Israel and Palestine

In response to Israel's policy of occupation and destruction, around one hundred former representatives of France and the United Kingdom urge their governments to act through a series of sanctions aimed at safeguarding the rule of law. A coalition of 102 former French and British diplomats is calling on their countries to jointly sanction Israel, warning in an open letter that Israeli policy in occupied Palestinian territory threatens to permanently erase the possibility of a Palestinian state. France and the United Kingdom “must act together to uphold international law in Palestine”, said the letter published on Saturday by French outlet Le Monde. It urged the two governments to push for “equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians”. The signatories include former British ambassadors to the United Nations, Jeremy Greenstock and Emyr Jones Parry, and former French Middle East directors, Yves Aubin de la Messuziere and Denis Bauchard, drawing on decades of diplomatic postings across the region. “Palestinian house demolitions and rampant settler violence – with the connivance of the Israeli army and police – amount to ethnic cleansing,” said the letter. “The world no longer sees Israel as a genuine democracy,” it added. Such language, said Nicholas Hopton, a former UK ambassador to Iran, Qatar and Yemen and one of the signatories, was not invented by the diplomats themselves. “The words are not our own,” he told Al Jazeera. “They are taken from the international legal bodies, the UN, those who have been observing from a neutral position and with expertise.” (click image to read in full)

The US-Iran conflcit has now become truly a crisis which is engulfing the entire Middle East. The options open to the US appear to be narrowing. And in the absence of a strategy, what we see is a daily knee-jerk reaction, in the form of daily bombardments or Iran. US ally, Israel, in the meantime continues with military operations in Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank. Iran is retaliating with atttacks on Arab countries. the latest target being Egypt. Iran's allies in Yemen and Iraq are also weighing in. Iran appears to have regained its balance, after the killing of the Supreme Leader on 28 February. Apart from Iran and Israel, the conflict has now engulfed the six GCC countries (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE, Qatar and Oman), as well as Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Palestine. With the conflict now entering its sixth month, and expanding, the consequences are huge, and not as Donald Trump expected when he capricously launched it.