Events are important

to the east and west of the River Jordan, which is Palestine and Transjordan. This Mandate permitted the Jewish and Arab communities to organise their own internal affairs. Subsequently, the Arab community withdrew from its commitment.

Even so, the UK government proposed the 1937 Peel Commission Partition of Palestine, but it was rejected by the Arabs, as was also the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan. Given these circumstances, there could be little hope for ‘working to a two-state solution’.

The ‘Oslo Accords’ came close to a solution thirty years ago this September. Hamas objected to the peace negotiations with Israel and called for a boycott of the Palestinian elections. But the Palestinians approved this peace process and gave Arafat a sweeping victory.

In November 1947 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the resolution to partition Palestine. With this resolution the UK government announced it would formally withdraw from its Mandate on 15 May 1948.

To lay the blame of the UK government’s ‘abandoning’ of its mandate is to both ignore the United Nations’ part in the formal ending of the Mandate, with its acquiescence to ‘civil war’, and the Palestinian Arabs own ‘terror’ organisations which had the military support of the [Syrian] Arab League.

And what Keith Tunstall is not addressing, regarding this 7th October attack by Hamas, is less about the ‘two-state’ solution, which Hamas denies in principle from its ‘Covenant’, and more against the wider normalising process between Israel and Bahrain, UAE and Saudi Arabia.

Which begs the questions whether Keith Tunstall is ‘sympathetic the plight of the Palestinian people’?

I concur with Cllr Tracie Bangert on importance of Remembrance Sunday.