I have a simple question to ask this morning. It is whether David Cameron is really as stupid as all appearances suggest he might be?
This passage in The Guardian inspired the question:
The UK could officially recognise a Palestinian state after a ceasefire in Gaza without waiting for the outcome of what could be years of talks between Israel and the Palestinians on a two-state solution, David Cameron has said.
Speaking during a visit on Thursday to Lebanon intended to tamp down regional tensions, the foreign secretary said no recognition could come while Hamas remained in Gaza, but that it could take place while Israeli negotiations with Palestinian leaders were continuing.
Let me unpack that for a moment. Cameron is saying that the UK might recognise a Palestinian state if:
- Hamas is eliminated from Gaza, which is the stated goal of the current genocidal Israeli campaign there.
- The Palestinians will not then have a free choice on their next leadership.
- The leadership that will be imposed on them as a result must then negotiate with Israel.
- Subject to the condition that Palestinians do not have a free choice they might then have a state.
Did Cameron think we would not notice what he was really saying?
Or does he think we do not care?
Or is he just too stupid to appreciate any of this?
It's almost impossible to tell.
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Your analysis is impeccable. He’s not stupid but relying on people not scrutinising it. The govt can then say officially they are being conciliatory when actually they are saying nothing.
I walked past him in the House of Lords, he seemed pretty vacant to me, the original empty man.
Your points suggest that Camoron doesn’t do logic/is in performance mode – saying something that to those unwilling/unable to dissect meaning.
However, I would be inclined to quote the late, great Peter Cook (to Clive James)
“ah yess, hypocrisy, the vaseline of political intercourse”
(cue audience reduced to stunned silence – me crying with laughter).
I think that pretty much covers it, all those dead people – they ain’t tory – so why should Camoron worry?
Agreed
A wonderful quote – to be re-used. Especially apposite just now.
Cameron is a product of his upbringing and experience. Dreadfully limited in his exposure to and understanding of the world, but with that Eton and Oxford arrogance and sense of entitlement to rule. Sunak is much the same.
To answer Richard’s question, Cameron has never needed to be clever to succeed in life, so he simply doesn’t bother trying to be so. Remember, he famously wanted to be PM because he thought he’d be quite good at it. Not much thought involved, obviously.
Ask Vernon Bogdanor.
Cameron has form being casual with reality. Remember his breezy Brexit decision, and his sneaky retreat on losing.
He is the epitome, if not the caricature, of the amateur English upper class, born to rule. He lacks Boris Johnson’s guile, but is probably more dangerous.
Rory Stewart is very critical, in his latest book Politics on the Edge.
Thank you, Helen.
Socialists should beware of Stewart.
I’ve just been reading Rory Stewart’s book, Politics on the Edge. Cameron appears as new PM, dealing with Afghanistan problems just as he is now dealing with Gaza — not listening to people who know the situation, making up his own feel-good hazy policies. My conclusion is that he really is that stupid, and doesn’t know it all.
Gaza is , or would be part of a wider Palestine. Most Palestinians are in the West Bank. Fatah are in charge there although there have not been elections for years and they are unpopular because they are seen as too accommodating towards the Israeli occupation. Hamas have become more popular because of their resistance. How far they would allow genuine free choice is problematical and a new state would have to depend on outside aid to establish it. It might be much reduced if Hamas in its present form formed a new govt. The prospects for a mew Palestine would be less.
My solution would be for the UN to impose a new mandate while civil society is re-built. Israel would have to accept what the international community decides. The key player being the US. If the US are behind a new state, Israel would have to accept. The key is a guarantee of security or both sides.
A new regime which was more democratic and supported by surrounding states and the UN would have a better chance of flourishing.
The other major obstacle is the presence of 700,000 settlers in the West bank.
Clearly the only way to lasting piece is West Bank & Gaza becoming a sovereign Palestinian state. An international solution along these lines will have to be imposed, Israel will have to be forced into it by the US, their backers. This is highly unlikely as the Israeli lobby is far too strong in the US (and the UK for that matter look what happened to Corbyn). Hopefully they can be persuaded into this. There would have to be wide military zones along the borders and the US would have to provide funds for Israel’s security. The Israeli settlers that have grabbed land would have to give it up if they have done so illegally. This something similar to what the Saudis are proposing. There needs to be an international working group set up to try and sort this out
Yes. we are in broad agreement. The Arab states made similar proposals in 2002 but Bush was in power.
The Israeli lobby is very powerful but it has been challenged in the United States. Many US Federal staff turned up yesterday with Palestinian colours and they fasted for a day in solidarity with them. Polls among young people are significant despite attempts to dismiss their views as just ‘anti-Semitic’.
The substance of the American protest is not just moral but that one sided backing of Israel, also undermines American and the West generally as it lays us open, correctly IMO, to charges of double standards around a rule based international order. Despite its many faults I would not want to see the international order be determined by Russia and China.
Sunak and Starmer have made no protest about the death rate. Blinken has said ‘don’t kill so many.’ Presumably lower figures are acceptable. Yet they suspend funding for UNWRA thus imposing a collective punishment on the people. It looks like our foreign policy is being written in Washington and Tel Aviv.
The ICJ has called for a number of things, including not killing a ‘protected group’ and aid which has to be ‘immediate and effective’. They don’t seem to be happening. A report about the implementation of their rulings is due in three weeks. I expect the ICJ will not agree they have been implemented and those supporting Israel will be implicated. Perhaps not in the statements of the ICJ but among the general public.
I note that even the BBC Middle east web page has been reporting the excesses of the settlers and the military occupation. ( I haven’t seen Orla Guerin for weeks. Some of her reports on Gaza were in contrast to the statements of Israel. She didn’t say so but the content of the reports spoke for themselves. I wonder if pro-Israel lobby has asked for her to sent on leave. Perhaps )
I think Kevan, the Israeli lobby is not as powerful as it was. It should be challenged.
Richard, pardon me for taking up so much space, but this has been posted in the last hour. It is relevant.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68177357
There are decent people around
Why is it always US will have to fund Israeli security?
Who funds Palestinian security? Who has ever funded anything other than aid for Palestine? EU countries have tried in past, Netherlands provided solar panels once, many of them. Israel took them?? There are many other examples of similar. Security cannot be in the hands of Israel!
Thank you and well said, Richard.
Around 2009 – 10, Cameron, Osborne and Clarke visited our office, City trade body, for a working lunch with bank leaders.
After the trio were escorted out. the banksters admitted to finding Cameron and Osborne ignorant, unwilling to listen*, grandiose**, petulant at time and lightweight and wondered if Clarke, jovial, engaged and self deprecating, could be leader and PM in waiting, and how Cameron would stack up against Obama and Putin and other serious leaders.
*Cameron and Osborne would not listen when told that leaving the European People’s Party would make it more difficult to advance Tory and / or UK interests.
**Cameron could fake sincerity, but knows his station and ours, according to Tory activist colleagues, and Osborne acted as if he had never met anyone outside the upper class, from Tory activists and our observations. I will try to write more about Cameron’s connections and how his path in life was eased.
Not long after we met Balls and Darling, Cable and Clegg. They weren’t much better.
My expereince of Balls and Darling was not much better, especially Balls
I can see how he and Osborne get on
Thank you, Richard.
I wrote the names in that order as the persons nominally more senior did not give that impression. Darling and Clegg let their side of the discussions be dominated by Balls and Cable*.
Cameron’s great great grandfathers were the first managers of HSBC and the Chartered in what became Standard Chartered. His father and grandfather were senior partners at City firm Panmure. Cameron also had connections with the court. On the morning of his interview at Tory HQ, a call was made by a courtier, whose identity is debated, to the effect “that a rather nice young man is coming for an interview today and one hopes he does well”.
Panmure is broker / adviser to Jardine Matheson, cross shareholder with HSBC. Cameron interned at Jardines in the university holidays. He later employed and ennobled HSBC’s Stephen Green.
At Oxford, Cameron was taught by Vernon Bogdanor. Bogdanor reckons Cameron was his best student and able to teach PPE. Bogdanor was rewarded with a peerage. To make it easier to sit in the Lords, Bogdanor left Oxford for King’s College, London, around the corner.
After Oxford, Cameron worked at Tory HQ and at the Treasury, a path plotted for him. At the Treasury, he worked with Jardine heiress Tessa Keswick, Osborne and my future manager, a junior minister. My manager and Cameron and Osborne did / do not get on, one reason why she did not get a peerage.
In advance of getting a safe seat and to get some outside work experience, Cameron joined Carlton. Michael Green famously employed anyone likely to advance his business and social interests.
Life has been relatively easy for Cameron, but he thinks he knows more than professionals in the field. One military commander had to remind him that it was not the playing fields of Eton when discussing something the UK military was involved with.
This is how it often works at that level of British politics. There are more Camerons around, not just in the Tories.
*I dealt with Cable in government on projects to improve the financing of industry and vocational training. Cable was superficial, uninterested and disengaged. That rubbed off on his officials. So many ministers, advisers and officials were like that in the coalition, including, to my surprise, Jo Johnson. He was not like that when we met in 2009 – 10, but may be he was faking it in advance of being selected for Orpington and then government benches.
Richard and I have exchanged comments about where we go from here in the last couple of days ago. Soon after the 2019 election, a journalist friend and soon to former Labour activist said it needed WW2 for the conditions to elect a socialist government.
Noted
Obama’s reaction after first meeting Cameron: “Jeez, what a lightweight”
The mangled manipulation of facts goes much further than Cameron. It sinks even into the lower depths of the cohort of Scottish Conservative MSPs. Miles Briggs venture into BBC Radio Scotland GMS this morning, expecting, no doubt to have a What’s App bean-feast, exclusively at SNP expense (there is nowhere safer from criticism for a Scottish conservative to go, than a BBC Scotland studio); but Alister Jack’s dopy wholesale What’s app deletions and casually off-hand apology had rather queered his pitch, even there. So no doubt thinking quickly where else to mangle a fact, Briggs chose Grenfell; criticising the Scottish government for being too slow on the cladding problem in Scotland.
This is a really bad move. Grenfell is a huge problem in England and effectively nothing substantive has been done. The impact is far beyond the problem schools. Residential cladding is a huge problem, largely unsolved, and in scale under-reported. ‘Inside Housing’, “Fact check: how many people live in buildings with dangerous cladding?” (June, 2020) suggested that in an area that was difficult to estimate, the best estimate was probably that of:
“the Association of Residential Managing Agents (ARMA), who estimate more than 500,000 people are effected. This was based on a survey of its members which revealed 25% of the buildings they own with more than 50 units had problematic cladding. Scaled up across the stock owned by its members, they estimated 274,000 flats were in homes with dangerous cladding. Using the average for household size of 2.4, this would account for 657,000 people.”
That is not the end of the problem, not by a long, long way; in England there is a further consequential side-effect of which Briggs, I hazard is completely clueless: the leasehold law in England (which is currently, but ineffectually being re-written it is so egregiously deplorable). This currently provides the freeholder with the opportunity to avoid the cost penalties of disastrously faulty new flatted developments, and pass the remediation cost back to – the victim.
Sky News, ”Buying a flat ruined my life’: Leaseholders plead for tougher legislation against home ownership ‘scam” (2nd February, 2024) discusses the outrageous financial predicament of specific victims, including Dan Bruce who lives in an £800,000 flat in Camden, built in 2018. So bad is the situation (from council tower blocks to £800,000 apartments), Sky News reports: “The government intervened to ask Camden Council to issue a remediation notice against the developer – with Housing Secretary Michael Gove even calling the situation “deplorable”. But under the terms of Dan’s lease that would have allowed the developer, who is also the freeholder, “to charge us to fix their own shoddy work”, Dan said. Instead, he has had to spend thousands of pounds in an “exhausting” legal fight against the developers, contractors and insurers involved in signing off the building as safe.”
Sky News also say, “[t]he proportion of new-build houses sold as leasehold rose from 7% in 1995 to a peak of 15% in 2016, according to government data. There are five million leasehold properties in England in total – equivalent to one in five dwellings……Labour MP Barry Gardiner, who has spent 20 years campaigning to abolish leasehold and recently made a documentary on it, said the bill is ‘133 pages of tinkering with a fundamentally unjust system’. Leasehold needs abolishing, not updating. It’s a relic of a feudal system,” he added. Mr Gove had promised to scrap the system entirely but was reportedly forced to row back on the pledge over concerns there was not enough time before the next general election to enact such a major reform.”
Some of the victims are now claiming the leasehold system is a scam, and the injustice is a second Post Office scale scandal.
Underpinning all this is the basic fact that somehow, flawed developments were allowed to be completed unfit, and this takes us neatly back to where we started: building regulation. The Conservative Government is responsible for austerity on a scale and for so long, there is simply nobody, anywhere representing the public interest and ensuring the laws, regulations and standards that are there to protect everyone, are either fit for use, or capable of protecting anyone.
Meanwhile the Conservative Government, Party and Press peddle the false talk of “Red Tape” and its destruction as the answer to growth, while destroying everyone’s lives; and wheeling out the Miles Briggs MSPs of this world, to deliver the claptrap.
Thanks
Mr Warren’s most excellent post on Grenfell has stirred this development manager’s keyboard into action because as good as it is, he only scratches the surface. The causal elements are:
1. Deregulation
2. BREXIT
3. Austerity
This is the unholy trio that has brought down Britain’s construction industry turning it into a shadow of its former self. One of the biggest sectors of GDP. ‘Greed’ might be in their too, as is an obsession with ‘inflation’.
The destruction is sometimes self inflicted for sure, but it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other – the other being stupid politicians who know fuck all (sorry).
What I’m about to give you is my observations based on running building projects on sites and buying from developers under s.106 (52% market price) and package deal acquisitions (full market asking price) – it makes no difference what you pay, you can still get shite either way.
DEREGULATION:
Everytime we buy from the private sector (s.106 or package deal), the standards we pick up for (say) smoke alarms etc., are always lower than those required for social housing landlords (which is who I work for). We have to ask for the higher spec as ‘extras’. We’ve seen some funny things over the years – gas pipes in the middle of spaces for cookers, condensate pipes at the back of cookers and washing machines just waiting to be smashed or to go brittle and fail (should be outside into a pipe); plug sockets right next to gas mains in the boiler cupboard. Ceiling lights glued in and not bolted. We’ve seen it all.
Developers always get new build coming out of the ground with foundation work first because once that is done, you can build to the old building regs. That is why all the properties we are buying into 2026 will all still have carbon heavy gas central heating in them. I kid you not. Thousands of them, yet to come onto line. Low carbon my arse.
Whereas in the past, Building Control was a statutory function you can hire private firms to do this now who are a bit more ‘flexible’. Now, cast your minds back to how the ratings agencies in the financial sector worked and contributed to the 2008 crash and……………….you get the picture?
But it’s not just Building Control – how about the NHBC (National House Builder’s Certificate) and CML (Council of Mortgage Lenders) verification?
We took some units from a major developer recently that had been signed off by the NHBC and CML (where the property is signed off as ‘mortgageable’) only to find before handover that our own drain survey revealed that the down pipes from the roof gutters were not even connected to the drainage or it was silted up; that the drainage runs had the wrong diameter pipes (leading to blockages) and three of the units living rooms were directly over an open sewer and had not been sealed off or connected to the main sewer in the road! Poo!!! And some of the drainage runs that at least require a 1 in 20 fall, were actually going upwards and would have backed up causing blockages. New houses!!
Verdict? You are actually safer in a rented council property than when you buy your own new house. Who’d have thought ‘caveat emptor’ would apply to a new property eh?
BREXIT:
Problems with labour/staff who now mostly have to stay abroad = fewer bodies to do the work. The English go abroad too since they’ve been trained to do nothing properly except party.
Doubling up of trades – plumbers doing gas fitting – certification is a nightmare.
Problems with the supply chain – everything takes forever and has gone up in price.
Material shortages making contractors cut corners, make do and mend and use inappropriate materials to finish jobs – the same can be seen with material costs – roofs having inner membranes that look like sewing blankets when they should be continuous strips as a first defence against leaks, just to save money.
Higher labour costs – brickies are in such short a supply that they only have to do a 3 day week and then they can piss off home. Good for them, but bad for the industry.
Severe trade shortages in some parts of the country.
Quality of work is declining for new build – this is all over the internet and see above.
AUSTERITY:
Fewer people to go and check that regs and standards are being adhered to.
No investment in young people getting into trades because of an emphasis on the national curriculum and the shutting down of school’s vocational programmes because of crap Tory education budgets – totally stupid considering BREXIT.
Adding more work to Building Control and Planning services such as the roll out of EV charging on the back of still more cuts to capacity.
Most site managers I have met this last 5 years all say the same – labour, supply chains, skills – all lacking. No wonder they all look older than their years.
And while we are at it let’s mention two other things under the guise of PRIVATISATION:
NAVS – New Appointments and Variations – companies that can come in and buy the water supply infrastructure to a new development – set up by OFWAT (or is it
OF-TWAT?) to ‘generate competition’ in the water supply. These boys know all about their charging regimes but sod all about how to connect properly to the network. Just because we have a sprinkler feed on our water supply, they want to charge us extra for a little pipe that feeds the sprinklers – huge potential for abuse and exploitation.
MAN-Cos – estate management companies – because Council General Funds are contracting, an estate management company will now do the street cleaning and maintenance charging each household a fee. Again, a huge potential for future abuse.
Verdict?
FUBAR. The new normal.
Time for a coffee.
Enjoy the coffee
Thank you
My brother-in-law had a major Birmingham rendering firm, until Kier paid him a fortune to manage remediation to their architectural disasters. Being driven past new builds by him is frightening. He is constantly looking off the road exclaiming “look at that, walls not straight, whole house leaning”, pointing out roofing faults etc. He visited my step-son’s new build purchase and was escorted out by his wife after he started detailing the construction and finishing disasters in the hall and kitchen.
I seem to remember decades ago that the Building Research Establishment in Reading just laid down the standards – research based – and all just had to comply.
There was only one source – now every developer seems to define their own standards – as you seem to be saying.
On a personal note – a relative is thinking of buying new build on a new development in Enfield – which is somehow underwritten by the council who have some ‘affordable’ properties for rent on the site. They do seem well finished houses – but your remarks makes me think of warning her off???
Only scratching the surface?
No argument here. The Conservative government, its acolytes, Press and operations are demonstrably rotten to the core; and require to be removed, as a matter of urgency.
Great summary thanks PSR. Fits with the bits and pieces I have picked up and personal experience.
As I understand it, whilst sections of the City are the Tories biggest donors, construction are not far behind.
PSR : Your story of the housing crisis on new builds reminded me of this from last year. Very similar stuff.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/oct/21/cracked-tiles-wonky-gutters-leaning-walls-why-are-britains-new-houses-so-rubbish
@ John S Warren,
Where similar cladding was used in Scotland, it was installed in accordance with a much tighter building code:
https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2024/01/29/edinburgh-flats-fire-today-gee-i-wonder-why-the-building-did-not-have-to-be-evacuated/
The, done on the cheap, installation method used at Grenfell compounded the problem of using flammable materials and allowed the fire to leap rapidly from floor to floor. That method simply wouldn’t be permitted in Scotland where firebreaks are installed at every level; at each corner and around every aperture (window or, where applicable, balcony door).
Essentially it boils down to this Building Standard which has existed in Scotland for more than 20 years:
2.4 Cavities
Mandatory Standard
Standard 2.4 :
“Every building must be designed and constructed in such a way that in the event of an outbreak of fire within the building, the spread of fire and smoke within cavities in its structure and fabric is inhibited.”
Put simply, cavity barriers prevent the chimney effect that caused the disaster at Grenfell Tower, so why did building standards in England not make them mandatory?
At one time in the past there was red tape called the “Building Regulations” and building inspectors to ensure the regulations were adhered to. Camaoon and the rest of the tories scrapped this so now builders can get away with any shoddy work and the idea of green, well insulated homes has been junked. On the plus side the house builders a coining it in.
Historian and Guardian columnist Andy Beckett – in my view, the best commentator of historical political trends there is (check out his books on the 1970s and 1980s) – in his always must read articles in the Guardian, has this on Tory ‘moderates’ – very well worth a read (spoiler: in the end the extremist nutters always regain control of the Tory party):
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/02/margaret-thatcher-tory-moderates-rightwing-extremists
Agreed
I read it this morning and thought it very good
Thank you, both.
Growing up in Buckinghamshire, Timothy Raison was my MP. Ian Gilmour was next door. Lord Carrington lived down the road. The Tory Wets were so different.
Gilmour’s family live nearby and raise money for relief works in Palestine. Lord Carrington’s son is a good landowner.
Ian Gilmour was the paradigm ‘Wet’. In his withering book on Thatcher, her works and acolytes, ‘Dancing With Dogma’, Gilmour writes of Hayek’s ‘Road to Serfdom’ (knowing very well it was Thatcher’s ideological Bible) in words that follow Herman Finer (‘Road to Reaction’), that: “[it] is an anti-democratic, quasi-dictatorial tract, intolerant of countervailing institutions” (p.223).
That is ‘Wet’ Conservatism. There are no Wets in the Conservative Party; anywhere. None. Finally hosed out by Johnson, or despatched by the insanity of Truss et al.
Agreed
I met and quite liked Gilmour as a young man
Gilmour’s book ‘ Dancing with Dogma’ – about Thatcher – is still a good read today and even though it was the old Conservative Party that was very patrician – it is far better than modern Neo-lib Tories banging on about the Left wing ‘nanny state’.
The mendacious Conservatives nd their gophers, who claim One Nation Conservatives or other current, scruffy rubbish, are being created ot of nothing by Conservatives fearful the current electoral abyss they are facing proves existential for the Party. It is nothing but a hoped for soft-landing bail-out for failed Hayekians, if they can just con enough electors to believe in fairies.
I repeat. There are no Wets in the Conservative Party. None. That is the price of forty years of hubris.
Further to my comments about Ian Gilmour, thank you to John, Richard and PSR.
My only quibble with John is about Johnson getting rid of the wets. I think that tradition was gone by the 1990s. David Gauke and Dominic Grieve represented nearby seats. Gauke lives nearby. David Liddington succeeded Raison as my MP. They may call themselves one nation Tories, but are nothing like the wets.
I went to school with some Gilmour types. Being landowners, they have roots, not like the deracinated neoliberal elite, and are in the same boat as the rest of us. They are not all like that, but are more likely not to be Thatcherites with a shopkeeper mentality.
Also, fantastic post about building from PSR. Thank you.
I take your point; strictly you are right. I was specifically trying to make room for Dominic Grieve, although I have always thought of him essentially as a soft (but not very soft) Thatcherite. Candidly I wrote my comment having not really made up my mind. I concede your point entirely, although in the current age Dominic Grieve is as close to Wet Conservatism as you are likely to find. I have probably now finished his credibility within the Thatcherite gerontocracy of the current Conservative Party membership; forever.
They expelled him
To his credit
Thank you, John.
All I would say is check everything if you are buying new. And make friends with the site manager because that might be useful if works are still going and they stick around
If you have a wet room, run the shower to check if the water goes down the drain and not out the door into the hall!
Remember that you will have a 12 month or 24 month warranty for components. The NHBC or equivalent will cover the fabric of the building, sub structure, walls and roof for 10 or 12 years should they fail, then the builder has to come back.
An end of warranty inspection will also ensure that shrinkage etc., can be dealt with before it expires and the builder disappears for ever.
Making friends with Corgi registered gas engineers and electricians is also a good idea, we constantly see residual mains devices not plugged in which are meant to protect the mains from surges and dodgy stuff. That means that there maybe some unresolved electrical problem somewhere.
Thanks
David Cameron is partly responsible, with the French military, for the bombing and destruction of Libya leaving a divided country with rival factions at war and mass chaos and misery a la Gaza. He therefore doest care a brass monkeys about the killing and starvation of Arabs. He came to be Tory leader partly by championing green policies but once in office abandoned any puny green initiatives like the feed-in tariff for renewables. Once out of office, he called green policies “green crap” so this shows the man is a completely wasted space.
Returning to the Palestinian question: any Western politician advocating a two-State solution is doomed for failure. Previous “negotiations”, seemingly entered into in good faith by Israel, have always broken down.
Israel will always claim
* the Palestinian side will not “shift” to accommodate their concerns,
*the Palestinians are intractable,
* the Palestinians impose impossible conditions…
And as Richard suggested in his post, why do the Israelis break up the talks? It is Israeli intransigence, not Palestinian willingness.
This is a quote from a report on the Israel National Security Conference from 8½ years ago – and nothing has changed since.
QUOTE
“Documents from past negotiations reveal what “de-militarised” actually means for Netanyahu and the Israeli right: Israeli negotiators have previously used “de-militarisation” to demand Palestinian acceptance of continued Israeli control of Palestinian airspace, an ongoing Israeli army presence in the West Bank, the right to unilaterally deploy Israeli troops into Palestine in the event of an “emergency,” and the power to dictate what, if any, weapons could be used by the security forces of the proposed “sovereign” Palestinian government.
“In other words, the “state” Palestinians are being expected to gratefully agree to is not even “sovereign,” but simply a re-configuration of Israel’s occupation under a novel framework of legal colonialism.
“More revealing were statements of other officials in the Netanyahu administration on this issue, that went unreported. Tzipi Hotovely, Netanyahu’s deputy foreign minister, [now the Israeli Ambassador to the UK] for instance, dismissed the idea of two states:
““There is a vision that there should be a separation between the two peoples for coexistence. When that didn’t succeed, they promised us that the aim of this separation would be an umbrella of legitimisation. Then they said the partition and separation would be something that could get us by with the other nations. Now, in 2015 an entire generation asked and demanded peace and what did it get? Delegitimisation… The problem is not one state but the idea of two states, and our thoughts have been frozen on this issue.”
END QUOTE
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/next-threat-too-many-them-resource-scarce-future
Palestinians are only too aware of the apartheid that comes with being an Arab under Israeli law. Whichever solution is being touted, Israel will never cede equality to the Palestinians and the Palestinians will never accept fewer rights than those enjoyed by the current Israeli population.
Has anyone else read about Israel bombing a Belgian development agency building in Gaza, presumably because they are supporting UNWRA?
I read it in the Guardian earlier but it seems to have disappeared.
I wonder what Europe and Nato will do about this.
That was a ripper of a read. Excellent work. Thank you to all contributors. 🙂