At the Labour Party Conference back in September 2015, the Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn addressed receptions held by Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East (LFPME) and Labour Friends of Israel (LFI). At both events he delivered relatively similar speeches in which he talked about the psychological toll that the conflict takes on both Israeli and Palestinian children and the need for both sides to compromise and negotiate. LFI received the speech enthusiastically, but at the LFPME event there was outrage. One attendee shouted ‘this isn’t about peace; this is about justice’, to enthusiastic applause from a large proportion of the room. When Benn tried to respond, he was heckled by people calling him a ‘disgrace’ and saying that he should not be Shadow Foreign Secretary.

This attitude of ‘justice’ over ‘peace’ is a damaging trend that has come to characterise much pro-Palestinian activism. That is to say, the demands of Western activists living in relative comfort have become progressively more detached from the aspirations of the actual people whom they claim to be defending. Whilst support for a two-state solution amongst Palestinians is lower than it has been historically, in the last 12 months, polling conducted by the Palestine Survey and Research Group has found that it is still the preferred outcome of between 45 and 51 per cent of Palestinians. Contrast this with the logo of the UK’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign which features the entirety of ‘historic’ Palestine with no mention of Israel.

As Joel Braunold, US Director of the Alliance for Middle East Peace, has writtenin this journal, one of the greatest obstacles to peace in the region is a lack of trust. If Western activists were actually interested in peace, instead of organising boycotts which only poison the well further and focusing exclusively on delegitimising Israel, they could participate in more constructive activities to advance mutual recognition, and peacebuilding. As well as disavowing terror and ceasing to sentimentalise ‘the resistance’, they could lobby for greater funding for grassroots projects which build trust between ordinary Israelis and Palestinians, or work on building links with sympathetic Israeli politicians, political parties and NGOs that stand for mutual recognition, a shared society and the two state solution.

Read the article in full at Fathom.