Edina, sister-up with Gaza!

It’s not every day you get the opportunity to ask a direct question of your country’s leader. I was lucky enough to get just that at an event in this year’s Edinburgh Book Festival. Following a chat between Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, and Indian writer, Arundhati Roy, the former opened up the discussion, inviting questions from the audience. My arm shot skywards, ready, primed to ask, “Given that Arthur Balfour hailed from East Lothian, near here, do you agree that the idea to twin Edinburgh with Gaza is a blessed initiative?” Who? What? A daft, silly question and waste of an opportunity you might think. But is it?

Imagine someone came to your door and said that since their ancestors lived here 2,000 years ago, the house really belonged to them. One can guess the standard response were it a Scots door. But the following day they come back with the police who say, yes, the law says they have a right to half your home. Imagine further that they invite all their family and friends from all over the world to come and live in your home and now, over 70 years later they occupy upwards of 80% of the house. Would you call that a catastrophe? A Palestinian would, but he or she would give it in Arabic; Nakba.

But who has the time and energy to worry about Palestine? We’ve Brexit, possible extinction and Scotland’s latest fiasco attempt to qualify for a major football tournament on our collective plate. What’s more, Palestine is a dense topic. It’s one of those unfathomable, never-ending problems akin to solving a rubik’s cube when severely colour-blind. Even those who support Palestinian rights can’t agree; one-state, two-state, blah blah. Fair enough. I can remember two teachers in a modern studies class at high school staging a debate, one as an Arab, the other an Israeli, that descended into a theatrical shouting match that ended with big Mr Hamilton banging his palm on the desk and storming out of the room. Highly entertaining, but what did we learn?

Presumably, the lesson was that this dispute has no solution agreeable to both sides and that unfortunately such troubles do exist in the world – oh dear. In fact, that about sums up what we still learn about that part of the world as adults. Twinning with Gaza is not a solution but a very modest proposal for the people of Edinburgh, or any city for that matter, to concretely and positively affect the lives of people long in dire need of our help; the people of Gaza.

Today, what remains of Palestine is either under military occupation or as former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron characterised Gaza, ‘an open-air prison’. Two million people are crammed into a prison in one of the most densely populated regions of the Earth. Not an ideal context in which to raise children, but this particular prison is packed with one of the youngest populations on the planet; most Gazans are kids, 51 per cent of whom are under 18 years of age.

According to the World Bank, it has an economy that is 90 per cent dependent on government expenditure, UN and other external donations. Barely an economy at all. UN reports state that 95 per cent of the water there is not fit to drink and Gazan health professionals are on the verge of declaring an epidemic with the resultant rise in water borne disease. Access to electricity is confined to just a few hours daily and some of these endless reports now debate over the point in the near future at which Gaza will actually become unliveable. Perhaps it would be better if, as Nobel Peace Prize laureate Yitzhak Rabin put it, Gaza would just sink into the sea.

70 per cent of Gazans are also refugees or their offspring. Refugees, as we know, are people who flee war and terror. Yet the people of Gaza have endured a series of ‘operations’, a handy euphemism for massacres, including that of children. From these, there is nowhere to flee – unless of course, it is into the sea.

I remember while living in Italy some years ago, I met a saintly character called Peppe Pio. It was from Peppe I first learned of the Balfour Declaration, a public announcement issued by the British government declaring British support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine in 1917, then part of the Ottoman Empire. It effectively promised the support of the most powerful state on the globe at that time for a Jewish state on land where 90% of its then population were non-Jews. On land, incidentally, that the British had previously promised to the native Arabs for their own independent state in return for their (Arab) assistance in fighting the Turks. It sounds incredible now that Britain could parcel out parts of the globe to whomever it chose, but that is how the world was. Anyone serious about trying to understand the reality in Palestine today must know something of that history. If they take the trouble, they’ll soon discover the centrality of this document in everything which was to follow. And it was pioneered and bears the name of one Arthur Balfour – a Lothians man.

To be clear, we are not speaking here of some coal-miner from Tranent. Balfour was very much part of the British establishment of the time, he was a Tory, a Foreign Minister under Lloyd-George and Prime Minister of the country. Like many of his class, he was also an evangelical Christian who believed that a return to Palestine by the Jews would herald the second coming of Christ and their conversion to Christianity, or their burning in hell. It was a way these ‘barbecuing Christians’, as Israeli Historian Ilan Pappé calls them, could get rid of the Jews from Britain or Europe and get the only Jew they wanted; Jesus Christ. The fact that Zionism was originally a Christian ideology surprised me, as did the demonstrable anti-Semitism of its adherents. Nonetheless, it was later picked up by a small minority of Jews and, especially after WWII, attracted many Jews of widely disparate values. It has a history of its own which I won’t burden you with here, but it grew and evolved into the settler-colonial state ideology we know today. But it began with Balfour.

Peppe and I spoke a lot on these matters and he was unequivocal in his condemnation of Britain’s role in Palestine’s plight, ‘every capital city in the UK should at least sister-up with Gaza’, as he put it.

On returning home to Auld Reekie earlier this year, I was both amazed and delighted to discover that such a campaign to twin Edinburgh with Gaza did in fact exist, that a small group of activists were trying to realise Peppe’s idea by collecting signatures on a petition to say sorry for Balfour and to sister-up with Gaza. Should I have been surprised? Many think of Edinburgh as a very snobbish city, a bastion of conservatism, but like all cities, there is more than one Edinburgh. Burns wrote:

Thy sons, Edina! social, kind,
With open arms the stranger hail;
Their views enlarged, their liberal mind,
Above the narrow, rural vale;
Attentive still to Sorrow’s wail,

Whether or not the city Rabbie described ever really existed, if you wanted to prove it accurate now by choosing to twin with another municipality, where in the world should the city choose? Whose cries of distress should it acknowledge? Looking around the planet today, there’s no lack of candidates which, campaigners tell me, is a stock response from some among the city’s elected officials, ‘we can’t twin with them all’. One even opined, ‘why don’t we twin with Tel Aviv’? This from a Labour Party councillor. Where in the world today will you find people enduring what anthropologist Patrick Wolfe has called, ‘the logic of elimination’ if not Gaza?

For me, Ilan Pappe got it right when he described the Edinburgh-Gaza twinning campaign as a ‘Blessed Initiative’. The choice of the word ‘blessed’ is an interesting one. It can mean that something is holy or hallowed; what is more holy than helping those ignored and forgotten who suffer, Frantz Fanon’s, ‘The Wretched of the Earth?’ As someone who writes beautifully and clearly on what she calls, ‘the physics of power’, Arundhati Roy knows well-enough whose boot is on whose neck in her understanding of the historical and current relations of power in the region. And she certainly knows of the name Arthur Balfour. In truth, I can think of no-one I’d rather be sitting next to the FM when I asked my question.

‘Blessed’ can also be used to refer to something welcome or longed-for. In these divisive times, what could be more welcome than a proposal that brings people together, one-stater, two-stater; independista, unionist or Brexiteer and Remainer? It also means that something is approved or endorsed. The current mayor of Gaza supports it. Given that Glasgow is currently twinned with Bethlehem and Dundee with Nablus, in the occupied West Bank, why not our capital? And why not with Gaza?

Twinning, or sister cities, developed as a phenomenon following WWII to foster friendship and understanding among different cultures and between former foes. Could the twinning of Edinburgh with Gaza, though to an extent symbolic, not at least recognise and take some responsibility for the role played by a son of the former in the plight of the latter? Responsibility, as Canadian physician Dr. Gabor Maté defines it, is not about blame or that you caused something but the ability to respond in the present moment to what’s happening.

This response could provide practical assistance to a people under a brutal and illegal siege. Help with sewage, clean water and general infra-structure provision for instance. Young people in Gaza are turning to programming as a way to break their confinement; groups such as Gaza Sky Geeks offer a community with 50 per cent unemployment some economic option, for cyberspace is the only territory that Israel cannot sanction. And Edinburgh is a city that needs IT skills big-time, with most work presently going to India.

There are also concrete examples of what can be achieved from Glasgow and Dundee; for instance, the latter’s donation of refitted fire engines by the city’s fire brigade union. There are Gazan students studying in university in these cities now who would not be there were it not for the initiative of these councils. The prospects too for educating the people of Edinburgh on the current and historical situation in Palestine would improve, including both the British and Scottish Governments’ response to that reality.

A former First Minister once spoke of an independent Scotland being a beacon of progressiveness. Independent or not, this act might prove an example that went beyond mere words, one which could spark other cities to follow suit. Would it be fair to say that the more cities that twinned with Gaza around the world, the more likely it would make those planning any future ‘operations’ think again, possibly saving lives? And if not, might it not help ensure we are better informed of such actions if and when they do occur? Any reasonable person would have to say, yes. That alone might seem reason enough. In which case, someone has to be first, so why not Scotia’s darling seat?

In 2014, after much debate and discussion, Scotland was asked whether or not it wanted to be an independent country. A big part of the conversation then involved what kind of country it hoped to be. What values did it aspire to both domestically and internationally? It seems likely this national chat is to be rekindled. But, whatever her direction of travel, in the UK or not, in the EU or not, who could reasonably deny that her capital twinning with Gaza offers one clear answer to that question? And an answer that shouldn’t be controversial, no boycott is proposed, no divestment nor sanctions requested. Did the First Minister think it a good idea?

Sadly, I didn’t get to ask the question as Nicola didn’t pick me to ask one. Those assembled didn’t get to hear her or Arundhati’s response and no discussion was generated. In February 2020 however, Edinburgh city councillors will meet to discuss it. And with enough support, might declare to the world that Edina can indeed still hear and display solidarity with the people most egregiously impacted by this ‘greatest mistake in imperial British history’.

If you agree, please sign the petition here.

Note: it is a Council petition, so only open to Edinburgh citizens.

Comments (5)

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  1. Charles L. Gallagher says:

    As I see it the only thing Joe got right was about the duplicity of UK, Wastemonster Governments.

  2. Daniel Raphael says:

    Very nice idea. Blessed Be.

  3. Ray Burnett says:

    You make a good case, Joe. Sadly I live outside my native city so can’t sign but can circulate and wish you well.
    No time to go into it just now but the Scottish input to Christian Zionism goes much deeper than Balfour. Sadly.
    Twinning would be a fine statement of the values on which our new Scotland should be built.

  4. James Mills says:

    From little acorns… Many will remember the furore which greeted Glasgow’s decision to celebrate the ”terrorist” Nelson Mandela by renaming a city street after him . Only years later was he accorded the praise for his attempts to reconcile the country that had so mistreated him and his people .

    Perhaps such actions as ”twinning” prominent cities , like Edinburgh, with Gaza may have a transforming effect on the closed minds that see only one people in this region , and equate mention of Gaza with terrorism and violence , forgetting the many injustices that have been meted out to the innocents in this area .

  5. SleepingDog says:

    I checked Wikipedia and the Palestine twinned city page suggests Gaza is/was twinned with Tel Aviv:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_twin_towns_and_sister_cities_in_the_State_of_Palestine#Gaza_City
    and the Israel twinned city page suggests not:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_twin_towns_and_sister_cities_in_Israel#Tel_Aviv
    Presumably the acknowledgement of such a twinning would also acknowledge a two-state solution.

    So I checked the Scottish page and there are two Scottish urban settlements twinned with English ones.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_twin_towns_and_sister_cities_in_Scotland

    So twinning (I thought twin meant two? anyway) is about dividing as well as uniting.

    What happens if one city/town wants to ‘unfriend’ another? Maybe that’s what happened to Gaza. All the more reason to find it a new friend, then. Good luck with your petition.
    https://www.haaretz.com/1.4989355

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