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"To everyone's surprise, Orbán conceded early – before 9.30pm – and cheers erupted from all corners of Budapest’s centre. One small but mighty party was organised by the centrist Momentum Movement. On the large screen was the prime minister glumly telling his supporters that it was over, and the defeat was 'painful'. In the crowds were dozens of people giving him the finger." Marie Le Conte was in Budapest when Viktor Orbán fell.

Eyal Weizman on the destruction of Gaza: "Two and a half years after 7 October 2023, most of the Gaza Strip – cities, refugee camps, schools, universities, mosques, the health infrastructure, agriculture, wells and the soil itself – has been destroyed and made toxic by bombs, artillery, tank shells and sappers. The most systematic destruction was caused by D9 bulldozers made by the US company Caterpillar. These giant armoured machines stabbed their blades into the ground, churning up fields, felling orchards, flattening homes, tearing through roads and ploughing through cemeteries."

"France builds 300,000 homes every year. If that number sounds familiar, it's because that's the target that the UK misses year after year. So far this century, a new tramway has opened in France every six months. Is this a coincidence, or are they linked?" Thomas Ableman describes what happened when a group of transport and housing aficionados took British policymakers to France to see first hand the country’s fast growing tram network.

Matthew McManus says the right wants voters to be stupid: "In Poisoning the Minds of the Low Orders, his great book on early modern conservatism, Don Herzog notes how British conservatives relentlessly argued that the lower orders ought not to be educated lest it provoke 'insubordination'."

Diana Resnik reports on two new studies that suggest wind turbines pose very little risk to birds.

 "I’m always amazed by the technical knowledge that CFF kids seem to have, too. In our next film, The Cat Gang, a small boy's suspicions about another gang of smugglers are raised by one of the villains wanting a battery for his car. 'Most modern cars have 12 volt batteries, so why does he want a 6 volt battery?'. He’s about eight..." Bob Fischer and Vic Pratt review a new DVD compilation of Children's Film Foundation gems.

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Before his books about the Royal Family, Andrew Lownie wrote about Britain's intelligence services. He found them much more helpful than royals have been. Here he talks to Peter Geoghegan about the way that British institutions protected Prince Andrew for years.

Peter Oborne reports that Alistair Burt, the former Middle East minister, admits he was wrong to give Israel unconditional support and wonders if other British politicians will follow his lead.

Polly Mackenzie maps the limitations of the 'add it to the school curriculum' mentality. "If we want a society that is literate in money, media, and citizenship, we need an infrastructure for lifelong learning that reflects how adults actually live. Schools are only one node in a much bigger information system, and we’ve been neglecting the rest." 

"[Ewen] Cameron destroyed the lives of his subjects, many of whom were exceptionally vulnerable, and achieved nothing of scientific value. His work is a catalogue of exploitation and abuse. Yet there is no comprehensive account of Cameron’s studies to be found anywhere in the bioethics literature." Carl Elliott on the way that scandals in scientific research are conveniently forgotten.

"Imagine walking out of Camden Town tube station, turning north towards Camden Market and finding yourself facing a twelve-lane concrete motorway full of roaring traffic. This was the intended outcome of the 1960s Ringways plan to drive four giant circular roads through the capital in order to enable millions of Londoners to drive their private cars straight through the heart of the city." Jim Waterson meets the man who has spent 20 years researching that plan.

Boak & Bailey discover Rustic Ale and what became of it.

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Chris Grey analyses the dangers of the new far right in Britain: "It seems to be quite different to earlier versions of far-right politics which, whilst aggressively anti-immigration, were not, apart from a very small fringe, intent on a wholesale overthrow of the established political order. Yet, now, it is becoming almost mainstream to speak as if that political order has entirely failed." 

"It saddens me to say that Israel today seems to be a world away from the inclusive, pluralistic, open and democratic principles on which it was founded in 1948." Labour MP Peter Prinsley, who is a doctor and Jewish, writes about his experience of being denied entry to Israel.

"The exact movements of the train are kept secret for fear of terrorism – in 1886, Queen Victoria’s train was reportedly targeted by Fenians. But we know the train is only used very infrequently, not least because it is so expensive to move out of its shed at Wolverton near Milton Keynes." Christian Wolmar agues that the demise of the Royal Train was inevitable.

Owen Hatherley says one of the clearest markers of Britain’s civic downslide in recent decades is the slow cancellation of its once plentiful provision of public toilets.

"[Herbert] Howells and [Ivor] Gurney walked the streets of Gloucester into the early hours that night, excitedly debating what the Tallis Fantasia might mean for the future." Terry Blain tells the story of the first-ever performance of the Tallis Fantasia in the city's cathedral as part of the 1910 Three Choirs Festival.

Roger French takes the bus from Nuneaton to Leicester.

Lib Dems call for a review of the law after Palestine Action arrests

Lisa Smart, the Liberal Democrats' home affairs spokesperson, has asked the government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation to urgently examine the "troubling precedent" of the use of the Terrorism Act to arrest large numbers of people expressing support for Palestine Action.

In the letter to Jonathan Hall KC, she said: 

"While we recognise the serious nature of this group’s activities, including criminal offences, such as vandalism of military equipment and RAF aircraft, aggravated burglary and violent disorder, and some cases awaiting the conclusion of trials, we are deeply concerned about the use of terrorism powers against peaceful protesters in this context."

Meanwhile, reports BBC News, Kishwer Falkner, chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, has written to the home secretary and Metropolitan Police commissioner Mark Rowley.

Her letter said

"We are concerned that some recent responses may not strike the right balance between security and fundamental rights. Heavy-handed policing or blanket approaches risk creating a chilling effect, deterring citizens from exercising their fundamental rights to freedom of expression and assembly through fear of possible consequences."

Yesterday, I wrote a post suggesting the government's proscribing of Palestine Action has been counterproductive. 

I could have added that if people come to believe that government throws about the label "terrorist" to freely, they will be less likely to believe it when it warn us of groups that certainly are terrorists.

The government's own goal over Palestine Action

Embed from Getty Images

Until the government proscribed it as a terrorist organisation, I had not much heard of Palestine Action. Now its name is everywhere.

One reason for this is that, though its actions may fall within the expanded definition of terrorism in the 2000 Act, they are not what the average voter recognises as terrorism. So people who would never dream of carrying a placard saying "Provisional IRA" do not feel the same distaste towards Palestine Action.

More deeply, the British people are shocked by the razing and starving of Gaza, yet no one in government has acknowledged that shock, let alone given it a voice. And it's the name of Palestine Action, rather than the organisation itself, that has become a rallying point for those who want to fill this political vacuum.

Because Palestine Action has been decreed a terrorist organisation, the police have no discretion in policing demonstrations where its name is used on placards. They must arrest the people with those placards, thus giving Palestine Action more publicity.

So unless it wants to fill our prisons with pensioners with a conscience, while letting real criminals roam free, the government is going to have to back down. When it does, it will still be able to prosecute Palestine Action under conventional laws, of which it has plenty to choose from.

We would then stop seeing placards with "Palestine Action" on them, but there would still be demonstrations against the Netanyahu government's murderous assault on the people of Gaza.

Pro-Palestinian campaign groups have their bank accounts frozen

At least two peaceful pro-Palestine organisations in the UK have had their bank accounts frozen, reports the Guardian.

The two examples the paper gives are the Greater Manchester Friends for Palestine and Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which have had access to their funds cut off indefinitely by Virgin Money and Unity Trust bank respectively.

The Guardian says of this news:

Coming amid the banning of Palestine Action earlier this month and the arrest of more than 100 people for showing support for the group, and the threatened arrest of a peaceful protester for having a Palestine flag and “Free Gaza” sign, it has amplified concerns about a crackdown on critics of Israel.

This has made me remember what I wrote when everyone on Twitter was hurhuring about Nigel Farage losing his Coutts account:

I'm uneasy with the enthusiasm for Coutts's decision to close his account.

Because, despite what right-wingers believe, the banks are not part of a woke blob. They are conservative organisations, and if they start refusing people accounts because of their politics, then it is left-wingers who will suffer more.

And I can see government and right-wing activists putting pressure on the banks. Why do Just Stop Oil activists have accounts with your bank? Ban them!

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Ben de Pear and Ramita Navai tells the story of how the BBC repeatedly delayed and ultimately shelved a damning documentary on the destruction of Gaza's health service. Gaza: Under Attack was eventually screened by Channel 4.

“Resilience is critical to manage global heating: housing, food defences, water supplies, food supply, healthcare, finance and workplaces. Too often we are fighting last centuries’ wars by insulating homes from cold and failing to protect them from heat; hence, we install air to water heat pumps, where other countries are promoting air to air (which provides cooling in summer).” Simon Ferrigno asks if Britain is prepared for more heatwaves.

“The data doesn’t suggest that total demand on the criminal courts is unprecedentedly high. The number of cases coming into the system has increased in recent years, but remains below levels in the early 2010s. Indeed, the total amount of court time spent on jury trials has decreased by almost a quarter since 2016. The biggest problem facing the courts is the growing productivity gap – what we’re getting out compared to what we’re putting in.” Cassia Rowland is not convinced by Sir Brian Leveson's recommendation that we severely restrict the right to a tribal by jury.

Jacqui chooses 10 favourite London novels.

Susan McDonald discusses her love of the poetry of W.H. Auden: “In Tonight at Seven-Thirty, Auden says ‘the funniest mortals and the kindest are those who are most aware of the baffle of being’. I agree – that’s why I’ve read his poems for the past 30 years.”

“If horror film makers have nothing else they can always rely on a cheap mask to bring a sense of the uncanny, playing upon our deepest instinctive fear of The Other.” Ray Newman on the power of the mask.

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Alexandra Hall Hall lists 10 things Britain could do if it really cared about Palestinians.

"If this plan is about prevention, then nature should be central to it. The science is unequivocal: contact with the natural world supports human health in wide ranging and profound ways. It lowers stress, improves mood, and alleviates symptoms of anxiety." Andrea Mechelli et al. argue that there is a striking omission from the NHS's 10-year plan.

"I recently wrote an article for the Telegraph about a series of unexplained electrical substation fires across the country. There had been eight in the space of a few weeks between March and mid May, when normally you might expect one or two every few years." Coincidence or enemy action? Jonathan Ford investigates.

Henry Jeffreys has the latest on the Unbound scandal: "Pete Brown, Britain’s best-known beer writer, said: 'I don’t think I got a single UK review or mention anywhere apart from those I generated myself. It was then that I realised the model gave Unbound absolutely no incentive to try to sell a book post-publication.'"

"In late May he secured an incredible coup over Caroline’s chief advisor, the Whig MP Henry Brougham, who was trying to negotiate a behind-closed doors settlement. Instead, Wood met Caroline in Calais and convinced her to return from exile, take up residence in his London home and from there claim the right to be crowned Queen of the United Kingdom." Martin Spychal on Matthew Wood, who took up the cause of Caroline of Brunswick, the estranged wife of George IV.

B.D. McClay speaks up for her favourite Jane Austen novel: "It’s not my intention to turn Northanger Abbey from a gleeful romp into a treatise on human judgment. It is a light novel – Austen’s lightest – and that lightness should be burdened as little as possible through overthinking it. Nevertheless, at risk of weightiness, it’s worth exploring how Northanger Abbey is more than a satire of other novels. Managing disastrous first impressions, discerning the sincerity of another’s intentions, seeing into somebody’s character: these are all here, explored in just as nuanced a way as they will be in Emma or Pride and Prejudice."

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"Weaponising food deprivation has been Israeli policy for decades. As a senior adviser to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert put it in 2006, the government’s aim, in strictly restricting the entrance of foodstuffs into Gaza, was to 'put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.' Now, Israel seems to have committed fully to the latter goal." Jennifer Zacharia details the sufferings of the Palestinians.

Roland Smith weighs the objections to the European Convention on Human Rights and says we'll need good arguments against them if we're to resist the coming campaign for Britain to withdraw from it. 

"I moved to the city eight years ago to study neuroscience at University College London. Since then, rents have nearly doubled but the square footage of my digs has stayed the same. As I grow up in age and out in size, I begin to see that the hoped-for upgrade that should come with time now looks impossible. My generation is running but we’re not moving." Rose Dodd reports on life as a private tenant in London.

Michael Rosen proves that educational research did not begin with Michael Gove.

Londonopia tells the story of a unique London store: "Arthur Liberty wasn’t just flogging  fabrics. He was hawking a vision - a sensual rebellion against the stiff moral corsetry of Victorian Britain. Where others sold sensible serge, Liberty offered peacock-feather glamour, hand-painted decadence, and the vague but thrilling possibility that you might run away with an artist and spend your life eating figs in an atelier."

"War is a dreadful thing, amongst all of the horrific things that human inflicts upon other human in the name of 'war' there are some events that stand out as atrocities: one such atrocity took place in the aftermath of the battle of Naseby." Keep Your Powder Dry tries to pin down the exact location of The Farndon Massacre in the villages just south of Market Harborough.

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"What's happening in Gaza is a humanitarian and existential tragedy for the people living there, a moral and political disaster for Israel, the indirect, long-term result of past European barbarism and the subject of a damaging present European failure." Timothy Garton Ash reflects on European double standards and German cognitive dissonance.

Séamas O'Reilly reports from Ballymena: "To their credit, the PSNI have been clear-cut on this point, with the chair of their police federation Liam Kelly describing the violence as 'mindless, unacceptable and feral' and the actions of the rioters as 'a pogrom'. There is no interpretation of these acts, no nuance or context that can be added, that points in any other direction.

Hannah Al-Othman and Jessica Murray on increasing concerns over the quality of 'expert witness' evidence in British courts.

"I wanted to go back into the past and look at it with fresh eyes, to better understand the roots of this uncertainty. What I began to find was twofold: first, there were major shifts in power during the 1980s and ’90s – primarily away from politics and mostly toward finance, though also other areas. Second, there was a significant internal shift in consciousness. We are very different creatures from the human beings of 1978." Frieze interviews Adam Curtis about his new television series Shifty.

The car made pedestrians second-class citizens, and we shouldn't let driverless vehicles push us off the road altogether, says Adam Tranter.

Northolt Park Racecourse near Harrow was superbly equipped and the headquarters of pony racing in Britain, yet it had an active life of only 11 years. This local history site tells its story.

Layla Moran on Gaza: "Starvation shouldn't be a weapon of war"

The senior Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran has warned that people in Gaza face "unbearably cruel levels of destitution" and called on the government to match its recent tougher tone on Israel with action.

Speaking to the Guardian she said:

I remain frustrated that while the government’s words and tone have changed, in terms of concrete actions, not much has changed.”

She called on the government to recognise a Palestinian state, which would "safeguard Palestinian interests and also send a very clear signal to Israel that there are consequences to their actions". She also condemned the government for allowing trade from illegal settlements and for "still arming Israel when they shouldn’t be".

The report goes on to detail the suffering of the family of Mohammad, an NHS doctor who operated on her last year and whose elderly parents remain stuck in northern Gaza.

He describes conditions on the ground as a "slaughterhouse" and says people are on the brink of starvation.

Layla told the Guardian:

"Starvation shouldn’t be a weapon of war and it is unbearably cruel that it’s got to the levels of destitution that Mohammad’s family are describing, but their story is just one of millions that are now trapped in northern Gaza in a situation that seems even worse than at the beginning.

"It has to stop now and the UK government needs to redouble its efforts to make that happen."

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"Adults are going hungrier to keep children better fed. The most vulnerable – infants, pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers and others needing special diets - are already starving. The very poorest, those unable to call on better-off relatives, those cut off by military checkpoints, are already wasting away as their internal organs suffer irreparable damage." Alex de Waal on starvation in Gaza.

Ben Jackson says the government must change direction on child poverty: "When governments are remembered after they lose office, their achievements are unforgivingly distilled into a few pithy bullet points. Does Keir Starmer really want one of his bullet points to be that he was the unusual Labour prime minister who presided over an increase in child poverty?"

Rose Dixon reports the success of Iceland's experiment with a four-day working week.

"The men would wait for the Germans to pass over them and then come out at night. Their role was not to fight the Germans face-to-face. Their brief was to hit the supply chain, causing enough chaos to slow down the German advance, blowing fuel and ammunition dumps, destroying railway lines, bridges, and convoys. Local country houses that had been taken as German HQs were to be destroyed and German officers and British collaborators assassinated." Andrew Chatterton explains how the British Resistance would have fought Nazi occupiers.

"Meryl marched into the hotel suite where Hoffman, Benton, and Jaffe sat side by side. She had read Corman’s novel and found Joanna to be 'an ogre, a princess, an ass,' as she put it soon after to American Film. When Dustin asked her what she thought of the story, she told him in no uncertain terms. They had the character all wrong, she insisted. Her reasons for leaving Ted are too hazy. We should understand why she comes back for custody." Michael Schulman tells the story of how Meryl Streep battled Dustin Hoffman, retooled her role and on her first for Kramer vs. Kramer.

Peter Black discovers an Edwardian mystery: The story of Violet's Leap.

Police break into Quaker meeting house to arrest six women at political meeting

I'm blogging about this because the story does not seem to have been covered by any general news outlets.

From Quakers in Britain:

Police broke into a Quaker Meeting House last night (27 March) and arrested six young people holding a meeting over concerns for the climate and Gaza. ...

Just before 7.15pm more than 20 uniformed police, some equipped with tasers, forced their way into Westminster Meeting House.

They broke open the front door without warning or ringing the bell first, searching the whole building and arresting six women attending the meeting in a hired room.

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023 have criminalised many forms of protest and allow police to halt actions deemed too disruptive.

The website quotes Paul Parker, recording clerk for Quakers in Britain:

"No-one has been arrested in a Quaker meeting house in living memory.

"This aggressive violation of our place of worship and the forceful removal of young people holding a protest group meeting clearly shows what happens when a society criminalises protest.

"Freedom of speech, assembly, and fair trials are an essential part of free public debate which underpins democracy."

Later. The Morning Star has more about Youth Demand, the group whose meeting was raided.

Layla Moran calls on government to stand up to Trump over Gaza

Interviewed here on The News Agents podcast, Layla Moran calls on the government to take a stand against Donald Trump's plans for the resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza. 

She wants Britain to recognise the state of Palestine and to call for an immediate meeting of the United Nations security council.

Her point that Trump respects strength, and certainly won't respect the government's current timidity, is well made.

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Andy Boddington, a Lib Dem councillor in Ludlow, explains why he won't be signing a petition on Gaza organised by a Shropshire resident: "How can you be a peace campaigner when you accuse people who won’t sign as having extreme views without knowing their views or reasons for not signing. Mr Robbins should withdraw his reckless attempt to name and shame councillors and to put them in danger. He should work towards peace in the Middle East not towards creating conflict in Shropshire."

"When I explained my situation to my manager, they said I had just two weeks off on full pay. After that, I’d get what is known as statutory sick pay from my employer, paid at just £109.40 a week. I could hardly believe it." After experiencing the financial blow that being diagnosed with cancer also brings, Danny Berry has joined the Safe Sick Pay campaign.

"The point is - there were no pro-slavery societies. People who wanted to carry on benefiting from slavery for as long as possible counseled delay and inaction - that was the only realistic course. It would not have been tenable for Dundas or any other public figure to argue in favour of slavery. In that sense, there are analogies with climate change." Jackie Kemp looks at the different ways the story of slavery is represented by Edinburgh's monuments."

Historic England considers Cornwall's under-researched queer literary history.

"Eight new villages were planned for the Forest, Kielder itself would be the largest - 'new village communities of estate workers, adequately and compactly housed, and enjoying a high standard of local amenities'." Municipal Dreams on a postwar experiment in rural housing.

Stephen Wagg likes Kenneth More far more as an actor than I do, but I still enjoyed his discussion of the sudden decline of More's career: "More ... received an offer from David Lean to play the lead in an adaptation of Richard Mason’s interracial romance novel, The Wind Cannot Read. He says he turned it down, unsure if the public would accept him in a 'Rupert Brooke-style' part; More later called this decision his biggest professional mistake."

I am pleased the party will take no further action against David Ward

The Yorkshire Post reports:

The Liberal Democrats have said they will take no further action against a Yorkshire MP who suggested he would have fired rockets into Israel. 

Bradford East MP David Ward faced the prospect of party disciplinary measures after he took to social media site Twitter to support Palestinians in the Gaza conflict. 

Mr Ward had said: “The big question is - if I lived in Gaza would I fire a rocket? -probably yes.” 

Now Lib Dem chief whip Don Foster has said no further action will be taken after Mr Ward apologised for any offense (sic).

I am pleased to hear it.

I gave my own view on this blog at the time David sent his tweet. He was being foolish - whatever Gaza about it is not about him - but also making the serious point that military action of the sort undertaken by Israel can be counterproductive.

Don Foster's decision is a blow to those who comb Twitter and the wider web in the hope of finding something they can claim to be offended by and then demand action.

It is also a blow to those in the Liberal Democrats whose chief activity is calling for other people to be thrown out of the party.

GUEST POST What the US can do to end the Gaza conflict

Daphne Holmes calls for the carrot and the stick to be employed with Israel

Ever since the formation of Israel as a nation, the collective attitude of the United States has been to unfailingly - and sometimes blindly - support that nation in its quest for sovereignty and security. According to the Foreign Policy Journal, between the years 1948 and 2009, the United Nations issued 79 resolutions against Israel, condemning it actions against its fellow countries in the region. During that same period, the United States has, in its position as a member of the UN Security Council, vetoed a total of 46 of those resolutions.

Israel has little incentive to change its tactics
In the few cases in which the US agreed to the resolutions, there was significant public pressure not to sanction Israel, even in cases where the country’s actions would have been condemned, had they been committed by another country not as closely allied to the US. It would seem therefore that it is not in the collective will of the United States to hold Israel duly accountable for its actions.

Admittedly, Israel has acted in ways that might arguably be justified by its need to defend itself against historically sworn enemies. Granted, some of those enemies have publicly stated their desire to wipe Israel off the map. That said, at what point is the escalation of the killing of civilians an acceptable response to the killing of one’s fellow countrymen, some of whom were also civilians?

The truth is, there probably isn't much that anyone, including the US, can do to actually end a conflict that is based in millennia of tribal hatred and near-constant battles. Even if there was an ultimate solution, it is questionable whether the American public would get behind it if it required any significant compromise on the part if the Israelis.

In a measured response to an imperfect world, significant progress would likely be possible if other nations’ leaders - including the US - could adopt the same wisdom embraced by good parents, and refrain from getting involved in their children’s skirmishes. Such involvement inevitably causes the skirmish to escalate, which is exactly what has happened for many years in the Middle East. Were an agreement to be brokered between Israel’s allies and Palestine’s allies, a common commitment not to provide materiel, financial, or intelligence support to either nation for use in its defense or other military exercises, it is quite possible that both sides would be forced to come to some level of accord, with each recognising that they are incapable of sustaining military exercises without the backing of wealthy and powerful allies.

This is but another situation in which 'if' is a powerful word, since neither country nor their allies are willing to turn aside from a long-laid path, especially when there are significant resources in the region that have been and continue to be exploited by all parties.

A modest proposal
With these obstacles firmly in mind, there is something that the United States can do to at least diminish the intensity of the conflict, and reduce the number of casualties that both sides suffer. Perhaps the most important effort to get the ball rolling is already occurring in the United States. First of all, Americans are growing increasingly outraged by recent reports of Israel’s disproportionate responses to Hamas aggression, such as the Israeli bombing of a school and even a US mission location, both of which resulted in significant civilian casualties. Add to that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent public statement in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, where he stated, "They [Hamas] use telegenically dead Palestinians for their cause. They want the more dead the better." The derisive allusion to the Palestinian people as being "telegenically dead" has offended all but the most racist of Americans.

One result of such atrocities and public relations gaffes is to instill a degree of compassion for the Palestinians, causing more people to empathise with their plight as dwellers of what is actually an occupied compound that routinely comes under attack. That compassion eventually begins to soften Americans’ perception of the Palestinians as being terrorists, and the resulting pressure to reduce or end support for Israel is growing, slowly, but measurably.

Despite the apparently changing trend in public opinion in the US, the Americans’ efforts to help broker a real end to hostilities must still be handled carefully, lest that trend be reversed. For that reason, the efforts should likely be largely unheralded in the press. Ideally, the US, along with its allies and those who are supportive of the Palestinians, would consent to a gentlemen’s agreement to present both Israel and the Palestinian government with an ultimatum. First of all, Palestine must disavow the actions of the terrorist group Hamas, and cease any alignment with Hamas in their official actions. Israel, on the other hand, must allow Palestine its sovereignty, and end its role as occupier in Palestine.

The carrot in these demands is an offer of significant relief aid, as well as the offer of an international peacekeeping force to ensure adherence to the stipulations of the offer. The stick would be the termination of any form of materiel support previously given to both sides, essentially acting as the parent who refuses involvement in a child’s argument. The bigger stick would be the termination of any aid to either country, neither of which could function effectively without external financial support. The ultimate incentive would be the threat to impose martial law, enforced by a multinational force that would in practice become occupiers of both countries.

The challenges
Perhaps the most difficult part of this program would be the need to implement it with as little public knowledge as possible, particularly in the countries who would attempt to broker the deal. Too much transparency would result in a hardening of public opinion in all the brokers’ home countries. In the US in particular, such a plan would either have to be approved by a Congress that has proved to be unwilling to sign on to anything the current administration proposes, or handled via executive action, which would face public pronouncements of outrage, as well as legal challenges, from the Republicans.

With the US midterm elections coming up in a few months, and a presidential election scheduled to take place in 2016, virtually any effort to broker a lasting peace between the two countries would find itself rapidly reduced to a political sparring match, which would cripple the effectiveness of any effort. And in a country that has been arguing for several years about the excess use of executive power, and has grown weary after a decade spent in multiple wars, even a whisper about such a venture would turn immediately into a contentious roar.

Due to all the factors noted above, it might be suggested that the best thing that the US can do to end the Gaza crisis would be to offer up a collective prayer for its final resolution. And in fact, if the US is to successfully implement any plan to end the hostilities, the plan’s success might well hinge upon the country’s ability to convince its citizens that prayer is all the country is offering.

Daphne Holmes is a writer from ArrestRecords.com and you can contact her by email.

How Israel accounts for civilian deaths

This letter from the Western Mail was tweeted by Nick Clark.

Nick Clegg: Israel must open talks with Hamas

In an article in tomorrow's Guardian, Nick Clegg writes:

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu must now put Israel’s long-term, strategic self-interest ahead of short-term, tactical military gains. It is time for the Israeli government to talk to the Hamas political leadership in Gaza. Israel’s refusal to engage with President Mahmoud Abbas’s new unity government, because it includes Hamas, must be reversed. 

In 2008, the former Israeli intelligence chief Efraim Halevy called for engagement with Hamas, recognising that, in spite of heavy losses, it would not be cowed into submission. Three military operations later, the case for direct talks is all the more pressing. As Israel’s military might is brutally confirmed, the need for a new political approach is urgent. 

Hamas is vulnerable and broke. Until forming the unity government with Fatah a few months ago, it could not pay the salaries of doctors and teachers, and faced growing discontent from ordinary Gazans. Hamas is isolated in the Arab world, and Israel cannot destroy militant Palestinian opposition – that much we have seen – but it does now have an opportunity to drive a wedge between Hamas’s political and military wings. An unexpected act of political magnanimity, rather than sporadic military reprisal, would also garner Israel international support.

As a Guardian news report points out, Nick's remarks represent a widening split with David Cameron, who has limited his response to calling for an immediate ceasefire.

But voices on the Conservative back benches are beginning to call for talks too, and the Financial Times reports that British public opinion is shifting away for support for Israel.

It quotes an unnamed minister as saying:

"Many of us have had pro-Palestinian demonstrations in our constituencies over the past few weeks. We should not ignore public opinion."

It seems the Harborough Mail is now an authority on the Middle East

Haaretz bills itself as "the world's leading English-language website for real-time news and analysis of Israel and the Middle East".

Today, as a reader has kindly pointed out to me on Twitter, it quoted David Cameron as calling for an "unconditional, immediate humanitarian cease-fire" in Gaza, and warning that future prospects of a two-state solution were quickly dwindling.

Its source for this important intervention?

"A British daily called the Harborough Mail."

I know what happened: the Harborough Mail has recently taken to running agency copy on national and international news stories on its website, and one of those must have popped up in one of Haaretz's searches.

Still, it doesn't give you enormous confidence in that Haaretz's understanding of British sources. The Harborough Mail, of course, is not a daily but a very local weekly.

Coming soon: The Ludlow & Tenbury Wells Advertiser on how to deal with ISIS in Syria.