DO LOST PALESTINIAN LIVES HAVE EQUAL VALUE TO UK LIVES? IF NOT WHAT IS THE EXCHANGE RATE?

The daily tragedy, death and destruction of Gaza, its civilian population reduced to no more than expendable collateral damage to an out of control brutal Israeli Defence Force do not make for good holiday viewing. But as someone who refuses to accept that lives in different parts of the world have differing values and currencies I have tried, often in vain to keep up with events for the 2 weeks I was in Southern Spain.

I could understand why whenever news of the atrocities came onto a TV screen in a bar or restaurant, why the staff quickly changed channels, but it still made me angry. Tiger Wood’s back problems and Frank Lampard’s loan to Manchester City just seem to have far more recreational value than the plight of innocent families blown to pieces by British made weaponry in the name of “the right of defence”

But then things are very much the same at home.

People run away from things that they don’t wish to see, they know how horrible it is, but they don’t want to confront it, they don’t want to look, it’s not a question of denial it’s just natural not to want to be face to face with such horror. The pictures on our TV screens and in the newspapers are in themselves are a watered down version of the unfaceable reality, it is best for us to view to view death from not just a geographical distance but also from a digital one. This sanitised reporting is again a response to our internal discomfort with the truth, the newspapers reporters and photographers and TV commentators are fully aware that if they make us view this macabre death scene in all its full gore and horror that they will be blamed themselves by the public for making them look, making them see.

Thankfully though despite the censorship the world is now seeing, is now facing up to the fact that “something must be done”  But just are the something’s that should be done? Well we can start with a sustainable ceasefire,time alone will tell whether or not the current cease in hostilities has any lasting impact, but we can but hope that it is a start. but then we have had plenty of similar cease fires in the past each being replaced with a return to even more killing. 

We could as a nation once David Cameron has worked out how to spell disproportionate, call for UN action, but we all know that every attempt to make Israel answerable to the world community is thwarted by the US veto on UN votes. It is still very clear that the USA values the Jewish vote far higher than Palestinian life, so we are back to that currency question again in a politics versus people exchange rate system. So what is left? Or more importantly what is left that is worth trying and likely to succeed?

Well we certainly need to continue the current talks we need a “regional” figure to oversee any negotiations and we need to remove from the scene all those who have failed so badly to use the times between conflict to bring about a two sided solution.

We should therefore start with a call for Tony Blair as the Quartets Middle East Peace Envoy to step aside, our hapless former PM who himself took us into the equally horrific illegal war in Iraq has in recent months completely lost the plot. His continued absence from Gaza and his repeated support for Israel’s right to defend itself including recent Israeli TV interviews defending the IDF military response show a remarkable lack of diplomacy and impartiality and place him far too firmly in Netanyahu’s pocket to be taken seriously anymore.

But is our current Prime minister any better? Certainly not, arms sales have increased dramatically to Israel since his taking of office and we now have the contradictory farce of spending UK aid money to build up humanitarian and Social support within Gaza, whilst taking Israel’s blood money to provide sophisticated weaponry to destroy the very aid projects we funded the building of!  I have never been a fan of Baroness Varsi but I must applaud her for accepting in her well-publicised resignation letter that the UK policy to the current crisis is “morally indefensible” and “not in British national interests” and

The end game has to be a political two state solution agreed between Israel and Palestine confirming a viable Palestinian State and agreed removal of Israeli settlements on Palestinians Land this coupled with assurances for Israel in relation to their ever more demanding security concerns.

The “Egypt” proposals should also take seriously the little publicly commented on Hamas 10 point truce initiate. For those (the many I guess) who have not seen this proposal the main points are as follows 1: Withdrawal of Israeli tanks from the Gaza border 2: Freeing all the prisoners that were arrested after the killing of the three youths. 3:Lifting the siege and opening the border crossings to commerce and people 4: Establishing an international seaport and airport which would be under U.N. supervision 5: Increasing the permitted fishing zone to 10 kilometers 6: Internationalizing the Rafah Crossing and placing it under the supervision of the U.N. and some Arab nations 7:  International forces on the borders 8: Easing conditions for permits to pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque 9 :Prohibition on Israeli interference in the reconciliation agreement 10:Reestablishing an industrial zone and improvements in further economic development in the Gaza Strip.

But whilst a continued and lasting peace remains for the international community to be without doubt the most desirable and urgent need the world must also own and answer the wider questions of justice and accountability of all parties in relation to the atrocities carried out by both sides. Hamas rocket attacks on Israel may be futile and dealt with at ease by Israel’s Iron Dome defence system, but they are still indiscriminate acts of violence carried out by an elected government against a civilian population, but Israel refuses to sign the International Convention on Human Rights belittles the role of the International Criminal Court and prefers to play hardball with world concerns, so any complaint by them to the Court prosecutor for investigation and trial of Hamas’s actions are a non starter. Palestinian however are now a recognised UN state, can sign the convention and should ask the prosecutor to hold those responsible in the Israeli for giving the orders to butcher innocent children and families to account.

Peace and Reconciliation are non negotiable partners, long standing peace can never hold without tackling head on the thorny  issues of justice and accountability, such was the case in South Africa and Northern Ireland and such we hope will be the case in Israel Palestine.

The old adage “No justice, No Peace” may be over used and under delivered on but for Palestine it will be a pre requisite for the acceptance of a permanent Israeli state as it neighbour and not its prisoner and executioner

TONY BLAIR THE COMPLETE NARCISSIST

There is a widely held view, prominent within the British media that Labour backbench rebellion against the Iraq war in 2004 was predominantly based on our rejection at the time of the “dodgy dossier.” Parliament gives voice to this red herring through the over concentration in the chamber on the past and future roles of weapons inspectors and the need for greater clarity on shared intelligence on chemical and nuclear weapons.

Yet for me, at the time one of many anti-war Labour MP’s, weapons of mass destruction were always less concerning than the weapons of mass distraction employed by Bush and Blair to try to excuse their warmongering and their ulterior motives.

At the time, I was also a member of the Labour friends of the Middle East and our own discussions over what was occurring were always far more expansive, and our concerns far more plural.

Those concerns, as they always had been were about the continued fragility of the Middle East states, and the concern that constant interference by the West in the affairs of these states could only lead to further unrest.

These States themselves of course were created on borders drawn up and imposed by “outsiders” undermining local self-determination and preventing any internal Arab solution being found.

So let us now be clear on the real cause of the current bloodletting in Iraq and Syria, let us place the blame squarely where it should rest. The blood indelibly stains the hands of both Tony Blair and George Bush Jr.

I personally recall in 2004 being interviewed under caution by Special Branch officers after a transcript of a meeting between President and Prime Minister came into my possession via my political assistant. The document you may recall was given back to number 10 as its disclosure at that time, in my view, would have placed British Troops engaged in the “theatre of war” in danger.

The two spooks interviewing me were keen to ask questions on my view of President Bush, mostly because I had already admitted discussing the document with colleagues from the Democrat Party in the States. I told them that in my view President Bush was the most dangerous man on the planet and that despite his own well documented claims,  the true axis of evil existed far closer to his home than he had suggested and were in fact resident within the Whitehouse. The two officers were aghast, how could a member of the UK Parliament hold such “extremist” views? Well perhaps if they are reading this today they will understand far better the basis for my concerns.

As Isis (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) continues its offence against ill prepared Iraqi troops to build a Sunni based Islamic State which recognises no borders, the true cost of the West’s illegal occupation of Iraq becomes ever more apparent. Do we never learn? I thought by now that world history would have helped us prevent such mistakes not simply continue to repeat them. It really is very, very simple; any military occupation of any country will simply act as a recruitment agent for the forces rallied against you and any puppet regime placed in power by any evacuating army will always fall over simply by being labelled from the start as contaminated goods.

Tony Blair of course thinks differently, in a recent 3000 word essay he dismisses the claims of those of us who believe his war on terror simply made a bad situation a critical one, he says about the current crisis in Iraq that “We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that we have caused this” and there he goes again trying to “liberate” notions this time instead of nations! Which I guess is an improvement but it doesn't hold true.  Despite the loss of well over 1m troops, insurgents and civilians in Iraq and of course also in Afghanistan since Bush and Blair’s wars began, my former Party Leader still wants us to hold on to the premise that without his involvement it could all have been worse! Open civil war, the use of chemical weapons by all sides, rape used as a war weapon, hundreds of thousands of children dead and dying through hunger and disease, neighbours killing neighbours, ancient cities flattened, villages wiped out and the numbers of fundamental extremists increased tenfold and he suggests it could have been worse! It just doesn't ring true.

What is true of course is that the enforced borders and invented nation states such as those of Iraq established by the British Empire in 1921 and Syria, a 1922 creation of French/British making which also formed the lands of Lebanon and British controlled Palestine, are going to be continuously challenged and fought over by local tribes and faith based militants. 

This will continue until such a time that the Middle East is shaped in a form acceptable to those living in the

Middle East rather than that only acceptable to Western governments still intent on manipulating their own imposed regimes for their own ends.

It is also worth remembering when trying to work out what has gone wrong in Syria, before 1945 that the French Mandate created different States in Aleppo, Damascus, Alexandretta, Apatite, Greater Lebanon and Jabal Al Druze, and that borders in Mesopotamia were also redrawn ignoring the views of those in Kurdistan who were to be denied autonomy for decades to come. And yet now we try to preach to the dispossessed the language of unity!

The answer to the current crisis in the Middle East is not to be found looking down the barrel of guns either in the hands of Western Soldiers or those sold or gifted to Al Qaeda by Western Governments, it is to be found internally through negotiation (enforced if necessary with Arab peace keeping forces on the ground) and through the continued involvement of the Arab League Council. My current belief, uncomfortable as it may seem both to the West and to those of us who seek co-existence and secular nations is that the days of Iraq as a nation state could now be numbered and that will inevitably leave us with separate Sunni, Shia and Kurdish States.

At the moment the need to stop the bloodshed is of course far greater than any desire for perfect multifaceted Muslim nations, but if there is a hope of fixing Iraq’s damaged democracy and creating an Iraq and a Syria where Kurds, Shia and Sunni Muslims and Christians can live in peace together then the UK and the USA need to learn its lessons of the past and in future keep our distance.

WHY SYRIAS TEARS ARE WASTED ON THE WEST

The daily heart wrenching images coming out from Syria tear at the very soul of humanity, how can human life and the lives of children be so cheaply discarded, extinguished and violated? Who is to blame?, How can we bring those responsible to justice? and what can we do to stop the bloodshed? These are probably the three most voiced questions asked by those of us taking time out of our busy lives to even care. But we cannot rely on the British Government or even the BBC to provide us with the answers as in their eyes its all far too simple. It's all the fault of the Syrian Government and its head of state Bashar Assad, that's all you need to know, that's the foreign office line and our job as subjects of our own head of state is to believe them. But look again, dare to search for the truth, expose yourself to the horror and you will find a far more complex tale than that told in our newspapers and on our TV screens.

Syria is of course the birth place of the Baathe Party, it's breakaway sect in the early 1960's going on to raise Saddam Hussein into power in Iraq. The group then was split into Marxist (Civilian) and Militarist wings. The Military power which held say in Syria exists as the main power to this very day and its current President Bashar Assad the son of Party founder Hafez Assad rules in name only. I met Bashir in Syria in 2002 and found the most unassuming leader I had ever had the fortune of meeting. He certainly wasn't raised for the role, that honour was reserved for his brother Bassell, whose coronation never arrived due to his playboy tendencies which led to his death in a high speed car crash in 1994. And so it was that a young Bashar, an ophthalmic surgeon at St Marys teaching Hospital in London suddenly became next in line to the top job back in Damascus. Bashar and his British born wife to be Amas Ahkras found their lives completely reordered.

The Military might of Syria however was not about to lose its grip on power and despite many attempts at modernisation by the new president they continued to run Syria with an iron fist rather than take advantage of the new presidents ability to change Syria for the good. And so when the Arab spring finally made its way on the road to Damascus it met with stiff resistance from within the regime. Whether or not the determined reformer I first met fresh in office had long since given up trying to control his military chiefs I do not know, but he seems to be powerless and at times caught like a rabbit in the headlights when challenged on the alleged crimes of his state.

And then to make things even more complicated and far more dangerous the military themselves are losing grip on their own regional regiments as long held tribal differences come to the fore. The recent atrocities of course at first attributed to the Syrian Government were it seems actually carried out by a militia group loyal to the Baathe party called the "Shabia" others blame the FSA (Free Syrian Army) for similar atrocities carried out in villages loyal to the regime. In other words despite the wish of the BBC and the British government to explain away these atrocities as a simple government v the people struggle those on the ground talk of sectarian unrest and almost open civil war between opposing terrorist groups and government supporting militia in the North, and this violence is now spreading across the border into Lebanon.

But despite who is leading who and who is really calling the shots one thing is for sure and that is that the Baath Party of Bashar Assad and his father, Hafiz Assad, are still in absolute control of Syria, and any wish from the west that they are to be toppled as quickly as over regimes in the region is ill advised

This conflict will go on for a long time. There are a lot of supporters of the Baath Party regime. Not just members of the Shiite Alawite community and the Christians and the Druze, but others too, particularly among the Syrian bourgeoisie, the middle classes who support the regime. It will also be bloody. So what happened to the UK governments resolve as expressed over Libya to protect civilians on the ground? Where is the cry for military intervention? Or is Britain's resolve limited to our economic interest and the size of the government army we face?


Or perhaps the advisers in the foreign office are reminding British ministers of what happened in Algeria in the 1990's when the rise of Islamist groups was kept in check by a pro government alliance of tribal groups. In Algerian both sides, the military and the Islamist's, militias, started massacring very large numbers of civilians in terrible ways. The obvious fear is that the same kind of thing could happen in Syria now because we know very little about the rebel forces and the rebel militias that are now emerging across the country.

Robert Fisk, for me the most gifted, open and learned journalist in the Middle East recently told reporters that

"Well it already is happening in Syria. I went to a suburb of Algiers called Bentalha where there was an Islamist attack on villagers who were themselves "Islamist's". Hundreds of people were killed, including babies who had their throats cut.

I was in the village where this happened and saw the corpses of these babies and I saw the parents. And from the roof of their home, I saw the Algerian flag flying from the nearest Algerian Army barracks. From which, apparently, the Algerian Army could not come to the rescue of the villagers.

Of course they could, but they didn't. This is the sort of situation we're now seeing in places like Houla and Hama and I suppose perhaps, horribly speaking, in Aleppo too. We're seeing the same sort of pattern emerge, unfortunately."

The simple fact though is that the Syrian opposition, the armed opposition to Bashar Assad is so divided that it cannot be regarded as a serious threat to the regime. And Britain and the West have no idea who is leading that opposition on a day to day basis

And if we don't know who the opposition is, then the lazy thing to do is to simply blame Bashar Assad and the Syrian Government. But the West in this case cannot be seen to even give support to the opposition, as they undoubtedly contain elements and fighters from Al Qaeda, whose members may indeed perhaps be involved in massacres similar to the Houla massacre aimed at different tribal groups. And of course even if we had a side to back then the UK's economic interest is limited in this case so don't hold your breathe waiting for UK military involvement

Syria, and it's people need a new start, but it will not get that from a prolonged and bloody civil war. Bashar needs to lead a new drive for a democratic nation that actually represents all the people of Syria - the Sunni, the Shiites, which means of course the Alawites of the presidency, Bashar Assad and also the Christians and Druz. It's current bloodletting offers no such vision, just a continence of  sectarianism and continued religious indifference.

Bashar, the eye doctor from London would do well to look for help from the young leaders of Lebanon, as well as from the UN. He should look to develop a new state that rejects a society based on sectarian values and tribal difference. A country proud of its secular ideals rather than one driven into Islamic dominance I don't find Bashar Hassad not guilty of involvement in Syrias painful daily trials and tribulations, in fact it is his weakness at times that has acted as a recruitment centre for the more dangerous elements amongst his regime and following to take matters into their own hands and arm the militia's currently carrying atrocities in a tit for tat fashion with the rebels. But the West will do itself no favours by simply blaming the regime for all Syrias ills and saying how awful these massacres are whist wringing their hands and refusing to take any any part in seeking a solution.

Diplomacy and dialogue with Bashar and with others in the region including leaders in Lebanon is in my view the only way that further disaster can be avoided and all out civil war can be averted, if of course it is not already too late. My hope above in writing this piece is to educate and illustrate, to offer an alternative to the over simplistic view churned out by the mass media at a British and world  audience angry at what is in front of them on their TV screens but feeling powerless to do anything about it and wondering why their own government lack the balls to intervene.

Not all intervention has to be led with the gun, its high time the so widely valued British diplomats did their job in supporting a future for Syria by promoting jaw jaw instead of war war. It's high time that my ex party leader Tony Blair got off of the speaking circuit and his backside and did his job as Middle East peace envoy and Quartet representative of the USA, UN, Russia and the EU,  and engage with Syria, and its high time that the British public were told the truth as to what is really happening in the world around them rather than a sanitised and western influenced version of it.