More than 40,000 dead and people of all sides want peace, says Fleet Street Fox. The only question is when the madmen will see they can’t possibly win
If you want to know what’s happened to the world as a result of the October 7 massacre last year, just look at the picture.
Half of readers will be infuriated at the sight of the Israel and Palestinian flags side-by-side. They will have a visceral anger that someone has dared to use a picture of a state that shouldn’t exist next to that of one which wants to obliterate it.
The other half will think it sad we don’t see more pictures like it. Perhaps one or two will wonder why, in all the coverage of the Middle East, there hasn’t been a moment where someone pointed out those flags do fly together, somewhere.
The picture was taken at a checkpoint in Beyt Jala in the West Bank, once known as Judea, more recently part of Jordan, and since a 1949 armistice home to 3 million Palestinians. It’s not far from Bethlehem, and this picture was taken 22 years ago because that’s how far back you have to go to find an image of those two flags together.
But 2002 wasn’t peaceful. That year Israel suffered a massacre at a bar mitzvah, mall bombings, suicide bombs, supermarket bombs, coffee shop bombs, bus bombs, a massacre here and another massacre there.
It reported that Palestinians were executed by the Israeli military, suffered missile strikes, and were killed by the handful in attacks on leaders of Hamas, the al-Aqsa Brigade, curfews, ‘incursions’, snipers, rocket attacks, and exploding telephones. There was the Battle of Jenin, of Nablus, of Bethlehem, as Hamas terrorists used the Church of the Nativity to shield them from reprisals.
If that doesn’t sound very damned different to the news you’ve heard in the past few weeks, it’s because it isn’t. Israel and Palestine have been at this for decades, and if Jeremy Bowen decided for safety’s sake to sack it off and sit in his armchair at home refiling old footage from 1986 it’s unlikely anyone could spot the difference.
October 7 was different, though: the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. And the retaliation was different as well. Not handfuls killed this time, but 43,000. And for what? How far has anyone moved towards their ultimate goal: of either obliterating the state of Israel, or making it 100% safe?
Palestinians are no better off. Thousands are dead, the remainder traumatised, many surviving unimaginably grim physical wounds. Hands blown off, legs amputated, eyeballs missing, crush injuries, malnutrition and the sort of mental injuries that never heal.
Israelis are no better. Daily rocket attacks, enemies massing, the international community turning against them. It has a government that enjoyed no popular support before October 7, held together by a coalition of ultra-nationalist wingnuts who’d get on with Iran’s mullahs brilliantly if they didn’t hate each other’s guts, and still 97 sons and daughters are held God knows where in God knows what condition.
This conflict did not start with the creation of Israel; it didn’t even start with the ancient kingdoms of Arab or Jew thousands of years ago. The Holy Land has been a place of unholy war since forever, but that does not mean the people there like it that way.
Polling in Israel and Palestine shows consistent majority support for the two-state solution which would give each a recognised state of their own. It is not a new idea. The first time it was mentioned was when Israel was created, and the Palestinian leadership said no, we’d rather fight. The Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu agrees with them on that much, at least.
From day dot it has been the angry, stupid men in charge who have watered the Middle East in blood. A peace of sorts was holding after 1967’s Six Day War, but after Iran became a republic in 1979 the mad mullahs needed a bogeyman: America, and its ally Israel, fitted the bill nicely.
Israel had democracy, mini skirts, rock music. It had a lot of Jews, too, who despite its many other faiths and ethnicities drew most criticism. Iran seeded terrorism to maintain its domestic lies, and now its clerics are not even trying to pretend they don’t want to turn the entire Middle East into a caliphate where gays are thrown off buildings, women are beaten for not covering their hair, and they get to – I dunno – feel good about themselves.
In Opposition Labour called for the mullahs’ Republican Guard to be proscribed as a terror organisation, which is perfectly logical. In power, Labour knows it is that guard which will need to be negotiated with to call back Hezbollah and Hamas, to agree a ceasefire, and dial down all-out war. To find the peace their people want, the West will have to find a way for the mullahs to have a say in what comes next, just as they will the hardline rabbis.
There is no way to hold a perfectly-safe election, or even an opinion poll, in a war zone. But if the people feel that it’s better to be at peace, then one day that is what will happen. It happened in Northern Ireland, and in a generation Sinn Fein had a woman running the place who said there was “no hierarchy of victims”. Today Belfast, tomorrow Tehran.
Peace is imperfect, but it works. There are bomb-damaged people and buildings, but new, undamaged ones too. All it takes is for both sides to realise the only way to win was to stop fighting. Well, one year on from October 7, the humans still haven’t won. The w@***rs are having a great time, though.
The only question is when the madmen will realise their gods and bank managers alike prefer it when people live in peace. That until those flags fly side-by-side everywhere, Israel isn’t safe, Palestine isn’t free, and Iran hasn’t proved a damned thing.
Maybe next year. Maybe when the hostages are home.
