The new campaign from Labour Friends of Israel is a smokescreen

At a meeting of Labour Friends of Israel in parliament on Wednesday, the pro-Israel lobby group launched something of a rebrand: “For Israel, For Palestine, For Peace” is a slogan first seen at its stall at the Labour Party conference at the end of September.

The new campaign’s main stated aim was to persuade the government to increase its “international development spending on coexistence” projects between Israelis and Palestinians from “the current level of approximately £150,000 to £1.35 million”.

LFI director Jennifer Gerber said in a press release that, “Projects that bring ordinary Israelis and Palestinians together are absolutely essential for a lasting peace in the middle east, and we in Britain must do everything we can to support them.”

One person who attended the meeting described it to me as disturbing, because nothing was said about Palestinian human rights and the primary reason for their violation, which is the state of Israel. The left-wing law firm Mansfield Chambers tweeted of the event that “UK MPs support for Israel ignore the fact that they are part of the problem not the solution.” The fact that the event was promoted by the well-funded right-wing Blairite faction “Progress” tends to demonstrate this.

As my colleague Ben White has commented, the more liberal Zionist side of Israel’s propagandists in Europe feel that they must appear to be more “balanced” these days, which is a shift in rhetoric. It represents something of a tactical retreat from blatant and open support for Israeli war crimes, a strategy that has been contested sharply by more hard-right elements within the Zionist movement.

But, in reality, such a false “balance” and “coexistence” narrative is nothing new. In some senses it is as old as the Zionist movement itself. As Ben has pointed out elsewhere, it has been only five years since LFI’s last “reinvention”, where it sought to make a “progressive case” for Israel. Yet since then, the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement has only grown.

Ben White has proposed a three-step litmus test to put to any group which claims to be acting in support of peace in Palestine: asymmetry, international law and accountability:

Is the situation in Palestine being talked about as if it were a “conflict” between two equal warring parties, rather than what it really is; a colonial occupation? If so, there is a problem.

Are violations of international law (such as Israeli settlements on the occupied West Bank, all of which are grave violations of the Geneva Conventions) being ignored, denied or diminished? If so, there is a problem.

Finally, and crucially, are measures to hold Israel to account for all of this (such as BDS) being distracted from or actively fought against? If so, there is a major problem.

On all three steps of this test, LFI fails. Its new campaign is nothing more than a smokescreen.

The “coexistence” groups for which LFI aims to raise more than a million pounds, such as OneVoice and the “Alliance for Middle East Peace“, are complete dead-end distractions. These “coexistence forums” are nothing new and flourished in the mid-to-late 1990s during the high watermark of the “peace process” industry. In other words, they have been tried for 20 years and have gone precisely nowhere.

The Palestinian Authority’s Ambassador to Britain, Professor Manuel Hassassian, spoke to Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson at the Conservative Party conference earlier this month. Thanking him for the money that the British government donates to support the Palestinian Authority, Hassassian added, “But, sir, we don’t need the money.” According to Kamel Hawwash of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Prof. Hassassian pointed out that “crisis management” had been a dismal failure and that what is needed is “conflict resolution”.

“He did not think it was enough for Britain to consider not importing goods from Israeli settlements or to simply say that it is for the two-state solution or the right of the Palestinians to self-determination,” explained Hawwash. “Those are nice words to be said, but we need to see them concretised on the ground,” insisted the ambassador.

The PA and its two-state approach would take this diplomatic tack, but the truth is even starker. Britain has been deeply involved in promoting Israeli colonisation of Palestinian land for nothing less than 100 years, since it issued the infamous Balfour Declaration, promising to hand over Palestine – a land which very definitely already had an indigenous population – to the Zionist movement for the purposes of its colonisation.

This rhetoric about “coexistence” between the “sides” to the “conflict” is nothing less than a propaganda attempt to pull the wool over our eyes. Until Israel ends its occupation, stops blocking the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland and grants full rights for all, the “conflict” will go on. No amount of cosmetic rebranding by Labour Friends of Israel will change that.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.