15 Feb 25. The Editor received an invitation to cover the Gaza March through London on February 15th by a contact whose late husband was related to a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). The Gaza crisis has been a long standing interest of the Editor, so it was interesting to get views and comments from those people at the coal face.
On meeting my host and getting an idea as to what was the main cause of the current horrendous situation in Gaza, the Editor was struck not only by her forthright views but also the noticeable simmering anger. As far as she was concerned Gaza belonged to the Palestinians and any subsequent issues were the cause of everyone else but the Palestinians or the ruling Fatah Party. Hamas had been formed by Israel originally and it was a set up from the start. The fact that it was recognised internationally that Hamas were funded by Iran and they murdered, and took hostage, innocent men, women and children on October 7th 2023, did not seem to be factored into the conversation. The fact that since its foundation on May 28th 1964, the PLO had ben in a constant struggle against Israel, in country and with numerous international terorist attacks and the fact that some in power in Iran had pledged to remove Israel from the face of the earth, did not seem to feature in her explanations.
I said that I had always wanted to visit the area to get the real picture of Gaza and not what was broadcast. I asked if she would escort me, using her contacts, given the difficulties for journalists entering Gaza and the Israeli press monitoring. She warned against going with her as she would be arrested, not a good start. Her anger continued to emanate her views on the situation with the main point of anger being the Zionist movement. She said that the main reason for the current problem was the Israel wanted the gas fields off Gaza, which I had assumed already belonged to Israel, clearly my error. I found it difficult to get a word in edgeways as I was talked at for twenty minutes on the tube going to the March and anything I said ignored or disagreed with.
I have always seen the continued Israeli land grab on the West Bank as being a natural tinder box to increase tensions and fighting between the factions, particularly in the current war situation. These and other extreme policies are held by right wing factions in the Likud Party whose votes keep Netanyahu in power.
Gaza is a festering wound in the Region which should have been solved years ago, but with subsequent regime and government changes and the wider issues in the Region, starting in Iraq, the Arab Spring, Iran and ending in Syria, Gaza has been left on the back burner to fester in the heat and dust of that ongoing Middle East crisis. I remember clearly having dinner with my godson, a serving soldier, in 2010 and warning him of the Russian influence in Syria once the US and UK had washed their hands of Bashaar-al Assad, allowing his cruel regime to continue its barbarous treatment of its own citizens, coming to a sudden ignominious end in 2024. I was proved right in the ensuing carnage and future weapons testing for future wars in Ukraine and elsewhere. The Russian Listening Station on the coast had always been a key asset for Russia in the Region and its main supply route being from the warm water port in Crimea, the base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, where another tinder box exploded in 2022, fermented by the new Ukraine lease negotiations for Crimea in 2014. The fact that Ukraine controlled the water supply to Crimea was a key facet in the ensuing negotiations., thus the two conflicts became inextricably linked. There were a lot of pro and anti-Ukraine factions on the Gaza March one of whom, an Italian gentleman bemoaned of the fact that the current sanctions had resulted in a huge drain on the cultural dance, music and opera links long held between Italy and Russia.
I broke away from my host and her colleague when it became clear that my intentions to look at the whole history of Gaza from an objective point of view fell on deaf ears. They were right, everyone else was wrong, as she strode away no longer wishing for a reasoned and intelligent analysis of the issues at stake on the March.
That gave me a chance to mingle with the huge numbers, at least 15,000, on the March to get their views. Many of the banners and flags were centred on the huge plight of the children of Gaza, many thousands of who had died in the bombing and fighting and what they and their families would face returning to what was left of their homeland, much of which had been levelled to the ground with no water or electricity to sustain life. Many of them thought the violence would start again and not end until, Israel regained total control of the area with may mocking Donald Trump’s ‘Gaza by the sea,’ plan. Many saw international construction companies gaining millions from a reconstruction programme forecast to last at least 15 long years
I came away feeling that these innocent men, women and children, all of whom showed no anger or abuse during the March, had been caught up in years of struggle by numerous vested interests from the PLO, Fatah, Hezbollah, Lebanon, the US, the EU, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Iran in an angry exchange of views for the future of this country with none of them willing to back down or even find a peaceful and meaningful solution.
It was certainly reflected in the anger and intransigence of my host, but when you add the extreme heat and dust of the Region, that anger and resentment is just magnified to a point that a solution may never be arrived at.
I am remined of the remark made by this impossible situation by President Bartlett in the West Wing, when asked about the impossible Gaza situation.
“It’s the heat,” he said.
Not only the heat in the air but the embedded heat of everyone concerned, clearly reflected in my host’s ‘blame everyone else attitude.’
There were numerous small children on the March, one 3-year-old girl with a pro Gaza sticker on her face who gave me a ‘High 5.’
If, as forecast, the reconstruction will take 15 years to complete, that 3-year-old child will be 18 before life comes back to normal, a whole childhood lost, accompanied by a simmering resentment in the simmering heat which could kick it all off again.