Time is running out for two states

[Violet_Crumble]

John Denham
Friday October 1, 2004
The Guardian

My colleague Ian Gibson MP rang me at 6.30am from his hotel in Ramallah on the West Bank. Our visit to study healthcare in occupied Palestine was about to take a personal and frightening turn. Ian had been taken ill with a suspected minor stroke. The specialist came quickly and Ian was dispatched to hospital in Jerusalem in a Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance.

But at the al-Ram checkpoint, Ian's ambulance was stopped by Israeli border police. Despite his obvious ill-health - he was dry wretching - and representations from the British consulate, the ambulance was refused permission to go any further. For 70 minutes Ian was left in the ambulance before he was allowed to proceed in a different ambulance, needlessly called.

<snip>

What happens if the two-state solution founders in a failed Palestinian state or the simpler brutality of continued Israeli occupation? We and other EU taxpayers will carry on picking up the aid bill - already higher per head than any other country in the world - for mitigating the worst consequences of Israel's illegal occupation. Meanwhile our own security, and the credibility of British foreign policy, will suffer.

The hope of a two-state solution has united those whose sympathies have been with either side, and those who take no side but simply recognise that our own security depends on a just solution in the Middle East. Supporters and opponents of the Iraq war agreed that peace in the Middle East was essential to undercut the emotive appeal of al-Qaida to alienated Muslims. Speaking in March 2003, Tony Blair said: "All of us are now signed up to ... a state of Israel, recognised and accepted by all the world, and a viable Palestinian state. That is what this country should strive for, and we will."

Again this week, Tony Blair said: "Two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace, would do more to defeat terrorism than bullets can ever do." He promised he would make it a personal priority after the US presidential election. So how should that priority be demonstrated?

Now is the time to be braver and bolder about the pressure we can apply. Our government did not want the case against the wall to be heard in the international court of justice, arguing that it would not help the peace process. But external pressure does work. The clear condemnation by the court has shocked Israelis and their government and forced some rethink on the line of the wall.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1317414,00.html