I wonder if you ever watched the film Miss Congeniality staring Sandra Bullock who plays an American police officer. There’s a scene in which she enters the Miss USA beauty pageant. Each contestant steps up to the microphone to answer the question, “What’s the most important thing our society needs?” They each smile and give the same cliched answer – “world peace“. All except Sandra Bullock who replies, “Harsher punishment for parole violators”. The crowd goes silent and Sandra Bullock realises they don’t share her enthusiasm for justice, so she adds, “And world peace” and the crowd goes wild. 

Although the scene makes light of ‘world peace’, Sandra Bullock is making a point, “If we all believe in ‘world peace’, if we all want ‘world peace’ why, oh why, is it so elusive? Because peace begins, for example, by holding parole violators accountable. Peace begins with acts of justice. 

That is why the prophet Jeremiah warned “‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.” (Jeremiah 6:14). What is the peace that does not bring peace?  

It is a peace which only calls for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza allowing a brief window for humanitarian aid convoys. It is a peace which drops food supplies by parachute while also supplying bombs to kill the same people. It is a peace that makes access to food and medical supplies conditional on the release of hostages. It is a peace that advocates the building of a floating harbour to allow ships to bring aid from Cyprus rather than demanding the borders be opened to allow 500 lorries a day minimum to enter Gaza. It is a peace that ignores the legal opinion that Israel is committing genocide and therefore selling arms to Israel is complicity in genocide. It is a peace that sees no evidence of  genocide and ethnic cleansing. It is a peace that designates those who resist apartheid as terrorist organisations. It is a peace that only applies international law and imposes sanctions against our enemies. It is a peace that supports a two-state solution but will not recognise Palestine. 

The world’s peace is peace without justice. Peace without justice is appeasement of injustice. Peace without justice is complicity with injustice. That is the peace our Western politicians advocate and it is obscene. The people of Gaza are facing mass starvation not because of a natural disaster, but because Israel is deliberately withholding access to food and water as a collective punishment. The people of Gaza are facing mass starvation not because of the war but because Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war. The people of Gaza are facing mass starvation because the Zionist regime wants to make life unbearable and make Gaza uninhabitable so that the people will accept being driven into the Egyptian desert. This is the reason Israel has purchased 40,000 tents. Israel wants to depopulate Gaza, annexe the territory, replace Gazans with Jewish settlers and then claim the $500 billion work of gas off the coast. The people of Gaza are facing mass starvation because the international community is content to pass UN resolutions but refuses to impose punitive sanctions on Israel. 

There are people living and breathing in Gaza tonight who will be dead by tomorrow, or on Wednesday or Thursday, and they will continue to die until we hold our government leaders and the leaders of Israel accountable before international law. The famine and the genocide is not inevitable. In a very real sense,  “Gaza is the moral compass” of the world order. If the international community cannot, or will not, hold Israel accountable for genocide, then there is no hope for peace anywhere else in the world. 

The people in Gaza are experiencing genocide and ethnic cleansing. War crimes are being committed on a daily basis. There is a very real threat of another Nakba, with Palestinians expelled into the Egyptian desert. What do Palestinians in Gaza want? They want to live. They want an end to the genocide. 

Do they want a return to the status quo? No! They want freedom. They want justice. They demand the same rights we enjoy – liberty, equality, the right to self-determination. They want an end to Western indifference and complicity. What do Palestinians want of us? I suggest they want 10 things of us:

1. Demand an immediate, permanent and unconditional ceasefire in Gaza and withdrawal of Israeli forces.
2. Demand that the UNWRA and humanitarian agencies be allowed unhindered access to provide sufficient supplies of food, water, medical aid, tents, clothing. 500 lorries a day.
3. Demand the immediate release of all hostages including eight thousand Palestinians held in Israeli detention since October 7th.
4. Demand Israel pays war reparations for every civilian death, every injury, every home, every university, every school, hospital, clinic, and every business destroyed. That has been estimated to be at least $20 billion.
5. Demand support for the South African submission to the International Court of Justice charging Israel with genocide. 
6. Institute war crimes investigations against Israeli military and political leaders.
7. Arrest returning British citizens who have joined the Israeli military and investigate their complicity in war crimes.
8. Ban export licenses for British companies supplying Israel with weapons or military equipment.
9. Institute punitive sanctions until Israel withdraws completely and unconditionally from all territory seized and colonised since 1967. Palestinians demand a sovereign, independent, contiguous, Palestinian state.
10. Boycott Israeli goods. Boycott Western companies profiting from the occupation of Palestine. It is your money and your choice. BDS is a non-violent way to bring the liberation of Palestine from settler colonial military-imposed apartheid. BDS worked in South Africa. It can work in Palestine.
    
    Archbishop Desmond Tutu said.

“The end of apartheid stands as one of the crowning accomplishments of the last century, but we would not have succeeded without the help of international pressure. If apartheid ended, so can the occupation, but the moral force and international pressure will have to be just as determined.” 

If our political leaders will not yet take the necessary steps to achieve a just and lasting peace in Palestine, then we, civil society, must be the moral compass our sisters and brothers in Palestine so desperately need and deserve today.