THE WALL MUST FALL

On Wednesday the 24th, I ventured into the corridors of power in Westminister. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) had organised a lobby on that day in order to draw attention to the Israeli security barrier. So I arranged an appointment with my local MP, a Liberal Democrat no less. When you get to Westminister, the entrances to the houses of parliament are guided by hordes of police, some armed with machine guns, so it was hardly a welcoming sight. Since I had arrived early for my appointment, I waited outside the public entrance. I ended up meeting a lady who had come all the way from Wales, and she recanted how her branch of the PSC was having trouble with Christian zionists! While they would be singing in the street, the CZ's would distribute leaflets promoting the zionist cause ( although Christian zionists only want a Jewish state so that the Second Coming would commence, which would end up with all the Jews in Israel being converted. With fiends like these... ), and she was going to complain to her MP about it.

Eventually, the old bill let me in. They have that machine you find in airports, where you put all your bags on some conveyor belt to go through some device which sees their contents ( Dammit Jim, I'm a 4/5ths doctor, not a physicist). Then you go forward into a hallway which has corridors leading off in all four directions. It's the place where you see Andrew Marr on the BBC talking about parliamentary proceedings ( I saw Alex Salmond of the SNP being interviewed there, he's quite a short chap but I like him ). I asked at the reception desk for my MP, and he came down. After we sat down on one of the couches in an adjacent corridor, I began my polemic against the wall, quoting the International Court of Justice's (ICJ) ruling on the wall, which was that the wall itself contravenes internation law, that construction of it must halt immediately with demolition of existing segments already buily, and that reparations be made for the damage caused by the building of the wall. In the ICJ ruling was a report from the UN Secretary-General, stating that the wall, when completed, would annex 237, 000 Palestinians and 320,000 settlers to Israel, and would cut off 50,000 Israeli Arabs with Jerusalem ID from 180,000 others in Jerusalem ( The problem for the 237,000 Palestinians who will be in Israel is that they are holders of West Bank ID, which does not entitle them to visit Israel or Jerusalem, so this could be used to expropriate the land that they live on ).

After I told him this, my MP readily agreed with me on all points, regarding its illegality, its damaging effect on the Palestinians way of life, and its effects on the peace process ( It poses a barrier to the two state-solution, but that's fine by me. One state for both peoples is the only proper way forward. I doubt the Afrikaners suggesting a separate state for blicks in South Africa would have gone down well, so why should it be accepted here?), and told how various senior Lib Dems, from Menzies Campbell to Charles Kennedy, mention the subject multiple times. He suggested a way forward would be to review EU-Israel trade agreements, which deal with billions of dollars I should presume. Unfortunately, it would be difficult for the Lib Dems to exert pressure, being neither the opposition nor the governing party, but at least there are those present who have a viewpoint better than the currently popular "ISRAEL GOOD - PALESTINIANS BAD, MA-A-A-A-A-A" that passes for foreign policy vis-a-vis the Holy Land nowadays. At least that's one more MP who seems sympathetic to the suffering of the Palestinians.