Our first year as an organised group has been interesting.
Our activities have been successful with a number of very interesting discussions with Palestinian & Israeli Activists, some of these are online on our Website & on our YouTube Channel. We hope to have more such discussions in the coming year, and we would also like to arrange a more formal Fringe events at our Federal Conferences.
Organisationally, while our Executive has met regularly, and I am indebted to my Vice Chair Amin & Lorenzo especially for their support while I have been struggling with my health, we have struggled to set up a Bank Account to collect subscriptions limiting what we can do. Hopefully we will be able to sort this out in the coming weeks.
Looking at the main purpose of this group, to support the work of peace activists in both Nations, the mood is less hopeful. The ongoing political weakness in both Israel & Palestine is not allowing the political leadership in either to take the bold moves needed to forward the Peace process.
Israel faces yet another round of elections in 3 weeks’ time and the outlook is that there will be a continuing stalemate with neither the Right/Religious block (under Netanyahu) nor the Centre/Left block (under Lapid) being in a position to form a stable Government although the latest Opinion Polls seem to indicate that Netanyahu might just shade it with the support of the neo-fascist parties.
The big unknown is how, if at all, the Arab population will vote. While there are big efforts to get them to turn out & vote, there is a big worry that because they feel excluded from Israeli political life and society, they will stay away. The split of the United Arab List has not helped as this could well mean they are less Arab MKs than before.
On the Palestinian side, the political vacuum after the postponed elections that should have been held last year has led to many turning to more direct actions with a rise in violent demonstrations & worse. This has not been helped by heavy handed actions from the Israeli Security forces which has led to a sharp increase in the deaths of, mainly young, Palestinians and in turn to greater unrest and hatred.
This instability on both sides makes our work even more important. There is a need to show the only way to a peaceful solution to accept both sides have a right to exist in their homeland, both sides need to accept the right of the other side as well as their own. We also need to counter those in our own Party & outside who think that you can exclusively support one side and condemn the other.
In the end it is for the people of Palestine & Israel to find a way to live with each other, we need to support them in finding a way, we need to try to get the Lib Dems here in the UK to work with both sides with both nations, to build the consensus for peace.