Open Discussions/ Gulf Cultural Club
Palestine: the open wound
*Dr Mohamed Haidar (Economist, writer & commentator)
**Dr Bernard Regan (author and campaigner)
***Hamza Ali Shah (Palestinian political researcher)
Where does the world go from here? It may be premature to suggest a different route to peace in the Middle East as machines of death continue killing and maiming. But eventually the war will subside and a truce may be reached. For 75 years the conflicts have remained a constant source of worry causing a lack of development planning and a state of unending political turbulence. The region deserves to build itself and avoid wars. In light of the ongoing strife, what are the prospects of peace? What are the conditions of peace? Who are the makers of peace? Why have the international powers and the international community been unable to create an environment that is conducive to peace?
Tuesday 17th, October 2023
Dr Saeed Shehabi: Thank you all for coming tonight. I just want to tell you that when we deal with this topic we are not trying to present a political view point or side with this or that side. We are more concerned as a religious organization here with the religious aspect of the conflict. We are concerned about the destruction of the places of worship, mosques, synagogues, cathedrals whatever and we hope that there will be no more damage. Some damage has already been done but we hope there will be no more damage.
And also we are more concerned about the inter faith relations between the adherents of the various faiths. We do not want the Muslims to cut links with the Jews or with the Christians. And we hope that we will come out of this conflict with those relations in tact regardless of the feelings and the emotions. It is in the interest of the people of faith to have a continuous dialogue and this is why we are taking this perspective into consideration. We will have this discussion in a very calm way. We will not be revolutionaries here, we will not demonstrate, we will not go to protest. We will just present the facts as they are without provoking any of the sides concerned.
Dr Bernard Regan: I have to say that what we are dealing with is an extremely asymmetrical situation when we talk about peace and we talk about sides coming together and the possibilities of dialogue. I think the tragic reality is that we are not talking about two states of equal parity, weight and equal support in the world. We are talking about an asymmetrical situation which is extremely one sided.
That is a consequence as I wrote in my book about the Balfour Declaration because the state of Israel was created with the support of British imperialism. And one has to use that word because it was directly the British who were directly occupying Palestine at the end of WW1 in 1917- 18 and who took the decision that they would exceed to the wishes of the Zionist Federation that there should be Jewish homeland in Palestine.
They were very unspecific about what it meant but they gave a commitment and an undertaking which subsequently resulted in the League of Nations giving Britain a mandate – in other words the authority to determine how things would develop there.
It is very important because people do not recognise that the Palestinian people were seeking statehood from the very beginning in the Ottoman parliament. In the Ottoman parliament there were Palestinian representatives who sought Palestinian independence from the Ottoman Empire going back prior to WW1.
But certainly after WW1 there was a very clear request and representatives of the Palestinian people came here to London to seek agreement with the British that they should proceed with their right to independence, the formation of the state, parliamentary and governmental structures that would be required for them to achieve that and to actually put that case to them.
So it was the British consistently who hindered that and who opposed alternative forms of organisation, legislative councils, assemblies etc which actually were hindered by the fact that they were encumbered by the veto that British would exercise on any decisions that they came to.
So far from allowing the development of the autonomy and the self determination of the Palestinian people to go forward the British constantly and consistently placed obstacles in the way of that. And of course that happened most tragically in 1936 – 1939 when the Palestinian people as a people rose up to prevent British imperialism continuing along that path and sought to challenge that hegemony and that domination that the British were exercising.
Sadly that attempt to achieve statehood and nationhood was defeated as a consequence of the actions of the British military. Recent publications that you can find about the way the British acted show it was in the most cruel, vicious and vindictive way. Some of the things that we witness and see now happening in the course of war, things like collective punishments, human shields and other forms of violence literally going into villages and shooting one of every ten people and dismantling those villages if they were meant to be or said to be harbouring supporters of the Palestinians who were seeking independence.
So it is a consequence of the actions of the British that the situation arrived as it did in 1948. It cannot be excluded either that as a result of the actions they took in 1936 – 1939 the British helped to train Zionist paramilitary organisations which were party to the terrorism that was conducted in the course of that period that enabled them achieve domination over the Palestinian people.
And they planned for their independence in 1948 which was with what was called plan Dalet – a plan that was systematically deciding when and how the Palestinian people should be driven from their land. And that is important because what we are witnessing today is a replication of exactly the same methodology that was employed in 1948.
If you look for example at what happened in 1948 you can see examples of images and towns which were absolutely attacked by the Zionist forces who went into them and conducted massacres. There are many that have been documented. Places like Tantors, Deir Yasin and other village where people were killed when the square of the town was surrounded on three sides and the people driven out.
So what I am staying with profound regret is that the attitude of terrorism we are witnessing now towards the people of Palestine in terms of the blockade that is being conducted in Gaza has a history that goes back some years and is part of the way in which that country was established and it seems to me that it has tragically not broken with that kind of methodology of relating to its neighbours and to those people who had lived in the lands of Palestine for many centuries.
It is a situation that we can see now in Gaza that is resulting in complete tragedies, a situation which many international commentators respected. They are describing war crimes because of the gravity in which people are being attacked. Denying people food, water, fuel the basic necessities of life which under the Geneva Convention and international laws for the conduct of war are meant to say that non combatants should receive that kind of help and have a right to that and indeed that anyone who is not a combatant should not face the prospect of being bombed or attacked.
I can say that is an asymmetrical situation that we are facing and when I refer back to 1948 to what happened in the establishment of the state of Israel what we can see and what worries me about the prospect of peace moving forward is that the part of Gaza which is being threatened in the north and from which more than a million people have fled as a result of the threats they have faced means that we could see Israel occupying that whole area of Gaza. The small area of Gaza that does exist will be shrunken even further.
It does reflect how things developed in 1948 and what happened in 1949. And of course what happened in 1967 with the catastrophe that followed on from the Nakba when people were driven from their homes.
So the prospects of peace I think are not good in the short term. Peace requires one thing centrally to it and that is justice. And as long as you have the gross injustice that exists at the moment in terms of the rights of the Palestinian people that sadly will not happen in any short time. It requires a process in order to guarantee Palestinian rights.
That is different from a cease fire. A ceasefire can be achieved and there can be a situation where parties can sit down and negotiate the ways in which they conduct themselves and the way in which they take some respect and cognisance of international laws that are meant to govern the ways in which conflicts should be dealt with.
That certainly could happen. People forget this and on a number of occasions Hamas has had ceasefire agreements with Israel in 2007, 2008 and at other times when there were discussions about that kind of reduction of warfare.
One of the things that has to be considered is that there is a tendency to exclusively view Hamas as solely a military organization and that is not appreciating what it is. It has to be recognised that in 2006, 2007 they were elected as part of the government. If that is the case it means that there is wide consideration by people that they felt they represented them at that time.
At that time the British, the Americans and the European Union refused to have any discussions with them. I think that was actually an opportunity that was missed to engage in some sort or open dialogue or discussion about how things might progress in such a way that the rights of the Palestinian people and justice for the Palestinian people will be achieved.
Sadly we are a long way from that and I will return to my initial theme and that can’t be ignored. The roles of international powers like the USA and UK bear a heavy responsibility of the capacity of Israel to feel that it can act with impunity and that it does not face any serious criticism and it can do what it wishes. We can see that from the fact that the USA grants Israel more than $3billion a year for armaments. It gives it more money than all of its donations to the whole of Africa where we know there is poverty and there are many needs that should be met. But the USA chooses to give that money for the purchase largely of American arms.
But that kind of support if you like undoubtedly imbues in people like the government of Netanyahu an arrogance and a self confidence about what they can do. And we are facing one of the most right wing governments in Israel that we have seen. In 2022 when this government was formed it had a number of cabinet members all of whom made statements about the Palestinian people that we dehumanising and were quite openly racist. They have been described as human animals. That is the kind of superiority, arrogance and aggression is not conducive to actually opening up a dialogue about how we can transform the situation.
So there has to be a serious change in the attitude of the Israeli government to see some kind of progress to peace. A progress to peace requires a progress to justice and that means the end of the occupation of Gaza and the restoration to the people of Gaza their homes. It means an end to the settlement building. Settlements are now all over the West Bank. They have seen an access of 800,000 people living there, taking away the lands that belong to the farmers of the West Bank and the homes of the communities that lived in that area.
We need to see a radical change in the restoration of the rights of the Palestinians in the West Bank We need to see to the rights of the Palestinians inside 48, inside Israel also respected. They have a curtailment of many of their freedoms. At this point in time friends of mine in the north of Gailee and Nazareth have their towns surrounded and are in a situation where they feel intimidated.
In the schools inside Israel the history of Palestine has to be taught in a way that conforms with that narrative that is established by the Israeli government itself. So the tragic day of the Nakba when the Palestinians were driven out in 1948 is celebrated inside Israel as the day of independence but there is a massive contrast.
One does not have to forfeit anyone’s individuality or history or legacy to respect that there are different understandings of the way in which history has progressed. We have seen that in many respects in what happened in the north of Ireland with the discussions that took place there to resolve some kind of development of the situation notwithstanding the question of the unification of Ireland which remains unresolved. But nevertheless the way the discussion is conducted has changed dramatically. One would look at that kind of change taking place in terms of establishing a discourse between the Israeli government and the Palestinian people that would allow for those kinds of discussions to take place that would recognise the rights of all Palestinians in historic Palestine to live and to celebrate and to record their heritage.
Hamza Ali Shah: Thank you for having me. News has just come through that a hospital has been bombed in Gaza and 500 plus have been murdered. Again we are looking at the conversations and the obvious paradox about what actually constitutes peace and war and how to move forward. And with regard to justice. Justice is a term which is often loosely described as is peace and the bottom line is that until there is a removal of these structures which allow this level of violence that we have seen for so long that fosters this view that sees the Palestinians as sub human.
We have seen the same robotic recitations about Israel’s right to defend itself even it breaks international law and commits war crime after war crime. People witnessed the Rwanda genocide are drawing the parallels. We need to have honest conversations about peace and justice that do not strip away the context and take into consideration the last 100 years and the hurdles that have been built up to learn the lessons of the past. We have to recognise that this has to operate on a structural level. It is not just merely about economic considerations or the right of Palestinians to work within the 48 territories or having certain aspects of their lives improved.
There can’t be a fundamental improvement to life under occupation or apartheid. Don’t take these words from me take them from the international human rights community from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and take it from the scholars who have called Israel’s bombardment of Gaza a genocide. Israel has this impunity to act because it has a recognition from the international community. Only when we eradicate those barriers, only when we begin from the starting point of two people who are equal that true justice, true peace can be brought about. These barriers have to be dismantled and Palestinian prisoners cannot be held without charge or trial. There is no attempt to change that fact.
Before a single millimetre of the fence separating Israel and Gaza was breached two hundred plus Palestinians were murdered this year – no retribution, no accountability. A journalist was killed this year. Israel operates with impunity. Israel operates with a free hand and it is given a free hand by the international community. It is up to that same international community to exert the right level of pressure on Israel.
The starting point has to be two people not from an asymmetrical point of view but recognising that the Palestinians have a claim to justice, have a claim to land and have a claim to self-determination which has so far been nullified by the Israeli political and military establishment. So any discussion about peace needs to be fixated upon dismantling the structure of violence.
When the dust has settled the trauma will start. The Israelis do not have a solution for it. There have been 17 years of occupation. Palestinians needs a way out. There can’t just be tinkering round the edges. A fundamental whole sale change is needed not just to the Israeli structures but Palestinians need to move forward and this has to be the fundamental conversation.
Mohamed Haidar: Ladies and gentlemen, good evening to you all. What is going on in Gaza and Palestine? In Lebanon in Syria and the whole region?
Is this a limited military operation of clashes between the Palestinian resistance factions and the Israeli army or more than that the whole region and the western government who support Israel and some of the Gulf States.
Is it a war to start in the region in the shadow of the war in Europe between Russia and Ukraine supported by the west headed by USA and other countries like UK France and Canada?
The longer the clash and the war on Gaza all the possibilities are on the table.
In the mathematics science mainly geometry we have learned based on some hypothesis or axioms you can continue and solve the problem. In politics it is the opposite having the given and the axioms can only lead you to the war again not to a solution especially in the case of Palestine.
So what is going on in the region? I simply think from the end it is a war to involve two fronts the axles of resistance and the anti-war normalization front with the Israeli regime.
Taking the stream and the theme of all what has happened from last year until now the reading indicates that the region is on the edge of a volcano about to explode. The theatre the actors the directors of the whole scenery is telling us if there is a war coming it is completely different than the so called the Arab spring and its failure after several countries had been destroyed on the hands or our people with the assistance of the western front.
In short to this view what has happened in Gaza and the attack launched by Hamas was investable.
Go back a few months you will find the Israeli army was targeting all kinds of people in Palestine: civilian and military. Markets schools hospitals newspapers and TV station buildings, all kinds of civil and military ground was targeted. How many times has the Israeli army and the intelligence assassinated the Palestinian leadership and civilians as well. Have we seen any reaction from the international community?
From the security council and the UN agencies but some concerns of escalation of the situation and some effort to cool down the boiling pot in the Palestinian side where some Arab government had to interfere to stop the fighting and exchange of shelling and killing from both sides. This is the reaction and the result of the international community to interfere and stop this unfair and unbalanced military power.
The result of killing so many people on the Palestinian side and continuous oppression by the Israeli was a predictable result of the Israeli strategy in the Gaza. The continuous building of illegal settlements on Palestinian lands and the harassment of the army and the settlers by different means and ways mainly demolition of houses, cutting olive trees or confiscating houses and lands have been the result of and the only way for the Palestinian to put a limit to such abuse and assaults.
The siege of Gaza and the military presence of the army in the West Bank could not help at all to find a solution in the light of the international community’s silence. This is the result with no doubt.
Can they solve it? Can they find a solution in the light of what happened? Now what happened is far more than we expect to put back the negotiation on the table especially as there are no players on the table and the game is completely different at the moment.
Why? Let me mention some reasons why.
The military power of the Palestinian military groups (most of the groups) is far beyond what they had two or three years before in terms of capabilities and efficiency and man power and fire power.
International community:The last meeting of the Security Council and the endeavours of the Russians to agree on a truce has failed. So the international community does not want a peaceful solution before slaughtering the Palestinian and disarming them. This decision mirrors exactly what has been decided by Netanyahu and his killing machinery in his cabinet.
Internal affairs in Israel: What happened has been described as the most dangerous crises ever faced by Israel. This is a big lie articulated by the propaganda machine to gain support of the world to stand by them. The media in the world is a faithful partner in this game.
The White House repeated the media stories and lies and even the president himself copied their words. That reminds me of our ex-Prime minister Tony Blair when he believed fake reports on the existence of nuclear weapons in Iraq. CNN fakes news on live TV when the news director lively transmitted instructions to pretend there is an attack on the correspondents and giving them instructions on how to behave and show that they are afraid when they were airing this live on tv in front the whole world. Then the propaganda lying machine was grinding the fake news and spreading it everywhere.
But where are the raped ladies and girls. Where are the kidnapped babies? And the babies were beheaded and mutilated? Where are the photos and the evidence? Nothing – there is nothing but a picture which has been implanted in the world brain. The Palestinian are the criminals and only the babies are victims.
The Israeli already labelled the Palestinians as animals. Was there any reaction from any leaders of the international community to condemn this? No, none but even further than that they have given a concession to the Israeli to kill more people and finish Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the Gazan people had to surrender and give up their weapons so they can live after that as peaceful animals.
The Prime Minister Sunak has given 10 million pounds and allowed the Israeli to finish the job.
Surrender or you will die – this is what the whole international community is chanting and shouting loudly. Die we don’t care about you – we are listening to the Israeli government only. We care for the Israeli mother trying to shelter her babies in the thousands of shelters in the occupied lands when the Palestinian mothers will have no attention form the international community as they are already labelled as animals. This is reality and why you do not understand you Palestinians? Nobody cares for you. You are not blonde enough to care for you like we care for the Ukrainians.
The region in the light of such acceleration of events is not going to see a peaceful solution at all.
The international strategy to solve problems and wars in the world is failing or has failed. Peaceful solutions to some matters is not good based on the intentions of some governments mainly the Israeli government which has been led for the last 20 years by a war monger. His internal problems will explode more after this war finished.
Some evidence, based on a released woman, suggest that kidnapped Israeli were killed by the Israeli army fire when they were exchanging fire with Hamas people and the army destroyed the building were the kidnapped people were. This has raised a main concern about the intention of the Israeli army.
The region is boiling: As we can see at the moment the whole region is boiling like a volcano just ready to erupt and its ashes will reach all countries whether they have a normalization with Israel or not. All the people: Arabs, Muslims or those in the West are expressing their anger about what is happening in Gaza due to the continuous siege of Gaza and expected land invasion of its northern borders.
Some of the Arab countries have already closed the Israeli representative offices or its embassies. Some countries ask the diplomats to leave in the light of continuous military operation against Gaza and its siege.
The situation on the Lebanese border showed an intense clash and exchange of fire between Hezbollah and the Israeli army. Severe casualties were already recorded including soldiers or members of Hezbollah and civilians including two journalist who were hit by the Israel army.
In Iraq several American bases was rained with long range missiles which caused a lot of damage. In many other Western countries the alarm wase raised and some statements issued calling on their citizens to avoid some hot areas .
So in general, the atmosphere is not in favour at the moment with any visible initiative of peace to take place between the Palestinians and Israel. Knowing that some leaders are visiting the area, the only visible and readable attitude of such countries is only support for Israel and minimal support of the Palestinians.
However, in the light of the continuation of fire exchange and heavy use of fire from the Israeli side and the amount of destruction caused to Gaza, one can easily say there is no peace process and what is visible is a savage war with great destruction to both Palestine and Israel unless the world intervenes before there are clashes in the whole region and there is no other language but that of the war machinery.
Thank you for listening and I hope the world can finds a fair and just solution to this continuous tragedy.
Mohamed Haidar is an economist, lecturer and commentator with many years of experience in the field. He holds a degree from Yarmouk University in Jordan and MSc from Beirut University College (which is now the Lebanese University). He obtained his PhD from Durham University Business School. After working at the University first and at the Lebanese University later, he followed a career of journalism with the London-based daily, Al Hayat. He worked with the International Labour Organisation in Italy, preparing training courses for senior managers to enable them to run small and medium businesses in the Middle East. He published many research papers.
**Dr Bernard Regan is the author of “The Balfour Declaration: Empire, the Mandate and Resistance in Palestine.” (2018). He has been a Palestine Solidarity Campaign Executive Member for 25 years. He was also leader of many trade union delegations to Palestine. Bernard is also a National Education Union Trustee.
***Hamza Ali Shah is a British Palestinian political researcher and writer based in London. He works with a think tank and is a master’s student at King’s College London. His work has appeared in Tribune Magazine, Jacobin, and Novara Media.
