WHEN I was young, somewhere about half a century ago, the name Palestine was frequently preceded by a happy adjective. Sunny Palestine, people called it. Alas, alas!
David Pratt’s recent plea that the world provide answers to the Palestinians beyond a ceasefire was vividly taken up by Thom Muir’s comment on Thursday, adding some arresting facts. He reminds us of the “dismay” of the sunny land’s non-Jewish population (almost 90% Muslim and Christian in 1917) when Balfour declared a separate state within Palestine for the Jewish minority.
Thom allows that Balfour did not envisage the expulsion of hundreds of thousands from non-Jewish communities. Indeed, Balfour declared the division would be enacted “without prejudicing” the rights of Palestinians at large. Dismay, however, is seen now as a gross under-reaction to what horrendously followed.
READ MORE: David Pratt: Palestinians deserve answers as to their future beyond a ceasefire
But what about answers, David Pratt insists, and as the massacres continue it does seem strange that no-one is suggesting an attempt at a fairly obvious, positive move forward. So obvious indeed that it is something of an elephant in the UN assembly room around which delegates place careful feet.
Thom (and David) might have suggested that the UN which split Palestine reconvene thereto. Indeed it’s surely a duty. And it’s the specific responsibility of the split’s principal actors, the US and the UK, which happened to have an army in Palestine and deployed it to fortify the dividing line between the two states.
That line might be re-affirmed to bring peace and security to both states and we may be sure there are hundreds of thousands of the people of Israel who want justice and peace for the Palestinians, as surely all humanity must, and would joyfully embrace an opportunity for security in their own tortured land.
READ MORE: Ex-BBC editor intervenes in row over Gaza ceasefire calls at Scottish Baftas
The reconstituted frontline could initially be manned by an international taskforce of UN states, while the need for Israeli expansion might be met by the renting of land from the Palestine authority on the other side.
Hear the dissent: Couldn’t happen! Didn’t work before. Yet cooler reasoning reminds us the UN already worked the miracle of division, which suggests that with the entire world tuned in it would require less of a miracle to re-do it properly. There’s inexplicable irony in the fact that while the tenement blocks of densely occupied flats tumble in rubble to bury innocence, the US and the UK, dynamic creators of an Israel “without prejudice” against Palestinians, far from calling loudest for a ceasefire, are actually voting against one.
Sunny Palestine may be no more but just means may yet be found to rebuild and safeguard both states and to resurrect the UN's character and confidence.
A creditable overlord will be a necessary focus in our coming struggle to defer a little longer some global explosion rather like Gaza’s apocalypse, and to preserve some at least recognisable relic of Homo sapiens, the immensely gifted species fatally cursed in its vulnerability to hubris, greed and terminal myopia.
John Melrose
Peebles
OF course, we believe, most sincerely, that Rich Sunak is sorry aboot a’ thae Covid deaths and mass suffering. He werrs his troosers at hauf mast dis’nt he?
Ye’d think wi’ a’ his and his wife’s money stashed abroad, he could afford a perr o’ troosers that wid fit. He spends enough oan a lunch that would keep my wife and I oan H’oarses Doovers fur a week.
Donald Anderson
Glaschu
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