Like all the best mistakes, it was done for the right reasons. Knowing that for once the US wouldn’t veto, the UN Security Council passed a resolution condemning settlement building in the occupied Palestinian Territories. The UK was no doubt keen to be with the consensus but we were wrong to back the Resolution. This time was different. Not because Israel has changed, nor the expansion of the settlements is exacerbating the efforts towards a settlement, but because the world has changed and so have we.
The Arab Spring showed that the Israel-Palestinian conflict doesn’t matter. This may sound harsh for a country generating more news than any people can reasonably be expected to cope with but the medieval mapmakers were wrong. The Holy Land isn’t the centre of the world. It isn’t even the centre of the region.
Damascenes and Cairenes know Israel isn’t the cause of the Middle East’s problems.
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