Galloway, Britain & Israel

Virgil Haden-Pawlowski
Contributor
George Galloway – British politician and Member of Parliament from 1987 to 2010, founder and vice-president of the U.K. Stop the War Coalition and leader in the Viva Palestina aid convoys – has become something of an international icon, as well as a figure of controversy.
During his presentation at York University Nov. 16, Galloway spoke about the Canadian government’s attempts to keep him out of the country for political reasons, and advocated public mobilization and criticism against the illegal actions of Israel and its military in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
But Galloway’s speaking campaigns, critical of Israel’s actions against Palestinians, are bad for British-Israeli relations because of his ties to British government and his growing unpopularity among Israeli media. His hopes of influencing Israeli government policies by rallying international disapproval of Israel’s actions are idealistic and impractical. Galloway’s efforts would be much better spent on developing cooperative solutions within British-Israeli bi-lateral trade relations.
Galloway criticizes Israel for their use of white phosphorus in the 2008 siege on Gaza, the killing of nine humanitarian aid workers by the Israeli military on the aid convoy ship to Gaza in May of 2010, and for other controversial acts. While suspected war crimes are due investigation and public outcry, a British politician isn’t the one who should be rallying it, and public awareness and condemnation are not going to change Israel’s policies.
Galloway’s public criticisms of Israel during his speaking tours and his aid donations to Gaza (whose government organization, Hamas, is recognized by many countries as a terrorist organization) have made him incredibly unpopular among Israeli media. In fact, despite his expressed disapproval of Hamas, media sources have gone so far as to label him a supporter of terrorism and a pro-Hamas enthusiast.
With the media having a field day with Galloway’s reputation and growing Israeli contempt for him as a result, it’s not a stretch to assume some increased hesitancy from Israel in relations with Britain.
This, however, is only half the problem with Galloway’s campaigns. The second part of the problem is that Galloway’s speaking campaigns and attempts to influence public opinion internationally are not going to change Israel’s policies towards Palestine or its passive consideration to international law.
According to Jerusalem Post, the United Nations Human Rights Council has, in its four years of existence, passed 32 resolutions, 26 of which were against Israel for human rights abuses. The United Nations General Assembly, since 1958, has passed countless resolutions deploring the military actions of Israel or making requests of Israel to support UN peace initiatives that were ignored. There couldn’t be a clearer indication that international public opinion doesn’t carry much weight for Israel when a democratic body of representatives from 192 countries gets less attention than Breakfast Television.
If Galloway really wants to help bring peace to the Palestine-Israel conflict through international intervention, he should be looking for ways to build Britain’s relations with Israel and influence Israeli policy through bi-lateral trade relations outside of the UN. As of the year 2000, bi-lateral trade between Israel and Britain had grown to as much as £2.5 billion ($3.9 billion) annually, making Israel Britain’s largest single trade partner in the Middle East. That same year Israel and Britain jointly established the Britech Fund, which invests some £15 million ($24 million) annually for partnered research and develop- ment projects between the countries.
With so much trade and collaboration already happening between Britain and Israel there couldn’t be a greater opportunity to build cooperative peace plans into the trade agreements and development contracts between the countries.
Trade and economic opportunities are the new most viable venue to build the peace process on, but this doesn’t include the coercive boycott campaigns that have been gaining popularity lately. The amount of economic power consumer-export-products hold over Israel’s economy is meagre at best, and they aren’t going to make a significant dent in the country’s trade revenue.
Think, for example, of other consumer-led political movements such as fair trade, which since 1988, through consumer motivation, has only managed to gain control over less than two percent of the world’s coffee market.
With British-Israeli economic ties as close as they are, Britain has the unique opportunity to encourage the development of peace in Israel-Palestine alongside the development of British-Israeli trade and diplomacy.
But Britain hasn’t shown interest in taking a lead in the conflict negotiations and would probably rather leave it to the European Union and the Americans. So, as a British politician, instead of speaking at university campuses across Canada on established UN condemnations and human rights abuses by Israel, Gallo- way could better spend his time generating real solutions and incentives for his government to bring peace through British-Israeli economic cooperation.