THE UK has a “special role” to play in the Israel-Palestine conflict – but instead of accepting responsibility its leaders are “continuing the colonial attitude they had in the 1930s and 40s”, a leading Israeli activist has told The National.
Jeff Halper, who has spent decades campaigning against Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine from within the country he calls home, said the idea that governments like the UK’s are moved to action by international law and court rulings was “laughable”.
However, he said that Palestine had – perhaps unexpectedly – hit a global nerve.
“Palestine has become emblematic – almost every movement can find a connection … and it's managed to move young people in a way that no other issue has,” he said. “I think it's caught the older generation that are in power by surprise.”
However, the situation in Israel could not be more different. There, he said, Palestinians are not even in the news.
“We don't use the word Palestinians. We talk about Arabs in a generic way, because we don't recognize them as a national group with any national rights in Israel,” he said.
“We never use word occupation. We talk about Judea and Samaria [the Israeli state’s name for the West Bank].
“You never talk about settlements, you talk about communities. And you never talk about settlers, you talk about residents, about the residents of the communities of Judea and Samaria.”
Halper went on: “That's why, for example, ‘everything began on October 7’. People were having a music festival or living a nice life, it's a holiday, and boom, we get attacked by these criminals.
“Everything we're talking about, the whole violent process of displacement, all these years of taking land, that is forgotten. It’s all been normalised.
“Everything that happened is in the past and unknown. [Israelis] never learn about the Nakba. It's forbidden in Israel to teach about what happened in 1948.
“So the problem is 'security'. The problem isn't occupation, it isn't colonisation, it isn't oppression. It's security.”
Netanyahu’s victory came after a campaign which saw him portray former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin – who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the Oslo Accords and had been assassinated one year earlier – as an officer in the Nazi SS.
Halper said Netanyahu had been whipping up “violent hysteria”, adding: “It was clear there was no more peace process. The Israeli public had reputed it.”
Under Netanyahu, illegal settlements in the Palestinian West Bank have been accelerating, and Halper’s Icahd now has branches across the world, including in the US, UK, and Germany.
However, Halper said it had changed nothing on the ground in Israel – and nothing at governmental level internationally.
“They talk about this ‘rules-based international order’ and the UN, international law and human rights. None of that plays a role. That's all laughable stuff,” he said.
“I don't think they even think about that in government, or in parliament even. It's all transactional. There is no policy, there is no strategy, there's no values.
“In this transactional world, Israel has a lot to deliver. Israel controls a very strategic geopolitical place. It has the United States behind it. It's at the table with the big boys.
“If I'm [Keir] Starmer and I'm thinking about the Middle East or international politics, Israel's part of that, the Palestinians are nowhere. They're not at the table. They have no power, they have no resources. They're not in the game.”
Despite campaigning against Israeli occupation, Halper, now a resident of Jerusalem, acknowledges that he too is a settler. Born in the US, he took advantage of Israel’s Law of Return, which grants non-Israeli Jews citizenship, and emigrated to the country in 1973.
However, that reckoning with his own past is something he does not see from Western governments like the UK’s.
“In 2017, you had the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. It was one of the worst colonial documents in history, where the British basically gave Palestine to the Jews and wrote it down – and [the UK Government] celebrated it,” he said.
“It was celebrated. You had celebrations over the Balfour Declaration here. So not only aren't they taking responsibility, they're kind of proud of the mess they made."
In 2017, “proud” was exactly the word then-prime minister Theresa May used to describe her government’s feelings on the UK’s involvement in the Balfour Declaration.
Halper added: “So I think [the UK Government] really have a special role to play in all of this, but they're continuing the colonial attitude they had in the 1930s and 40s.”
Halper, who spoke to The National while in the UK for a speaking tour, said that the marginalisation of Palestinians had resonated with other marginalised people across the world.
“Other marginal people, including young people here in Britain, are being shut out of the system,” he said.
“People are lucky if they have a job. If they have a job, they're underpaid … My kids couldn't even think about buying a house.
“I think Palestine in a way has kind of captured that. ‘All of us are marginal. We're all the victims of these political parties. Nobody gives a shit about us. At least, maybe if we unite around Palestine, that will empower all of us’.”
He added: “I don't think it was planned in any way, but maybe the genocide was such that it was able to finally pull everything together.
“So I think it's a much bigger issue than just Palestine. Palestine has become the rubric for struggles everywhere.”
