feature Melbourn and the Middle East Conflict
This article describes information given at a meeting held recently in Melbourn by Melbourn’s Churches Together group which raised a lot of questions for those present. It has been included in the magazine because it was a local meeting and it was felt the subject matter deserved a wider audience. We, at the Magazine emphasise that we have not, and cannot, verify the information given on the night, or reported here by Melbourn Resident Hugh Pollock. No inference should be taken that the Magazine holds any view on the issues described. Editor I recently attended an evening of ‘information & discussion’ on ‘Understanding Violence Between Israelis and Palestinians’ at Melbourn’s United Reformed Church (URC). The advertised speaker was Richard Lewney, a URC Eastern Synod Representative, who had attended a 10 day October 2019 educational visit to Israel and Palestine organised for 22 church members following a 2016 Resolution of the URC’s General Assembly. Although not a church attender, I was curious to attend this Churches Together public meeting. The talk was delivered quietly, using overhead slides, by Richard Lewney, a thoughtful, middle-aged, practising Christian, who is a URC lay-preacher from Cambridge. Here are just some of the points presented during the evening. • The State of Israel was created by the United Nations in 1948, in the shadow of the Holocaust in Europe, to provide a place of safety and security for the Jewish people. Sadly, the people who were already living in that land, known as Palestine, were displaced from their homes through violence or local land purchase from landlords and so displaced from the land they had lived in for generations. As a result, around 50 per cent of that 1948 population of Palestinians became refugees. On Israel’s foundation, the United Kingdom’s direct responsibility for Palestine’s good government (undertaken in 1917) ended as the United Kingdom withdrew. Conflict continued and more and more of this contested land was occupied and claimed by Israel. • Today the remaining Palestinian Territories – principally the West Bank and the Gaza Strip – exist in a state of military occupation by Israel. The West
Bank is surrounded by Israel’s 25 foot high “Separation Barrier”, a wall that stretches for 440 miles ignoring the official Green Line boundary (the demarcation line set out in the 1949 Armistice Agreements) between Israel and the Palestinian Territories. The Israeli Government does not permit its own citizens to enter the Palestinian Territories and cites the wall and its associated checkpoints as a necessary security measure. Both the wall and the checkpoints are controlled by the Israeli military. Palestinians may only pass through a checkpoint with a valid permit, held by about 1.5 per cent of Palestinians, who work on the Israeli side.
• Israel
has established over 132 Settlements in the West Bank; all are illegal under international law. Some are economic industrial zones, comprising manufacturing, assembly or other production units, producing goods for export. The Settlements are exclusively for Jews and some are full-scale towns, or even cities, with hospitals and universities (subsidised principally by the Israeli Government) all connected by a system of roads, with access forbidden to Palestinians. The Settlements provide housing for around 428,000 Israeli Jews. The Settlements, the wall, and the road system are built not only on disputed land but, in part, on land that is privately-owned by individual named Palestinians. Also, water supply to the Settlements is a major contentious issue. The border controls enforced by the Israeli Government impact widely on all imports and exports, and taxation. They affect every aspect of the economic and social life of all Palestinians living in the Palestinian Territories. • During their 10 day visit the 22 URC members, as international visitors, saw much. They also met and spoke with local people about the conditions and the need for peace and justice. Mentioned often was the Israeli Government’s discrimination, whether in its water supply policy or in its July 2018 Nation State Bill which specifies, amongst other things, the nature of the State of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people only. The following stories of two Palestinian Christians served as further illustration of its effects. We in the audience were assured that their experiences were representative of the suffering of many under Israeli Government control – not only Christians, Muslims, Arabs and others, but also Israeli Jews opposed to the policy of the Israeli Government. continued on page 53 melbournmagazine@gmail.com
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