existing terms upon which the British electorate take a final vote.
 
4. Scotland and Ireland to both hold referendums in advance of a final British EU vote. The Scottish National Party has already voiced its intention for Scotland to hold a referendum to split away from Union with Britain should Britain move to separate from the EU. Northern Ireland might wish the same, due to renewed border issues with Southern Ireland. Both devolved regions therefore to hold separate referendums 90 days in advance of the final overall British referendum, announcing their intentions to either Remain or Leave the British Union dependant on Britain’s final EU vote.

This then also furnishes British voters with yet another vital factor – the future state of the British Union, with or without Scotland or Northern Ireland – prior to their own final vote on leaving the EU.
 
5. Overall aim. The aim of a final EU referendum is to allow a two-year ‘buffer’ period, during the article 50 negotiations, to clarify any and all advantages and disadvantages in either ‘Remaining’ or ‘Leaving’ the EU. This would also allow a period in which other factors such as continuing trade stability and the financial impact of either remaining or leaving can more accurately be gauged. At present, much of this is unclear, and a high degree of the campaigning has been based on jingoism or unreliable facts and assertions. In essence, the first vote can therefore be seen as a wish to leave in ‘theory’. The final vote will be one to leave in ‘practice’, by which time the final parameters of Britain leaving the EU will be clear to voters.

​If the final vote to leave exceeds the determined buffer margin (point 1), then Britain should leave the EU through a vote in Parliament within 90 days of said final referendum.   

 ​
Land Division 1948/1967 - A summary analysis
 
Most of this report relates to the first division of land in 1948, since that is when the major part of it took place and the subsequent displacement of Palestinians who had previously owned the land. But a second analysis was also necessary for the events of 1967, which saw a further displacement, but also saw an increase in the number of Arab-Palestinian citizens within Israel.

This latter element is vitally important, since still today they represent 21% of the overall Israeli population, but at the time of the two transition/partition points, 1948 and 1967, represented 29% of the Israeli population and 26.2% of the overall Arab-Palestinian population at the time. The reason for the reduction from 29% to 21% has been that, while the natural birth/growth rate of the Arab population has been high, the immigration of Jews to Israel has been far higher, particularly in the 1948-1975 period.
What concerned me in going through past documents and reports of the subject is that this Arab contingent who between 1948-1968 (I’ve added on one year because a number of Arab-Palestinians were repatriated to Israel/East Jerusalem in the year following the 1967 war) constituted a significant segment of the overall Israeli population often didn’t feature in land split appraisal documents. These were compiled to give an impression of purely Jews one side and Arabs the other, rather than Israeli-Palestinian, as if the 29% Arab-Israelis (an amalgam figure between 1948 and 1968) did not exist or had no land rights at all.

Indeed, often these documents were presented as if the Jewish population (who had been buying land steadily in the area since the 1920s) owned only 7% of the land in the area, and the remaining 93% was owned by the Arab population – with the impression given that this small minority landowning contingent then stole/forcibly acquired the remaining 93%.
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This is an entirely inaccurate/dishonest representation, not only due to the aforementioned 29% Arab Israelis not being taken into account in this calculation, but also because the 93% includes vast tracts of state-owned land, split between purely public-state owned land, 44.1%, and state/feudal-system leased land (Miri), 26.5%; plus tracts of land owned by religious groups (Islamic Waqf and Greek Orthodox Church), 3.5%.  

A full table of respective land ownership at the time of the proposed UNSCOP partition in 1948 is given below (research source links follow at the end):
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7.4%                           Jewish ownership (direct or through Jewish land funds).
11.6%                         Arab-Palestinian owner-residents.
6.9%                           Foreign owners, mostly Arab or prior Ottoman owners.
44.1%                         State-owned Public land.
26.5%                         State-owned/feudal-system leased land (Miri)
 3.5%                          Religious trusts (Islamic Waqf, Greek Orthodox  Church)
 

The biggest challenges faced with compiling this table were the discrepancies between existing tables and lists. Not only in combining all the stats into two simple camps, Jews and Arabs, to give a distorted picture, but in other stats too: some had state-owned land at 70-72%, others at only 44-50%, some at 60-66%. On some charts and lists, Jerusalem had a majority Jewish population dating all the way back to 1905, in others Arabs were the majority in Jerusalem. So how and why had these discrepancies occurred? Examining this required some delving down into the existing data on the subject, the results of which are quite enlightening.

To be fair to both sides, it appears they have both been telling (more or less) the truth, but in different ways. Selecting data which might serve their overall aims, but ignoring the rest. So to give a clearer picture what I have tried to do here is explain each land-owning category and the related Jewish/Arab -Israeli/Palestinian population stats at the time – along with the sources from which the information has been derived.      
 
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Initial UN partition plan (UNSCOP).

The initial figures for UNSCOP showed at the beginning of 1946 an overall population in the British mandate area – proposed for the partition of Israel/Palestine – of 608,000 Jews and 1,230,000 Arabs. By the end of the British Mandate and last calls on the proposed partition in early 1948, this had risen to 1,324,000 Arab and 668,000 Jews. So at this point Jews represented 33.5% of the overall 1,992,000 populous, marginally over one-third. (2)

The proposal for the two partitioned states was that the new Israel would include 485,000 Arabs in addition to the 668,000 Jewish population, total: 1,153,000. This would then leave 835,000 Arabs in the new Palestine. The proposed land-split for this was therefore 56% for the new Israel, 44% Palestine (with Jerusalem as an international city in the middle taking approx. 0.8% from each side). The initial reasons given for this larger split the Israeli side was to absorb the large numbers of Jewish immigrants that were anticipated after 1948 – but this split would have been justified just based on the initial much larger combined Jewish-Arab population the Israeli side in any case. (3)

Despite this evident factor, I was amazed at the number of past documents and reports I came across that complained about the UNSCOP proposed divide being made in this fashion, venting their surprise that 56% of the land should have been allocated to Jews when they made up only a third of the overall population. Some even suggested that UNSCOP had been ‘racist’ in preparing the partition this way. But we see in fact if we divide the overall landmass strictly proportionately with 1,153,000 one side in Israel and 853,000 in Palestine, we would end up with a 58% - 42% split – this aside from the aforementioned anticipated far greater influx of Jewish immigrants and the fact that 67% of the land in their proposed partition parcel comprised the Negev desert. Their portion contained far less arable land. So by those tokens, it could be said that Israel did not end up with anything like the strongly-advantaged share a number suggest.

Also the proposal of 485,000 Arabs amongst that 1,153,000 total might seem large, over 40%, but it was anticipated that the Jewish population would double through immigration over the next decade, thereby bringing it more in the 20-30% range. Though with the ensuing events – rejection of the UN partition plan and the Arab-Israeli war – that sort of proportion was not reached until after 1967; so more by ‘default’ than design. But it is telling that this significant Arab population of Israel (which indeed is 82% Muslim) are largely ignored in numerous land-split documents, almost as if they’re invisible or their land rights simply don’t count the same as Arab parties in the proposed Palestine.
 

Arab-Israeli population 1948-1968

The final Arab population within Israel after the 1948 war was 159,000, to which another 215,000 Arabs were added as part of the Israeli population in 1967-1968 (mostly from East Jerusalem, with a number repatriating within Israel in the year after the six-day war). Of the original 670,000 Israeli Jews in 1948, this total of 374,000 would have equalled almost 37% of the Israeli population; though to be statistically fair, this later Arab influx should be taken against a natural-growth adjusted Israeli-Jew figure (so that the two growths each side are even), which then gives a representative figure of 29% of the overall Israeli population (if both population contingents were counted in 1948, at the time of partition), and 26.4% of the overall Arab population (West Bank, Gaza and Israeli-Arabs); thus 18.8% of the combined area population at the time of partition.

By 1970, we have a situation whereby the population within Israel already was 3,014,000 (reflecting the massive Jewish immigration to Israel since 1948), including 458,000 Arabs. The population between the West Bank and Gaza was far less, 1,045,000, with the number of Palestinians living outside of the region as many again. 

This Arab population within Israel, 18.8% of the combined Israel-Palestine populations (as adjusted for 1948 stats, at time of partition) is significant, because when added to the 33.5% Jewish-Israeli population, gives a figure of 52.3% - not far short of the 56% land-split previously proposed by the UN.

And when by 1970 we see the massive influx of Jewish immigrants, as anticipated by the UN, whereby the Israeli population (Jews and Arabs combined) had trebled in just over twenty years, we start to see the rationale behind the UN planning the division in this manner.   
 

Claims each side

In retrospect, it’s a tragedy that the UN partition plan wasn’t accepted at the time and conflict avoided, particularly considering the loss of life each side and the large Palestinian diaspora which arose. There were claims and accusations on each side: Arab and Palestinian parties reported of widespread ‘ethnic cleansing’, the Israelis claimed that Arab army leaders ordered evacuations to keep the populous in between out of the path of war. As with other past wars I’ve reported on (one of my first assignments was the civil war in the Lebanon), I’ve found the truth invariably lays in the middle. The most notable books and journals on the subject are from Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe and Edward Said. While there is some valuable information in both Pappe’s and Said’s writings, Benny Morris’s accounts are generally considered to be the most objective and accurate.

In these, Morris found no evidence of organized or general ‘ethnic cleansing’ orders from Jewish leaders, nor general evacuation orders from Arab leaders – though he accepts (and this becomes evident from other reports on the subject) that this occurred in a number of isolated occasions, probably accounting for no more than 200,000-250,000 people (100,000-125,000 each side through forcible clearance or evacuation orders) out of the 700,000 leaving the area during this period. ‘Massacres’ too were isolated, most on a tit-for-tat basis, with both sides equally guilty. Morris summed up as follows:
'The Palestinian refugee problem was born of war, not by design, Jewish or Arab. It was largely a by-product of Arab and Jewish fears and of the protracted, bitter fighting that characterized the first Arab-Israeli war; in smaller part, it was the deliberate creation of Jewish and Arab military commanders and politicians.’

It becomes clear therefore that the vast majority (450,000-500,000) left purely due to the dire conditions of a surrounding war, which would then correlate with current war situations, such as Syria.  

So now with the prevailing population statistics in 1948, and the UN partition plan and ensuing war which shaped them, we can look again at land ownership at the time.
 

Private Land ownership in pre-1948 Palestine-Israel

The bulk of privately owned land in the previous Ottoman and subsequently British Mandate area of Palestine-Israel was known as Milk under Ottoman and Arabic land law. This is where land and property owners would have clear title deeds and in most cases would have paid a notarized price for that land/property (4).

The figures for Jewish privately owned land (mostly originally Milk, some bought directly, others through Jewish land funds and agencies) varied from 6% to 8.9% of the total landmass, so an average of 7.4%. Similarly, the statistics for privately owned Arab land ranged from 17%-20%, with at least 35% in the hands of foreign owners (mostly Turkish, Lebanese, Greek), so this total average of 18.5% was divided 11.6% (Palestinian resident owners) and 6.9% (foreign owners) respectively. 
 

Public and State land ownership

This proved the most loosely defined (and thus more open to interpretation by both sides) of all land ownership in the area in 1948. If we look at the Ad-Hoc ‘Palestinian Question’ committee map of 1945, (3) we see public areas clearly marked, ranging up to 85% in the largest area, Beersheba, mainly because it includes the Negev desert (and indeed equals 48% of the total area planned for partition). The average public/state-owned land from all these pie-charted districts is in fact 44.1%.

However, we then see from other journals and reports that the total area of state land is as much as 70.9% (5&10). It appears, from researching the numerous available sources, that the difference between the two claims is in fact known as Miri land under prior Ottoman land law (4). This is land that in strict legal terms is owned by the state, but is then leased on a peppercorn basis to tenants as long as the land continues to be ‘worked’ by those on it. If the land is neglected or allowed to lie fallow, then it is taken back by the state (as the overall rightful owners). So Miri is somewhere between an old feudal system and a tenant farmer situation, as we might recognize it in the West. Taking the known ‘state-owned’ land of 44.1% from the overall state-land claim of 70.6%, leaves us with 26.5% of Miri land. Miri land is described as follows in the British Mandate 1931 Hope-Simpson report:
Agricultural property is commonly held by Miri title. Miri is property over which the right of occupation or of tenure can be enjoyed by a private person, provided that such right has been granted by the State. The absolute ownership remains vested in the Government, but the grant is in perpetuity, subject to certain conditions. Of these, the chief is continuous cultivation. If the land remains unproductive for three consecutive years it may revert to the State. In that case it may be redeemed by the possessor on payment of the unimproved capital value. If not so redeemed it is sold at auction to the highest bidder (Land Code, Article 68).

It is easy to see how this Miri land would be interpreted differently by both sides. Arabs under the previous Ottoman laws felt they had a ‘right’ to this land in perpetuity, as long as they kept working it, even though they had made only a nominal or no payment for it. In the West, normally only a title-deed would be recognized, along with a notarised payment for same, as proof of ownership. To exacerbate this problem, under the Tapu laws which came in after 1858 (4), holders of ‘Miri’ land were encouraged to register their holdings (which land conveners and surveyors under the British Mandate also encouraged), but only a proportion did so, mainly to avoid paying taxes on the registered land. The result was that an already ambiguous land-rights situation was further muddied by lack of registration.

So again it appears both sides were telling their version of the truth. The state owned land at 44.1% (or thereabouts) is unequivocal, and in strict legal terms the 26.5% Miri land (or thereabouts) also appears to be state-owned, albeit with certain attached rights to the user/tenant for continuing agricultural purposes (and nearly all Miri land was in fact agricultural). However, with only a nominal or no actual payment having ever taken place for Miri land, loss or abrogation of rights is very different to title-deed land where there would have often been a substantial payment for it, with that sum resultantly lost.
 

Religious group trusts

While land and property owned by religious groups, Islamic (Waqf trusts) and Christian (mainly the Greek orthodox church) was obviously stringently registered, the secretive nature of these groups meant that figures were often not openly published. In the UNSCOP reports and tables (2&3), for instance, these are generally combined with the state or public land.

Indeed, it is known that all of the Mosques in Palestine/British Mandate-Trans-Jordan were owned by Islamic Waqf trusts and the Christian Churches mainly by the Greek orthodox church (12). Added to this were a number of monasteries and Islamic Hawzas with attached farmland. From research, the most likely figure for this was 3-4% of the total landmass, so 3.5% average.

Only a proportion of the Waqf land ownership was effected by the formation of the Israeli state; for example, the Al-Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques are still part of an Islamic Waqf trust, as well as most of the other mosques within Israel-Palestine. And none of the Greek Orthodox church owned land was effected. Indeed, to this day the Knesset building and many other buildings in central Jerusalem are on a lease to the Greek Orthodox church, where they remain one of the city’s largest landlords. Also, still to this day the remaining minority group religious sites (and their respective ownership) have been respected, such as the Baha’i temple in Haifa.

Though 3.5% of the total land-holding in Palestine-Israel might not seem large, what should be remembered is that land ownership for the 1947-1948 period was only worked out on landmass, not property value. If calculated on value, with much of this property comprising mosques and churches in city centres, particularly Jerusalem, we would see a very different picture.
 

Inconsistencies

One of the first inconsistencies to strike most people viewing these lists is that the Jewish population in 1947-48 was 33.5%, yet they owned only 7.4% of the land, with the Arab population owning the remaining 92.6%. This would seem a statistical impossibility, or at least highly unlikely – that one sector of the society owned only 22% of their reflective population mass in land, whereas the other owned almost seven times that, 140%, of their reflective population mass. Particularly as it’s reported Jews had been buying land there since 1905, increasing after 1920, with complaints (mainly from Arab parties) of quite an organized and aggressive campaign of land purchase in Palestine in the two decades preceding 1948 (private, Jewish land agencies and charities). So how could this be?

Part of the answer is in the final analysis of land-holdings and the fact that a large proportion is in fact either purely state-owned land or state-owned-Miri (long-term-lease) land. The degree of purely direct ownership by private Arab parties at 18.5% of the total then starts to show a more realistic correlation to the Jewish privately owned percentage, 7.4% - it being perfectly reasonable that the Arab community, on a proportional basis, would own a 28% higher representative share due to their longer time there.

If we look at the population spilt versus land ownership in Jerusalem, still further inconstancies appear. On the map showing regional populations (8), we see a pie chart for the Jerusalem area showing that they were 38% of the population (in the city of Jerusalem they were a majority, but this is a ‘Jerusalem district’ map), yet in the pie-chart on the map showing land ownership (3), they are listed at owning only 1% of the land. Again, how could this be – such a large contingent of the population owning only a fraction of the land? Both are UNSCOP maps from 1945-1946.

One explanation could be that because Jerusalem was originally planned as an international city for the proposed partition, the city’s stats (where the majority of Jews lived) were not included. The other explanation is that much of Jerusalem’s property was in fact owned by religious trusts, predominately the Greek Orthodox Church (Patriarchate), which was then leased, often long-term, to tenants (this later became known as Hachira in Israel). But if this was lease-tenanted on the same basis to Arabs and Jews, why is one group listed as owners and the others not? The only rational explanation is that the major landowner in this region, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, have simply been listed as ‘Arabs’. I’m sure many Greek-Christians might object to being termed ‘Arabs’, as would the many Armenians, Syriacs, Turks, Ethiopians, Russian Christians and German Templars who made up the population of Jerusalem at the time (11). Again we see a lumping together under a homogeneous group as ‘Arabs’ by the UNSCOP chart creators, which is ambiguous and sloppy at best, openly dishonest at worst. Why not simply list each group and their respective population and land-holdings – along with the precise nature of those land-holdings – then let readers make up their own minds?  
 

Restrictions and prejudices

Another reason for the proportionately lower ownership amongst the Jewish population pre-1948, is that in a number of areas their purchase of land was restricted. These restrictions were minimal initially, the main one being that Jews could not buy land east of the Jordan river, but in other instances under the British Mandate Jews were assisted in their purchase of land in the area. This all changed after the 1939 White Paper and the Peel report, after which purchase of land by Jews became far more restrictive, along with immigration. Still, a number of purchases took place during this period, particularly by Jewish land agencies from large absentee landowners, religious-group holdings and foreign companies. There were land concessions too from areas under State-British Mandate control, but there were complaints of these being weighted disproportionately towards the Arabs. In one example of 8,600 acres of arable Mandate-state land becoming available, 8,205 acres were allocated to Arabs and only 395 acres to Jews.

Also, only a few examples of Miri land being made available to Jews can be found; if indeed this was land that was meant to be available on an ‘equal-opportunity-basis’ to all those who wished to work it (and with nominal or no initial payment), then why wasn’t the Jewish proportion higher and more representative of their 33.5% of the population? Again this tends to hint at certain restrictive practices.  

I mention this because the issue often arises with current day Arab-Jew land practices within Israel, whereby the claim is made by some that Arabs cannot buy land but Jews can. This is not accurate. Only 8.4% of the land in current-day Israel is in private freehold hands, and this can be bought and traded freely by both Jews and Arabs. The remaining 91.6% is in State or Jewish National Fund (JNF) hands and can only be leased (usually long term, Hachira) rather than bought. The JNF portion is only 13.1%, which does carry restrictions that it should be offered only to Jewish lessees – mainly because it’s an agency funded entirely by Jewish contributions, and this was a stipulation of those contributors (some of them charitable). Possibly this was in part to redress the imbalances and prejudices they saw with Jews obtaining land in pre-1948 Palestine (though indeed a number of prejudices still exist today, with capital punishment for Palestinians selling land to Jews still on the statute books in the West Bank and Gaza).
   
However, there have still been examples of JNF land being leased to Arabs, and on the remaining state owned 80.4%, there are no restrictions at all – land/property is available equally for Jews and Arabs to lease long term (13). So while it is true that the majority of land/property can’t be bought by Arabs in Israel, the same is true for the Jewish population. Aside from the 8.6% in private freehold hands, that 80.4% can only be leased.  
 
 
Interpretations

Without doubt the main area of contention between Ottoman/Arab and Western/Israeli land laws has been over the interpretation of Miri land. Due to the fact that it did not represent ‘ownership’ in the way we would interpret it in the West (because usually that ownership clearly rested with the State, Sultans or foreign landlords) often this would be termed as ‘in possession of’.

However, if merely a long-term tenure arrangement combined with a nominal payment (or in the case of Miri land sometimes no payment) equated to ‘in possession of’, then it could be argued that the majority of land and property leased to Jews on a long-term basis (particularly from religious-group-holdings in Jerusalem) should come under the same banner heading. Particularly as such leases would have been on a similar long-term-renewable basis and in most cases involved a higher initial payment. If long-term lease property had similarly been listed as ‘in possession of’, then we might have seen a far higher representation for Jews beyond 1% in the Jerusalem district, more in line with their 38% residency there.
 

Jerusalem

Consult most Jewish and Israeli affiliated sites and you will see that Jews constituted a majority of the population in Jerusalem from 1905 onwards. But go on most Arab sites and you will read that Arabs formed the majority there.

Both are in fact telling (more or less) the truth. Within the city of Jerusalem itself, it is true that Jews have overall formed the majority there from 1905-1948, with the census from 1946 as follows: 99,690 Jews; 60,560 Muslim Arabs; 44,980 Christian, Druze and others (6).

However, in the wider ‘Jerusalem District’ are a number of suburbs and outlying villages in which there is a heavier Muslim Arab population, so that then the stats read: 102,452 Jews, 104,460 Muslims and 47,290 Christian, Druze and others (8).

In Palestinian-Arab documents, the ‘Jerusalem district’ total is quoted rather than the ‘Jerusalem City’ total, which then gives a slightly higher Muslim-Arab total. But on some occasions the Muslim-Arab total is combined with the Christians to give a heavier predominance of 151,750 ‘Arabs and others’ (or sometimes ‘Palestinians and others’) one side against 102,452 Jews the other. This then gives a distorted and somewhat dishonest impression, in the same way that lumping together ‘Palestinians and others’ to give 93% their side against Jewish landholdings the other of only 7% gives a dishonest impression. How would it seem if Jewish-Israeli sites quoted the land stats as ‘Jews and others’ owning 88.4% of the pre-1948 land, with Palestinian ownership at only 11.6% (reflecting only the direct Palestinian-resident land ownership).


Books and journals

There have been a number of books and journals on the subject, most notably – Ilan Pappe, Benny Morris, Edward Said, Joan Peters, Norman Finklestein, Alan Dershowitz and Avi Shlaim - but a number of these, as with the stats and tables, have been written from an emotive view one side or the other so haven’t been particularly objective or accurate.

Both Ilan Pappe’s and Edward Said’s accounts are heavily infused with anti-colonialism, in turn equated to Zionism, which tends to dilute their objectivity, and at times accuracy. Pappe’s contention of pre-determined ‘ethnic cleansing’ in 1948 is thrown into doubt by the fact that in the early stages of that war it looked unlikely they would win, and the tide only changed halfway through. When challenged over the accuracy of his accounts, Pappe himself admitted that his claims were mainly driven by ‘ideology’, with factual accuracy coming secondary to that.

Said’s theories were similarly anti-colonialism driven, though more heartfelt and widespread, with the general thought that all aspects of colonialism were bad. So equally he was also critical of many Arab leaders for often not acting in the interests of their people. Though by the time his ‘West vs the Rest’ theories were gaining popularity on university campuses, colonialism had by then moved on and was displaying a more benign face. A case in point is the West Indies shifting from mainly English and French colonial yolks. One of the last to take the vote in the French West Indies was Martinique. But by that time they’d witnessed the horrors of what had happened in Haiti under Papa Doc, so voted to stay as part of France rather than split away. Today Martinique is one of the most settled and stable of Caribbean islands, and the people there generally love still being part of France and considered French citizens.  So Said’s theories, while well-intentioned, were out of date and sync with historical reality by the time they gained popularity.

On the other side of the coin, we have Joan Peters, who suggested that there had been a large influx of Palestinians from neighbouring Arab states in the 1920-1940 period which then diluted their claims as ‘born and bred Palestinians’. In my research, I did not find evidence to support this. The main part of my deductions (and with various other stats) came from calculating the average natural population growth amongst Palestinians, which equalled 2.3% compound per annum. This then gave a clearer picture of external immigration over this period. I could find no more than an excess beyond natural growth of 35,000-40,000 people over this period – less than 0.5% of the overall population, so a negligible factor.

While it’s true that in the pre-1920’s period there had actually been a population decline in this period, mainly due to the ravages of Word War 1, the most that could be claimed is that this declining trend ceased with the influx of Jews to the area. There was also it is true a heavier Arab population increase in the areas where Jews had settled as opposed to purely Arab areas (10) – but this might have been due to the trend generally during this period for people to shift more from rural settings (and income) to city and industrial based work. Finally, wages were in fact higher in 1920-1940 Palestine than in neighbouring countries – but I could find no proof that this had led to a significant spike in immigration to Palestine. The most that could be argued from Joan Peter’s assertions and the relevant data of the time was that the influx of Jews between 1920-1940 had not had a negative impact on the Palestinian economy or caused the Palestinians hardship, as has been suggested by other writers; quite the opposite, in fact. I also found it a somewhat moot point that Peter’s was arguing that a Palestinian’s length of residence might dilute their rights, since much of the Jewish immigration was indeed very recent.

Both Dershowitz and Finklestein have accused each other of portraying too slanted a view (one side or the other) of the Israel-Palestine conflict, but their most famous debacle was indeed over Joan Peters’ book, ‘From Time Immemorial’ (which I have already commented on). Avi Shlaim has remarked that he finds Finklestein’s research thorough, but notably passes no comment on its obvious bias, with all of that research being devoted to ills and harms on one side. And as conflicting historians have pointed out, if Finklestein is so outraged by the holocaust being used to gain sympathy for the Zionist cause, why isn’t he similarly outraged by Palestinians using that comparison for their own plight or using the term ‘genocide’ – when their own losses are a minute fraction of holocaust losses.

Although I have high regard for Shlaim’s writings in many areas (in particular the historic collusion between Israel and King Abdullah of Jordan), I found – as indeed did novelist Joseph Heller – his assertion flawed that Israel has not been the main peace-seeker (as evidenced by their long-standing treaties with both Egypt and Jordon). As a result, I found the writings of Benny Morris to be the most balanced and informative; in general, he takes an even-handed view, criticizing both sides equally and remaining objective and accurate. I think it’s a shame, given the pure volume of writing on the subject, that so many of these accounts have been written from a one-sided nationalistic or anti-nationalistic point of view. I think the general rule of thumb is that where you see extreme, emotive terms being used – ethnic cleansing, genocide and apartheid on one side, barbaric Palestinians and bloodthirsty terrorists the other – don’t expect a balanced or accurate view to follow. 
 

General aim

The aim of this study is not in any way to make light of the tragedy of the wars of 1948 or 1967, or the terrible impact of these with the large numbers of Palestinians displaced. It is to bring some clarity to the prevailing circumstances and respective populations and land ownership at the time – especially in light of so many prior documents which presented an ambiguous or unclear picture.

From this, what does become clearly apparent is that the representation of only 7% Jewish ownership one side and 93% Arab/Palestinian the other is distorted and dishonest. And as part of that distortion, it appears the 21%-29% Arab population who are Israeli citizens to form a 52.3% majority are often never taken into account in these statistical charts. Indeed, that population split today, including the 21% Arab-Israelis, stands at 61.5% Israeli citizens/38.5% Palestinians between the West Bank and Gaza.  

That majority, whether a 52.3% representative figure in 1948 or 61.5% now, should be reflected accurately in reports and stats – but all too often that 21%-29% of Arab Israelis have been painted in as if invisible or their views and status as Israeli citizens do not count. In line with the main tenets of democracy, and indeed in order to compile a balanced and accurate report, that issue needed to be addressed.     
 
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Main research sources:

1 Population of Palestine pre-1948.
 
2 UN partition plan
 
3 Partition plan maps  
 
4. Ottoman land law
 
5 Israel land statistics
 
6 Palestine, Israel and Jerusalem population statistics
 
7 UN Ad Hoc Committee report
 
8 Palestine area maps, 1946
 
9 Avi Shlaim journal, 1995

10 Land ownership in Palestine, 1880-1948

11 Jerusalem report, 1948

12 Greek Orthodox Patriarchate report

13 Current day Israeli land/property law

14 Foreign Policy Journal, 2010.
 
15 Land purchase history pre-1948
 
16 Land purchase rights and restrictions
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