As someone who has spent a considerable amount of time working in and around recent war zones, I have often seen at first hand the consequences of destroyed infrastructure and displaced communities.
Much of my work took me to the Middle East, particularly to Lebanon and Jordan. I travelled to Lebanon shortly after the Israeli invasion began on 6 June 1982, arriving approximately two weeks later, around 20 June 1982. At that time, Lebanon was already deep in civil war, and Beirut was divided by what was commonly known as the Green Line, separating mainly Christian East Beirut from mainly Muslim West Beirut. The wider conflict also involved Palestinian organisations, Lebanese Christian militias including the Phalangists, Druze forces, Syrian forces, Israeli forces, and later a multinational peacekeeping presence.
Jordan also became a country I knew well, visiting it more than a dozen times. I spent time in offices, restaurants and coffee shops, and on one occasion was hosted with great generosity by Bedouin people near the Dead Sea. My professional work involved discussing pipes, water supply and wastewater systems needed to restore essential services after conflict. But the conversations were never only technical. I also listened to displaced Palestinians and their descendants, many of whom spoke of family farms, homes and communities lost during the upheavals surrounding the creation of Israel in 1948 and the wars that followed.
Our agent in Jordan was a Christian Palestinian. His family, like many others, had faced displacement and the difficult choice of where to rebuild their lives. They chose Amman because it kept them close to their original home, while other relatives and families resettled in Lebanon, Jordan, the Gulf, Europe or the United Kingdom.
It is worth pausing to consider what it means for any family to be told that the land, house and community built up over generations are no longer theirs. That experience lies at the heart of Palestinian grievance and identity.
The United Kingdom played a significant historical role in this story. On 2 November 1917, the Balfour Declaration stated that the British Government viewed “with favour” the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, while also saying that nothing should prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine. In practice, reconciling those two commitments proved impossible, and the consequences have shaped the region ever since.
After the Second World War and the Holocaust, international pressure grew for a secure homeland for Jewish people. On 29 November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 181, recommending the partition of Mandatory Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem under a special international regime. The plan was accepted by Jewish leaders and rejected by Arab leaders, and the following year saw war, the creation of the State of Israel, and the displacement of large numbers of Palestinians. UNRWA later began operations in 1950 in response to the needs of about 750,000 Palestine refugees.
This does not diminish the historic persecution of Jewish people, nor the horror of the Holocaust. But it does raise a moral and political question: whether a solution intended to protect one traumatised people was implemented without sufficient regard for another people already living on the land.
The present conflict has brought these issues back into sharp focus. On 21 November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant in relation to alleged crimes committed in Gaza. The ICC has alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the use of starvation as a method of warfare and attacks on civilians. Israel rejects the allegations and disputes the Court’s jurisdiction. These are serious legal allegations which must be tested in court, not treated as convictions in advance.
The warrants apply through the ICC system. The Rome Statute has many state parties, including the United Kingdom and many European, African and Latin American countries. The United States, Israel, Russia and China are not parties to the Rome Statute.
Comparisons with Nazi war criminals such as Adolf Eichmann and Reinhard Heydrich should be made with great care. Heydrich was one of the principal organisers of the Holocaust and chaired the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942, where the coordination of the so-called “Final Solution” was set out. He was attacked in Prague on 27 May 1942 in Operation Anthropoid by Czech and Slovak resistance operatives trained in Britain with the support of the Special Operations Executive, and died from his wounds on 4 June 1942.
Eichmann was captured in Argentina in 1960, tried in Jerusalem in 1961, convicted of crimes against the Jewish people and crimes against humanity, and executed in 1962. The Nuremberg International Military Tribunal indicted 24 leading Nazi officials in October 1945 and tried the surviving senior leadership of the Nazi regime for crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity and conspiracy. These cases remain a legal and moral benchmark, but each conflict must be judged on its own evidence and legal standards.
There is also a complicated question about resistance. In 1940, when Britain feared invasion by Nazi Germany, the British state prepared secret “stay-behind” Auxiliary Units: small resistance cells trained to sabotage and disrupt an occupying force if invasion came. Across occupied Europe, resistance movements used ambushes, sabotage and covert action against German occupation.
It is therefore understandable that Palestinians and their supporters describe some armed activity as resistance to occupation. However, international law draws a clear distinction between attacks on military targets and deliberate attacks on civilians. No cause, however strongly felt, justifies the murder, hostage-taking or targeting of civilians.
Palestinian political and armed movements have taken many forms. The Palestine Liberation Organization, founded in 1964, became the umbrella body for several factions. Yasser Arafat’s Fatah became dominant, while other groups included the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Palestine Liberation Front, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command.
One of the best-known early international incidents was the Dawson’s Field hijackings of September 1970, carried out by the PFLP. Several aircraft were hijacked and taken to an airstrip near Zarqa in Jordan; three aircraft were blown up on 12 September 1970 after passengers had been removed. The crisis contributed to the confrontation between the Jordanian state and Palestinian armed groups known as Black September.
Today, the United Kingdom should be careful to distinguish between Israel as a state, the policies of particular Israeli governments, Judaism as a religion, and Jewish people living around the world. Israel itself is a nation containing people of different faiths and backgrounds, including Jews, Christians, Muslims, Druze and others, with synagogues, churches and mosques forming part of its religious landscape. Equally, British Jews are not Israelis unless they are also citizens of Israel, and they should never be treated as responsible for the actions of the Israeli state or any Israeli government.
Criticism of Israeli government policy is legitimate, just as criticism of any government is legitimate. Hostility toward Jewish people, or attacks on Jewish communities in Britain, is not. It is essential to separate political criticism from religious or ethnic prejudice.
In my view, Britain should adopt a more even-handed position: supporting Israel’s right to security, supporting Palestinians’ right to self-determination, opposing attacks on civilians by all parties, and recognising Britain’s historic role in the origins of the conflict. That may also require a more honest public acknowledgement, and perhaps an apology, for the consequences of British policy during the Mandate period.
A lasting settlement will not come from treating Israelis, Palestinians, Jews, Christians or Muslims as single, uniform groups. Judaism is not the same as Israeli nationalism, British Jews are not representatives of Israel, and Palestinians are not collectively responsible for the actions of armed groups. The only sustainable future must protect the civil, religious, political and human rights of all communities in the region.
If I am honest with myself, I know how I would feel if my own family, and generations before me, had been forced from their home and land by war, political decision or military power. I would want justice, recognition and some form of redress. That does not mean I would regard verbal hatred, physical violence or attacks on civilians as acceptable. Many Palestinians seek justice without resorting to violence, just as many Israelis oppose policies carried out in their name. But in any conflict, those who use violence and those who do not may live side by side, sometimes in the same street, the same community, or even the same household.
That is why the bombing of civilian areas is so morally and legally fraught. Even where armed fighters may be present, the presence of a guilty minority cannot remove the rights of the innocent majority. Homes, hospitals, schools and places of worship are not abstractions on a military map. They are where families live, children sleep, and ordinary people try to survive. Any military action that kills or maims civilians must therefore be subject to the highest level of scrutiny, accountability and restraint.
Britain should stand consistently by the principle learned from the darkest chapters of twentieth-century history: civilians must never be treated as expendable. That principle should apply to all parties, including Israel, Palestinian armed groups, regional powers, and any state that supplies weapons, political cover or military support. Britain’s message should be clear and impartial: security cannot be built on the suffering of civilians, and no historic grievance, however deeply felt, can justify the deliberate or reckless taking of innocent life.