Utter nonsense

With regard to “Boris Johnson to ‘Post’: Choice is two states or apartheid” (March 9), the UK foreign minister spent barely 24 hours in Israel to lecture the Israeli public and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yet again that Israel has only two choices with regard to the Palestinian Authority.

What utter nonsense! (And this from a well read politician who ought to know a lot better.) However, what can one expect from someone coming from a country that 100 years ago started the process of an independent state for the Jewish people through the Balfour Declaration and then spent most of the ensuing 100 years trying to renege!

That Britain succeeded unilaterally in separating the whole area of Mandate Palestine east of the Jordan River is something we have to live with, but there is no reason to accept any advice from Johnson regarding the area west of the river, given the British role barely three months ago in promoting the text of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 at the behest of then-US president Barack Obama, contradicting international law.

It would be relevant to know how Foreign Secretary Johnson can think that the Palestinian demand that any future Palestinian state be free of Jews is anything other than racist, and why, uniquely of all territorial disputes in the post-World War II era, that such a racist stance should be supported.

Let us hope that when it comes to the UK Foreign Office briefing the member of the royal family who is slated to visit Israel later in the year, it will do a better job in explaining the history of this area. PETER SIMPSON Jerusalem