“Many criticise Israel’s policy of creating new facts on the ground with its settlement policy. This is curious, for the original and most consequential new fact on the ground was the creation of the State of Israel back in 1948, made possible by Britain facilitating the resettlement of Jews in historic Palestine and “consummated” with the unilateral declaration of independence backed by a military campaign when attacked by surrounding Arab regimes.
“Israel is a State imposed on the region by the western powers in the dying days of their colonial dominance, but now backed without qualification by the US, surrounded by many enemies unreconciled to its existence and sworn to its destruction. In an act of brazen effrontery with few parallels in human history, Palestinians were made to pay the price of Christendom’s guilt on the Jewish question and the West continues to act as the enforcer of this historically unjust redrawing of demographic equations in territorial jurisdictions.
“Burdened by Holocaust guilt, the West seems unable to draw any moral red lines that Israel may not cross. Instead, the setting of the West’s moral compass on the region’s conflicts is outsourced to Israel. The result is that conduct that many western governments would consider unacceptable for themselves or others is rationalised or not opposed when done by Israel.”
[Ramesh Thakur, former UN Assistant Secretary-General, in ‘Who Will Protect The Palestinians?’ published in Tehelka, 9 August 2014]