Israel and Palestine Archives - Wolfie Wolfgang

Forget about William, Kate and George and let’s hear it for John Kerry

wolf01 — Thu, 25 Jul 2013 09:16:00 +0000

John Kerry, the USA’s effective Secretary of State

While we in the UK have been obsessing on the birth of little Prince George and, of course, the hot weather, other news has tended to take a backseat. OK, we like babies and respond to their births as symbols of hope for the future even if we are not at all interested in the idea of a King George VII some time not so soon in the 21st Century. Having a hot and sunny July in Britain is also a joyful thing – wakening us up to our bodies and encouraging us to let ourselves go. So we, the baby-obsessed and sun-worshipping Brits, are allowed our simple pleasures but, please, enough baby-talk, and let’s look East, to the Middle East, in fact, for a real sign of hope. The excellent Mr John Kerry, the USA’s relatively new and, apparently, highly effective Secretary of State, appears to be achieving what seemed, not that long ago, an impossibility. It looks like he’s got Israel and Palestine to agree to sit round a table in the USA for sensible and realistic peace talks. If he can bring this off and peace really can be achieved between Israel and its neighbours, then that would be a true symbol of hope for the future – a much greater one than that small royal baby or the happy blip in the English weather.

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Time to stoop the blood-letting in Gaza and Israel.

wolf01 — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

If the wild-eyed leaders of Hamas and Israel honestly believe that this bloodshed will lead to peace then it is time for some wiser council from two World leaders who just might make a difference.

President Barrack Obama of the United States of America

President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt

It is already too late for some – let’s not allow this to get any worse. Presidents Obama and Morsi need to take the lead here or nothing will change. Sympathy is appropriate due to his recent bereavement but let’s not put our hope in the discredited part-time Middle East Envoy, blood-stained Tony Blair of Iraq notoriety.

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One Thousand To One: Israel’s love for one of its own and the price of freedom

wolf01 — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:46:00 +0000

The Israeli family of Gilad Shalit

The Palestinian families

Gilad Shalit on his release day

The first of the of the 1000 Palestinians on their way to release

I wish I understood the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. It has been the great unsolvable problem of our times and it has got no less unfathomable today with these emotional scenes of freedom and reunion when the 25 year old Israeli conscript soldier Gilad Shalit was exchanged for the first of two convoys of one thousand Palestinian prisoners.

I understand, of course, that one would do anything to save one’s son and a thousand to one is a moving token of that love. It is also understandable that the Palestinians would celebrate the release of one thousand of their own without thinking that their sons were somehow undervalued by the exchange rate.

Many of these men were also, in a different and more difficult to understand way, conscripts. Not all of them were bombers or would-be bombers and, I suspect, not many of them really set out to blow up babies in shopping malls even though that is the reality of terrorism no matter how noble the cause.

I am not as clever as all those international politicians who have failed to bring a solution to this problem but I do know that I would like, naively perhaps, to see a state of Palestine and a state of Israel living together in peace and where no one’s sons or daughters were pawns in a power game.

Meanwhile let those families rejoice but let’s also think of the families who are mourning their losses.

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