BRITISH Prime Minister Keir Starmer is clearly following in the footsteps of United States President Joe Biden when it comes to going all out to support the ongoing Israeli genocide in Palestine, especially in Gaza. It is not a sudden shift either. Back in July, an Al Jazeera report had quoted Starmer as expressing soli-darity with Israel, insisting unequivocally that “Israel had the right to cut off Gaza’s water and power”.

The fact is that when it comes to the problem in the Middle East, it is the United Kingdom, not the United States, that stands to shoulder the burden of responsibility in historical terms. It was the British government that created this Israeli-Palestinian problem through the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which duly mandated the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine at a time when the land had a sparse Jewish population accounting for a mere eight per cent of the population of Palestine.

Prompted by the Balfour Declaration, the population rose to 32pc by 1948 through terrorism, massacres and wars by Zionist gangs arriving in Palestine from the rest of the world. Through the same means and tactics, the Jewish po-

pulation has now reached 75pc in the land that comprises Israel and its illegally-occupied territories, while Palestinians (majority Muslims and some Christians) have been reduced from an overwhelming 92pc to a much harassed and persecuted minority of 25pc now, according to records of the Jewish Virtual Library.

Subsequently, the US-led gang was unjust to the Palestinians when to the 32pc Jews — with most of them being recent illegal gate-crashers — it offered majority land, while offering 68pc Palestinians the smaller portion. No wonder, the Palest-inians rejected the offer.

Benjamin Netanyahu, with help from the US and the UK, is now trying to get rid of even this 25pc Palestinian minority by killing most of them and forcing the rest to flee elsewhere.

It is not that Muslims reject peace with Israel. In fact, the government of Saudi Arabia, after discussing with Palestinians and other Muslim leaders, has twice offered ‘normalisation’ of relations with Israel on the condition of the establishment of a Palestinian state on contiguous ter-ritory based on pre-1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, plus a fair settlement for the Palestinian refugees.

Pakistan’s Gen Pervez Musharraf went much further and made the same offer in his address to the World Jewish Congress in the US. Unfortunately, neither Israel responded favourably nor the US, European and the Jewish world leaders made any effort to persuade Israel to accept what is surely a reasonable offer.

Ironically, while the vast majority of countries as well as their public sympathises with Palestinians, and public opinion even in the US, the UK and many European countries supports the Palestinians, but the influential leaderships of these countries — having been compromised by pro-Israel lobbies — have become Netanyahu’s mouthpiece. All these are unfortunate developments.

S.R.H. Hashmi
Karachi

Published in Dawn, October 19th, 2024