Diplomacy has its limits

"Israel is bigger than Gaza and the West Bank, but it is smaller than almost everywhere else. Less than a century old, it is a democracy surrounded by hostile nations and under permanent attack by terrorists who wish to see it wiped from the surface of the Earth. What is a “proportionate” response to a hydra-like enemy who sees the Final Solution as work in progress? All terrorism aimed at Israel is genocidal in spirit. What would a “proportionate” response to that ambition look like?" Matthew d'Ancona

OLIVER MILES, the former British Ambassador to Libya, has just written a piece in today's Sunday Telegraph on the troubling issue of Gaza. Under the heading "Gaza conflict: making peace involves talking to your adversaries," what emerges from the piece is that the Foreign Office's (FO) views and opinions of the Middle East, are usually skewered in favour the Arabs - in this instance the Palestinians.

            

           The FO's Arabist tendencies are historic and probably go back to T.E. Lawrence and beyond. The Arab cause is by now part of the FO's culture (Margaret Thatcher never trusted the FO and with good reason), and any views expressed by the FO on the Arab part of world should be treated with caution. It is little wonder that, in some quarters, the entrance to the FO is known colloquially as "Traitors Gate".

            As the ex-ambassador to Libya, I am sure Mr Miles is far better educated in the Arab cultures of that part of the world than most of us. However, like most British ambassadors, in whatever part of the world they serve; they will usually go native before their time is up.

DESPITE MR MILES seeking to diminish, as he did in one sentence, charges of anti-Semitism directed against those who dare speak up for the Palestinians and criticise Israel, then he is right. I have views on Multiculturalism which would lead most of the liberal-Left establishment in this country (and probably the FO) awarding me the ignominious title of racist. So I know what Mr Miles means. But in the case of Israel, anti-Semitism is not far from the surface.

            

            Under the cover of anti-Zionism, many anti-Semites seek to prosper. I am not saying all anti-Zionists are anti-Semites; just that this title gives a perfect camouflage to those that are.

            

            In light of the above; I would like to challenge the ex-ambassador's arguments regarding Gaza. Diplomats always want to talk and to negotiate. It is after all their stock in trade, and a much needed arm of international concord. But there are times when it is an infertile process, as Neville Chamberlin found to this country's cost when he returned from Munich waving his piece of paper promising peace.

            

            In Gaza, the unfortunate Palestinians are under the protection of Hamas; a terrorist organisation recognised as such by the UN, EU, USA, and the UK – where, however, the FO stands, is a different matter entirely.

            

            But Mr Mile's seems to favour the kind of appalling surrender by Israel, of the type the wretched Tony Blair agreed that the UK should do with the Provisional IRA – by promising that no IRA terrorist would be brought to justice for their evil, leaving many of their victims irrelevant to the course of Tony Blair's ambition. The terrorists were allowed to go free. Over 200 letters were sent to individual criminal members of the IRA with much blood on their hands promising immunity from prosecution.

           

            This is the kind of approach Mr Miles favours in relation to the Gazan crises. Mr Miles condemns Israel for not negotiating with Hamas. I find it bizarre that such a well regarded Rolls Royce mind, an expression usually applied to our overindulged FO civil servants, could even contemplate such a suggestion.

AS MR MILES points out, this is the sixth entanglement between Israel and Hamas. Does the ex-ambassador tell us how many of these conflicts were orchestrated by Israel? The latest one certainly was not. Hamas had deposited hundreds of rockets into Israel before the Western media even sat up to take notice. But once Israel, for the sixth time, decided to enter Gaza after days of Hamas's rocket bombardment - then like bees around a honey pot, the Western media were willingly herded by Hamas into Gaza to see the kind of "abominations" the Israelis had committed on innocent Palestinian civilians..

            

           During this latest conflict every ceasefire has been obeyed by Israel and broken by Hamas. Where Mr Miles goes wrong is in his insistence that Israel talks to Hamas. This of course is diplomacy of the Neville Chamberlain kind.

HAMAS DOES not wish to speak to Israel. If it did, it would recognise Israel as Jewish state, which it is not prepared to do. In fact Hamas's constitution forbids it. Does the wretched Mr Miles suggest that Israel enters negotiations with Hamas who refuses not only to accept a Jewish state, but also a Jewish people on what it considers to be its own land? If so, we are entering the ISIS territory of real genocide, and not the kind of exaggeration used by the  weekend demonstrators against Israel written on their posters.

           

            In this current conflict Hamas is seeking to get Israel to lift its blockade. The blockade was introduced in the first place because Hamas were importing military supplies to be used against the Jewish state. Cement went freely into Gaza in the naive assumption by the UN that it was meant to rebuild Gaza; but Hamas only built tunnels in yet another quest for the destruction of Israel.

            

            Now, because Egypt has closed Hamas's tunnelling life-line into Gaza from the Sinai after the overthrow of Morsi by Adly Mansour, Hamas now wishes to seek to lift the blockade. The Sinai tunnels had been a good little earner for Hamas. They imposed all sorts of taxes on all sorts of commodities travelling through them, whether from a single grape, or the latest Mercedes.

            Both the Palestinian people of Gaza and the Israel's are the real innocents in this latest conflict. The Palestinian people are being cruelly used as human shields by Hamas; as a means to an end.

            

             As far as much of the liberal Western media are concerned; it is the Israelis that are to blame; when in reality it is Hamas, whose sinister use of their own people, and the culpability of the Western Media which between them has put all responsibility onto Israel.

            

             The true war criminals Mr Miles, are not Israel but your Arab brothers in Hamas; and there can be no compromise with them without ceding to the Jews their right to their national homeland… that is Israel. This they cannot and will not give up. So talk is meaningless between Israel and Hamas, unless, as a prerequisite, Hamas acknowledges the right of the state of Israel to exist…which, Mr Miles, I doubt will ever happen. Perhaps you should acknowledge the fact that either a Jewish state is allowed to exist (which is something Hamas refuse to contemplate), or that the conflict continues. A conflict that Israel cannot ever tire of: because to do so would mean the end of the Jewish state of Israel. Perhaps it is Israel's manifest destiny, that it should be permanently in conflict with its neighbours, who wish to remove them permanently from the Middles East.