By Jafar M Ramini
If you live anywhere in Britain, especially in London you couldn’t have missed during this last month, the sea of red poppies adorning many a chest. The red poppy has become a symbol of the British legion, to commemorate those who gave their lives, needlessly, during the First World War.
In all the years that I have been living in London it has never ceased to amaze me how people still consider a war or the results of such, as a cause for celebration.
I shall not elaborate further on this, instead I shall leave it to Harry Patch, a veteran British soldier of WW1 who died at the age of 111 just four years ago. In his autobiography The Last Fighting Tommy, Patch wrote that “politicians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, instead of organising nothing better than legalised mass murder.”
That legalized mass murder almost 100 years ago cost us Arabs thousands of lives and brought us nothing but misery, destruction and division. Great Britain and its allies not only divided the Arab world into spheres of their influence; to the victor the spoils, so to speak, but also embedded Israel, a foreign, illegitimate entity into our midst.
Yesterday, 11th of November was also significant for us Palestinians because it commemorated the day when Yasser Arafat was murdered nine years ago, at the behest of Israel at the hands of a Palestinian collaborator.
At the beginning of last week, I attended a meeting at the House of Commons, where it all started, organized by the Palestinian Return Centre. The reason for this meeting was to ask Britain to apologise for the Balfour Declaration of 1917 that gifted Palestine, a country that Britain had no deeds to, to another people who had no right to it, the Jews.
This was the most dastardly of acts. The Balfour Declaration, had consequences and repercussions that are still deeply felt even now as I am sitting here to write.
The cruelty of its wording, in offering a home for the Jews in our land, Palestine, while emphasizing that this should not prejudice in any way the rights of the indigenous population, is that they adhered to the first part but totally ignored the second. This act by Britain was not only abhorrent and immoral it was also totally illegal.
The tragedy that followed is very well documented and its effects that are still unfolding daily and are there for everyone to see.
Israel continues in its quest to ethnically cleanse Palestine while in the meantime presenting itself to the world as a civilized, democratic state that is willing to make peace with its victims.
The Palestinians, after years of struggle and sacrifice finding themselves alone and isolated, without backing and with no army, no air force, no navy and no marines now must sit down and try to make peace with their enemy.
Deep in my heart as a Palestinian I yearn for my land and my people to see one day of peace and freedom before I meet my maker. There have been many attempts. Yasser Arafat tried it by offering the Jews the recognition they longed for and accepted the idea of an independent Palestinian state on 22% of the historic land of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital, which culminated in the signing of the Oslo Accord in 1993. But that wasn’t enough for the Israelis. Successive Israeli governments tried to kill Yasser Arafat. The Washington Post reminded us recently that in Yasser Arafat’s own words, the Israelis tried to kill him on thirteen different occasions. Ariel Sharon, who was the Prime Minister of Israel at the time of Yasser Arafat’s murder, seems to have succeeded. As Eric Margolis wrote today in The International News:
‘Who benefited from Arafat’s death? Arafat had been bitterly resisting US and Israeli efforts to impose a grossly unfair peace deal that would have broken up the West Bank into little Arab tribal reservations. Once Arafat was out of the way, the US and Israel swiftly installed a new, servile PLO leadership, headed by a yes-man, Mahmoud Abbas, financed by the US and protected by CIA-run police.’ *
You see, it doesn’t matter what you offer the Israelis in return for peace it is never enough. First they wanted a home to call their own and when they got that they went about expanding that home by terror, intimidation and then wars. Then they wanted their independence and when they got that they continued with their expansionism and brutality against us, the Palestinians. Then they portrayed themselves as the defenceless, humble little lamb surrounded by an army of wolves and they waged war after war in the name of self defence and security. Now, that they are in control of 100% of the Palestinian land, having forged a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan 1994 they are still vying for more. The latest demand is that we should recognize them as ‘a Jewish state’. There is no end to their demands. No, actually there are no boundaries for their ambitions and there is no end to their avarice.
In a recent speech Mr. Netanyahu said, “ In a permanent agreement the Palestinians will have to their national demands from Israel, including their right of return.”
Not only that, last week Mr. Netanyahu’s government announced its intention to build 3,500 new housing units in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. They also issued demolition orders in and around Jerusalem that if they are carried out they will render 15,000 Palestinians in the Jerusalem area homeless. This last Sunday the Israeli Government voted to confirm the Prawer Plan in the Negev, which entails demolishing of entire Arab Bedouin communities in the Negev, making 40,000 Bedouin Arabs homeless.
On top of all this Mr. Netanyahu has vowed never to accept a divided Jerusalem and never to leave the Jordan Valley. Actually, he is planning to build a separation wall at the border with Jordan not dissimilar to the one that crosses the heart of the West Bank. As I said, there is no end to their demands.
Where is peace in all of this? More appropriately, where is the honest broker, the United States of America? Where is the international community? Where is the UN? Where is the room for human rights and civilized behaviour? They are occupied too. We are all captive to Jewish power and money.
To give Mr. Kerry his due, after what must have been an exasperating and exhausting meeting with Mr. Netanyahu, he said:
"Let me emphasise that the position of the United States is that we consider now, and have always considered, the settlements to be illegitimate.”
He added:
"I want to make it extremely clear that at no time did the Palestinians in any way agree, as a matter of going back to the talks, that they could somehow condone or accept the settlements.”
Furthermore, in an interview with Israel's Channel 2 television recorded in Jerusalem before he left for Amman, Kerry painted a picture of what might lie ahead if peace is not achieved.
"I mean, does Israel want a third Intifada?" he asked, referring to the danger of a new Palestinian uprising to follow those that erupted in 1987 and 2000.
"If we do not find the way to find peace, there will be an increasing isolation of Israel, there will be an increasing campaign of delegitimisation of Israel that has been taking place on an international basis," he said.
In consideration of all this and the continued intransigence and arrogance of Israel dare I hope that Mr. Kerry, and others like him, in the current administration in America will see the dangers that Israel poses to world peace and harmony?
Dare I further hope that these fine words will be translated into firm action against the expansionist and belligerent attitude of Israel?
I, as a Palestinian, who is directly affected by what happens in the corridors of power in Washington wish to remind the Americans of their own first amendment.
‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal: that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights: that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’
Thomas Jefferson.
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