Not the first time Labour’s leaders have underestimated the Palestinians – Hugh Lanning

“Our duty is to raise the Palestinian flag wherever we are.”

Labour & Palestine’s Hugh Lanning was amongst the speakers at ‘Palestine – the Defining Issue of Our Time‘, an event held in Liverpool on the eve of Labour Party conference. You can read an edited version of his remarks published below.

Palestine: the defining issue of our time. Something Labour is finding out the hard way– to which I’ll return.

I am always overawed by both the resilience and resistance of the Palestinian people. To have got statehood over 70 years too late is our fault – it was not our land to give away.

Now they’ve still got to fight to make it a reality: our challenge is to do everything in our power to make it happen as soon as possible.

All the states who have recognised Palestine have gone on to mutter platitudes about a two-state solution whilst saying nothing about how it is going to be achieved in the teeth of the total opposition of the US and Israel.

For any solution, one or two state, to be possible, (apart from Tony Blair) there are three huge obstacles to overcome:

 • Israel has never accepted that there should be a state of Palestine – as it has made abundantly clear. Got to make Israel accept a just solution.

 • No negotiated settlement is possible whilst there is a titanic imbalance of power, no slings and arrows are going to overcome the military might ranged against them. It would be worse than Versailles.

 • Differential rights – a bland sounding term, but it is Israel’s fundamental belief: namely that Jews must have political, legal and religious and cultural hegemony and superiority over all the peoples in historic Palestine and beyond, backed up by overwhelming military might.

Any solution must be based not on an apartheid regime, but equality for all the people living in the region.

In Labour’s blindness to Israel’s historic project – the elimination of any prospect of a Palestinian state, Labour is not just culpable. It is not a mistake that we didn’t call for a ceasefire until too late, that we ignored the planned starvation and famine, that we recognise a state after it has been systematically demolished, that we still fail to call a genocide a genocide.

This wasn’t due to an oversight or ignorance, it because those running the party agreed with and thought that Israel’s actions were necessary and appropriate. 

And how do I know this to be true? Because we are still supporting those actions through supplying arms, finance, trade, military and intelligence cooperation and aid. Actions speaking louder than words, especially weasel words from those quite happy to take money from Israel-supporting lobbyists.

You’ll perhaps be surprised to hear I’m often asked why I’m still in the Labour Party, why I bother with Labour & Palestine. (I do wonder myself sometimes).

Because now, and for over 50 years as a member, I believe the party leadership has not represented its members views on Palestine. I do not believe, despite being loyal and wanting a Labour Government, that the overwhelming majority of members support what is going on in the ‘killing fields of Gaza’. 

That is not just rhetoric. It is estimated 25.000 people died in bombing of Dresden in WW2.

We hear numbers, 10,000; 50,000. Real estimates indicate that when a true count can be made – underneath the rubble, it will be in the region of 1000,000, at least 10% of the population killed and maimed. It doesn’t sound a lot but translate to UK population of nearly 70 million or the US of 250.

In the second world war the UK lost less than 1%, mainly military, as a percentage of its population.

I’m not prepared to desert and leave the battlefields of Labour movement to the friends of Israel – that would be letting down the Palestinians. Our duty is to raise the Palestinian flag wherever we are – in our Party, (maybe even in Your Party!) CLP, union, branch church or university. The point is not to talk to people who agree with, but challenge those who don’t yet.

This is not an issue that Labour can hide from by bureaucratic means. Even if it is successful in blocking debate this week, ruling out motions from over 30 CLPs – it will not stifle debate. Whether it likes it or not, that debate is going on in the Party, in the country, across the world. And it is a debate it is losing, it is a debate Israel has forever lost. Never will it be able to return to its persona as a victim state. It is the oppressor.

How many red lines, lines drawn in blood, are we, the West, the world prepared to allow Israel to cross? History tells us as many as it wants. The Nakba, occupation, the Wall/Settlements, Operations Cast Lead and Protective Edge, starvation, famine and genocide.

There will be no meaningful red lines unless we force governments to act. By pressure – public opinion, demonstrations and protests and by votes. We are not just the moral majority; we are the majority. And then, if Governments do finally listen, Israel won’t stop its racially driven war until it is made to listen, to stop which won’t be until there are strong, permanent sanctions – an end to arms, military and financial support. Israel is not going to voluntarily, in its eyes, ‘concede’ to a just solution. It believes it has the right and is in the right, but it is weak without Western support, in danger of imploding..

We have the means, collectively the West can stop this. But its lacks both the will and the moral fibre. More fundamentally, those in power don’t want to bring this to an end. The waffle about a two-state solution is merely camouflage for disguising their real intent. Not a two-state solution, not an independent Palestine, free and secure – in reality they believe in and are committed to the defence of a totalitarian Israeli state. 

However, they – the West, the leaders of this great party of ours, are misguided – not for the first time they have underestimated the Palestinians – not going anywhere, underestimated the people and the members of this party. Palestine is the defining issue of our time, Labour needs to recognise it has got it badly wrong on so many counts. There will be a free Palestine with or without Labour’s hierarchy, it needs to get on board or get out of the way. The avalanche of support for Palestine is going to just keep on growing until there is a free, viable and secure State of Palestine.

Free, free Palestine!

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