Alan Duncan’s diaries inspire – but he could do much more

Brexit has moved the Conservative Party well to the right of British politics, but there remained elements prepared to stand for justice in Palestine.  These people mattered, as they could potentially help build a broad consensus in favour of better British policies towards the Middle East.

In January 2017, Crispin Blunt was Chair of the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, at which time it launched a no-holds-barred inquiry into UK policy towards the Middle East Peace Process. Unfortunately, Blunt lost his post in August of that year, and the inquiry was quietly shelved.  

Sir Alan Duncan

Minister of State for Europe and the Americas, July 2016 - July 2019

Another person who has spoken up for the Palestinians is Sir Alan Duncan, Foreign Office minister from 2016 to 2019.  In early April of this year, he published his diary “in the Thick of it”, about his experiences during this period. Apart from disparaging two PMs and a host of former colleagues, Duncan was supremely critical of his government’s willingness to do the bidding of Israel lobbyists. I wrote an article reviewing Duncan’s diary and examining a hitherto unreported aspect, i.e. his relationship with Jeremy Corbyn and the labour left who were at the time “in the thick of an endless pro-Israeli smear campaign”.

See the full article in CAMPAIN

Where does the buck stop in the South Hebron Hills? →

Israeli PR typically portrays the army of occupation (IDF) as acting in the interests of security, when it is really confiscating property in the interests of settlers. In area described in this paper, IDF has no such "security fig leaf", because Palestinians resist in an entirely peaceful manner.  At the end, I ask who is really responsible for the lamentable situation faced by the people, even as they resist peacefully.

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My Oslo paper

The author/Jonathan reports on the two day conference marking 20 years of the Oslo Accords, and concludes that the problem is more about the West than about the middle-eastern parties (Israelis and Palestinians). The various speakers showed that the accords had failed the Palestinians, had proved a major disappointment to the host country, Norway, and had allowed Israel to manipulate international opinion favour of a long-standing Zionist agenda of controlling the territory and resources of historic Palestine. The solution lay in western leaders making rational decisions and holding in check overbearing lobbies representing foreign powers.

Source: Journal of Palestine Refugee Studies, Vol. 3, Issue 2, Autumn 2013, ISSN 2046-7060.