A partisan presentation
Sir: Last week Melanie Phillips attacked the West's approach to the Palestinians as deluded (Gaza: another front in Iran's war', 23 June). But if her analysis carried sway it would only reinforce the hand of those who see no point in negotiations.
Phillips's view is based on a partisan presentation of history. The 'international agreement' she refers to is the formal assumption of Mandate Palestine by Britain under the auspices of the League of Nations. Article six of the Mandate set terms of Jewish immigration 'while ensuring that the rights and position of the other sections of the population are not prejudiced'. This echoed the Balfour Declaration of 1917: 'His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing nonJewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.' The property deeds and keys held by so many Palestinian families are testimony that Britain and the international community remains in breach of this undertaking.
Melanie Phillips's assault on the whole Palestinian people as a group 'who have brutalised themselves' is both insulting and inaccurate. She would do better to ask how the tragedy of Gaza and the West Bank over the last 60 years has come about and why it was that Palestinians voted for Hamas in an election that was widely recognised as free and fair.
Those who take the time to find out will understand that Hamas's agenda is not nonnegotiable. Hamas is primarily a Palestinian nationalist revolutionary movement on the same journey as countless successful revolutionary movements before it. What differentiates it is its Islamic base.
We need confidence in our own values to compete with political Islam on a level playing field. When we besmirch a people who are the victims of an historic injustice, and when our position is non-negotiable, we offer them no escape. That is a very dangerous policy.
Crispin Blunt MP Chairman of the Conservative Middle East Council, House of Commons, London SW1
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