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Western Europe Western Europe Great Britain National Affairs THE POPULARITY OF THE Conservative government continued to decline in 1994 and early 1995—despite signs of further economic recovery—that of the opposition Labor Party and to some extent also that of the Liberal Democrats continued to rise. Tory unpopularity was shown in massive losses in local elections in May 1994 and May 1995 and in the elections for the European Parliament in June 1994. Evidence from polls suggested that since the summer of 1994, not only were Conservatives abstaining but also they were switching their support to Labor. The government's one major success, following secret negotiations, undeniably lay in the decision of the Irish Republican Army in August to declare an "unconditional" ceasefire. Manifest disunity in the government and in the Conservative Party—most obvi- ous in the case of policy toward the European Union—as well as recurrent scandals involving sex and money and professional lobbyists, cumulatively created an atmo- sphere of sleaze that discredited the integrity of people in public life. Standards of care in the National Health Service and educational resources were also perceived to be deteriorating. The national budget, presented in November 1994, pledged cuts of £28 billion in public spending and was widely held to be associated with the decline in public services. The counterpart to Tory decline was the rise of Labor. The latter party did indeed suffer a grievous blow with the sudden death of its popular leader, John Smith, in May 1994. After a period of maneuvering, Tony Blair was elected leader in July and immediately undertook a campaign to modernize the party and to forge a new relationship with the trade unions. Meanwhile, Paddy Ashdown, leader of the Liberal Democrats, was attempting to move his party closer to Labor and discard its earlier policy of "equidistance" between the two major parties. This move, if adopted by the Liberal Democrats, would certainly increase the pressure on the Conservatives. 238 GREAT BRITAIN / 239 Israel and the Middle East "Our political relationship . has never been so warm, has never had so much content and common ground," commented Prime Minister John Major after meet- ing with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel in Jerusalem in March 1995. This closeness was already apparent in May 1994, when the British government lifted its 12-year embargo on sales of arms to Israel; in June, when Israel and Britain set up a joint science and technology research fund; in August, when Foreign Office minister Douglas Hogg stated Britain's readiness to allow Israel full participation in the European Union's high-tech research program; and in September, when Major, visiting Saudi Arabia, attempted to secure the end of the Arab trade embargo against Israel. October marked a high point: General Ehud Barak became the first Israeli chief of staff to visit Britain, and Malcolm Rifkind the first British defense secretary to visit Israel officially. (Rifkind, Tory MP for Edinburgh Pentlands and a strongly identifying Jew, was appointed to his post in 1992.) Major described Israel's peace agreement with Jordan as an "extraordinary achievement" during a warm and productive meeting with Prime Minister Rabin on a visit to London that was abruptly curtailed because of a suicide bomb attack in Tel Aviv; and Queen Eliza- beth's consort, Prince Philip, visited Jerusalem to receive the "Righteous Gentile" award presented posthumously to his mother, Princess Alice, who had hidden Greek Jews from the Nazis during World War II. In November, Major, the first British prime minister to address the Joint Israel Appeal's (JIA) main fund-raising event in London, endorsed the unprecedentedly close ties between Britain and Israel. Some points of contention remained, including the future of Jerusalem. A state- ment by Major in May 1994, emphasizing that Britain did not recognize Israeli sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem, was thought untimely but representing no shift in policy. The statement was issued when the Likud-backed Campaign for a United Jerusalem asked Major to send greetings to a Jerusalem Day dinner in London. In March 1995, Jerusalem's mayor, Ehud Olmert, attacked the decision to send a Foreign Office diplomat to the PLO's Jerusalem headquarters, Orient House, during Major's visit. Speaking at the opening of Anglo-Jewry's celebration of 3,000 years of Jerusalem, he criticized Major and other British officials for failing to grasp Israeli and Jewish anxieties about the city's future. Another point of dispute was Israeli settlement policy. In April 1994, Foreign Office minister Hogg announced that, in an effort to prevent extremists from scut- tling peace efforts, Britain was making regular representations to the Israelis to "cease the construction of settlements which we regard as illegal. .. and an obstacle to peace." The British government showed its support for Palestinian control over the autonomous areas of Gaza and Jericho in various ways. Following the massacre of Palestinians in Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs by a Jewish settler in February 1994, 240 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1996 Prime Minister Major wrote to PLO leader Yasir Arafat denouncing the act and promising to provide £34,000 in aid for those wounded in the attack. In May, when Britain warmly welcomed the Cairo signing of the Israel-PLO agreement to with- draw Israeli forces from Gaza and Jericho, the government announced the provision of £70 million in assistance in the year ahead. In July, after warnings from Foreign Office officials that delay in bringing law, order, and prosperity to Gaza and Jericho would play into the hands of extremists opposed to the peace process, the figure was raised to £75 million. In July it was reported that senior Palestinian police officers were receiving training at Bramshill, Britain's national police training college, while Whitehall-backed experts were advising Arafat's officials on setting up a civil service and independent judiciary and on the development of financial institutions. In January 1994, Britain agreed to export arms to the Lebanese government in order to strengthen its control over the country; in October, Hogg, returning from a visit to Damascus and Beirut, called on Lebanon to stop Iranian-backed funda- mentalist guerrillas from attacking Israel. Addressing an Institute of Jewish Affairs (IJA) meeting in London the same month, Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd called Iran the world's most dangerous exporter of terrorism. In March 1995, in an interview with the Jewish Chronicle, Major reaffirmed Britain's determination to confront extremist violence by groups supported by Iran and other countries. Brit- ain, he said, had not changed its position on Iraq, nor its "concern" about Iran, both of which were opposed to the peace process. The London-based Committee to Free Mordechai Vanunu, the imprisoned Israeli nuclear spy, pressed its cause at a Jerusalem meeting with Israeli president Ezer Weizman in December 1994 and published simultaneously an appeal signed by leading politicians, actors, and writers in newspapers in London, Tel Aviv, New York, and Cairo. Islamic Terrorism The threat from terrorist attempts to disrupt the Israeli-Palestinian peace process caused the Board of Deputies of British Jews to put the Jewish community on the alert, first in March 1994 after the Hebron massacre in Israel and again after the Jewish community building in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was bombed on July 18. However, nothing could prepare the community for the two horrifying car-bomb attacks that took place on July 26, one outside London's Israeli embassy, the other outside the offices of the Joint Israel Appeal (JIA). No fatalities resulted, but 19 people were injured, and the buildings were considerably damaged. A pledge that Britain would do its utmost to catch the perpetrators was given by Foreign Secretary Hurd to Israeli ambassador Moshe Raviv and by Home Secretary Michael Howard to community leaders. Immediately following the attacks, armed police, backed up by Scotland Yard's antiterrorist squad, mounted guard on key Jewish institutions. In August Scotland Yard officials meeting with Board of Deputies security officers considered that the GREAT BRITAIN / 241 community was still under "significant threat," and in September Home Secretary Howard agreed to maintain a nationwide antiterrorist guard on Jewish communal institutions. In November a communitywide security operation was launched after Assistant Commissioner David Veness, in charge of Metropolitan Police specialist operations at Scotland Yard, cautioned community leaders against becoming com- placent. British Jewry was facing a long-term threat from extremist terror gangs "motivated by a rejection of peaceful coexistence in the Middle East," Veness said. In January 1995, five Palestinians, born in either Lebanon or Jordan, were ar- rested and held under the Prevention of Terrorism Act in connection with the bombings. Between January and March, three of the five (Nadia Zekra, Samar Alami, and Jawed Mahmoud Botmeh) were charged at Bow Street magistrates court with conspiring with others to cause explosions. In April Botmeh and Zekra were committed to stand trial at the Old Bailey, and in May Zekra and Alami were freed on bail totaling £1 million. Anti-Semitism and Racism The number of anti-Semitic incidents reported in the United Kingdom increased to 346 in 1993 from 292 in 1992, according to figures released by the Board of Deputies of British Jews in June 1994. An annual report published the same month by the London-based Institute of Jewish Affairs (IJA) placed the rise in the preced- ing year at over 20 percent. Entitled Antisemitism World Report 1994, the 270-page document assessing anti-Semitism in more than 70 countries named the United Kingdom as one of ten countries where manifestations of anti-Semitism were in- creasing. Incidents had risen steadily over a five-year period, and "the climate has definitely deteriorated," it stated.
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