Palestine Think Tank

Palestinian mission in London is failing Gazans in their “darkest hour”, campaigners say

The Palestinian representative to Britain should wake up, get his act together and robustly defend his people’s cause or else pack up and go home, British peace campaigners have warned Dr Manuel Hassassian in a scathing message.

British peace campaigners* have told the Palestinian general-delegate in London to be more proactive or go home.

“Whatever you do on behalf of the Palestinians, it needs to be done on the right topics, through the right media channels, in a timely way and at much greater amplification, please. Otherwise we have to question how your continued presence in the UK can possibly serve the best interests of your fellow countrymen,” U-Pal campaigners said in a scathing message to Dr Manuel Hassassian.

Dr Hassassian was appointed ambassador to the UK just prior to the 2006 Palestinian elections that saw the rise of Hamas to power. Since then Israel, with the connivance of the US, Britain and certain Palestinian factions, has tried to marginalize and destroy the people’s democratic choice. In the process Palestinians have had a quisling Fatah administration imposed on them and have been subjected to massive collective punishment, while Israel relentlessly tightens its illegal occupation, ramps up military action against the slightest resistance and mounts a genocidal blockade of Gaza.

Furthermore, the terrorizing of Christian and Muslim communities in the Holy Land continues with impunity while Western leaders look on.

U-Pal campaigners feel that Hassassian and his advisers are failing to speak up for their tormented countrymen in Gaza’s darkest hour. The Palestinian General-Delegation provides no effective challenge to the Israel lobby whose influence has become even more embedded in British politics and government.

A BBC interview last week on Radio 4’s PM programme with the Israeli government spokesman, Mark Regev, was “the last straw”. Regev was invited to comment on Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s observation, following his visit to Gaza, that “our silence and complicity, especially on the situation in Gaza, shames us all. It is almost like the behaviour of the military junta in Burma.”

Regev said:

Tutu is coming here at the behest of the human rights mechanism of the United Nations, which has rightly been criticized by two secretary-generals for being a very problematic institution.” He said Tutu’s visit was a “flawed” visit…” He has allowed himself to be manipulated by Hamas… Hamas is a junta that controls the Gaza Strip. Hamas is clearly calling the shots, they want to present a picture… [U]nfortunately he [Tutu], as the representative of the UN, has been manipulated to put out the message Hamas wants the world to hear.

 Regev also accused Hamas of “systematically destroying the civil society that existed there before. They are trying to create a Taliban sort of society… Iran-Taliban, that’s their model.”

The BBC failed to provide balancing input from the Palestinian General-Delegation to correct the false picture painted by Regev. Nevertheless, U-Pal says, Hassassian and his team should have immediately refuted Regev’s attempts to discredit the archbishop and demonize the Palestinians.

Campaigners are concerned that the official voice of the Palestinian people is rarely heard. They say it was an insult to the intelligence of BBC listeners and Tutu himself to suggest that the archbishop would allow himself to be “manipulated”, but Regev was allowed to get away with it as usual.

There is apparently no effort to set the news agenda and make sure the Palestinian case is clearly put on radio, TV and in the press. Their website is unhelpful to those wishing to understand and useless to those actively campaigning for freedom and justice. Most of us cannot remember the last time we saw or heard Hassassian.

Willie Madisha, head of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, wrote after a visit in 2006 that the dehumanization of black South Africans during the apartheid years was “a Sunday picnic” compared with what is happening to the Palestinian people.

On the performance of the Palestinian General-Delegation, Stuart Littlewood, who was in Gaza and the West Bank recently, says: “The Israeli propaganda machine pumps out vast amounts of disinformation knowing that the Palestinian spokesmen won’t hit back. It’s like a fixed football match. They won’t take a shot at an open goal.”

“Whom does the Palestinian General-Delegation in London actually represent?” asks surgeon David Halpin, who returned from Gaza last week. “The 1.5 million people in Gaza whom [Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud] Abbas encourages the Israelis to imprison and attack? The total population of 3.5 million in the remnants of Palestine ­ Gaza, the ‘West Bank’ and East Jerusalem? Or the 9 million in Palestine and in the diaspora? Whichever, the Delegation’s silence means complicity in the slow death of Palestine.”

Campaigners say they hear nothing from Hassassian’s Delegation on central issues such the right of Palestinian refugees, expelled by Zionist terrorists, to return home. UN Resolution 194, passed in 1948, has been readopted by the UN over two dozen times but no restitution has taken place.

Nor have campaigners heard any protest from the General-Delegation about Israel’s ceaseless programme of ethnic cleansing to dispossess Palestinians and expand the borders of the racist state across the Holy Land. The Israeli government has just announced the construction of 900 more new homes on Palestinian territory in East Jerusalem despite international criticism of its settlement expansion.

The General-Delegation even keeps quiet about Israel’s vicious siege of Gaza and the cruel starvation and other hardships inflicted on its civilians, leaving the job of speaking out to men of principle like Desmond Tutu and former US President Carter.

*U-Pal ­ Understanding Palestine. For more information, please contact

·       David Halpin ­ Tel +44 (0)1364 661115
·       Felicity Arbuthnot ­ Tel 44 (0)208 9850058
·       Stuart Littlewood ­ Tel 44 (0)1760 755349

This article also appeared on Redress http://www.redress.cc/palestine/upal20080607