CROSS-PARTY calls on the government to act over Israel’s brutal onslaught on the peoples of Gaza and Jerusalem are the product of mass protest and long-term campaigning.
Today’s parliamentary debate took place in the shadow of the huge Downing Street protest of the night before.
Home Secretary Priti Patel — herself an ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, forced to resign from Theresa May’s government because of unauthorised meetings with Israel — tries to present protesters as an awkward subculture whose concerns are alien to ordinary people.
This jibe is especially directed at the left when it campaigns on international causes, with factions in the labour movement unwilling to campaign against imperialism calling on us to focus on “bread and butter issues” and leave foreign policy alone.
But as Coventry South MP Zarah Sultana noted today, the public’s supposed lack of interest in what happens beyond our borders is a myth. “When I speak about Palestine, I get hostile replies from people outside Coventry, questioning if my constituents care. [But] since getting elected the thing I’ve been emailed about most by my constituents [is] Palestine and #SaveSheikhJarrar.”
Such is the outrage that Foreign Office Minister James Cleverly was unable to divorce Israel’s brutal bombardment of Gaza — in which it has deliberately targeted both civilian houses and media outlets — from the ethnic cleansing operation that preceded it.
The demolition of Palestinian homes and the eviction of Palestinians to make way for Jewish Israeli settlements is nothing new in East Jerusalem or the wider West Bank. It is the relentless colonisation process that Tory MP Crispin Blunt points out has “made a mockery” of the two-state solution to which Britain is supposedly committed, depriving Palestine of a contiguous territory and its putative capital city.
But Israel’s decision to launch violent police attacks on protesters against eviction in Sheikh Jarrar during Ramadan, and then to attack worshipping Muslims in the al-Aqsa mosque itself, have put this particular case in the international spotlight.
Cleverly calls on Israel not to evict the residents of Sheikh Jarrar, while echoing the usual formulas about its “right to defend itself” in the face of Gaza rocket fire. But the world knows the first rocket was fired in response to the brutality Israel is visiting on Jerusalem’s Palestinian population and that the escalation is being driven by Israel, which has launched hundreds of air raids over Gaza.
Uproar among Palestinian citizens of Israel itself is so great the mayor of Lod, where the murder of an Israeli Arab has sparked mass protests, calls it an “intifada” and demands the army come to put it down.
Boris Johnson calls for de-escalation. But there will be no de-escalation without external pressure.
Western reports called Mr Netanyahu’s joint press conference with Defence Minister Benny Gantz, where they vowed to crush protests with “an iron fist” and that their assault on Gaza was “just beginning,” a “show of unity” between two bitter rivals.
In reality the pair, who are both engaged in trying to win enough support to form a government, are in deadly competition: deadly for the Palestinians, since neither wants to look softer than the other.
Tel Aviv is also testing the new US administration of Joe Biden: will he back it to the hilt whatever it does, as Donald Trump did? So far Washington’s muted response suggests the White House doesn’t know.
That makes the need for popular pressure even greater. Johnson’s “deep concern” and pro-forma reiteration of support for a two-state solution are weasel words. Unions should push Labour to back calls for an immediate arms embargo and call it out on its opposition to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
And we must keep up the wave of demonstrations and actions in solidarity with Palestine. Our politicians must be made aware that connivance at Israel’s savage occupation will carry domestic consequences.
