Western Europe Great Britain National Affairs AN LOCAL ELECTIONS held in June 2004, Tony Blair's governing Labour Party came in third behind the Conservatives and the Liberal De- mocrats. The result was widely dismissed at the time as the product of a protest vote that would quickly evaporate, and this indeed proved to be the case. Nevertheless, the government, and Prime Minister Blair in par- ticular, had clearly forfeited credibility. The primary reason was the war in Iraq: no weapons of mass destruction had been found, and the gov- ernment had obviously relied on defective intelligence to justify its in- volvement. Furthermore, David Blunkett, the popular home secretary, had been forced to resign when his office was found to be involved in fast- tracking a visa for the Filipino nanny of Blunkett's lover. Blunkett brought more discredit on the government when a newly published bi- ography revealed his outspokenly negative views on the competence of his colleagues. Recurring reports of rivalry between Blair and Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown added to public distrust of the government. But none of this seriously shook its authority, either with the electorate or the government's own backbenchers. Even at the height of the Blun- kett affair, polls showed Labour at 40 percent, the Tories at 31 percent, and the Liberal Democrats at 21 percent, not significantly different from the pattern of polls taken throughout the year. The dissatisfaction of backbenchers with the Iraq war, increased university tuition fees, and the ban on fox-hunting was easily absorbed, and Labour was almost univer- sally expected to retain power at the forthcoming general election. This did not necessarily suggest enthusiasm for Labour, but rather ap- athy. In the last general election, in 2001, turnout was 59 percent, mean- ing that more people did not vote than voted for the winning party. The Conservatives failed to benefit from Labour's difficulties. The impetus im- 316 GREAT BRITAIN / 317 parted by Michael Howard's accession to the party leadership in No- vember 2003 (see AJYB 2004, p. 279) faded amidst confused Tory poli- cies, repeated reshuffling of personnel, and internal policy divisions, especially over relations with Europe. Moreover, Tory support for the war in Iraq abandoned the antiwar weapon to the Liberal Democrats, who benefited accordingly. In the elections to the European Parliament, also in June, the Tory vote of 27 percent was its worst result in a national elec- tion for more than a century. Israel and the Middle East Britain's bid for an active role in a resumed Middle East peace process seemed to be succeeding in December 2004, when plans were announced for an international conference in London in early 2005. Participating would be foreign ministers and senior officials from the Quartet (the UN, EU, U.S., and Russia) and other countries ready to donate funds to build a viable Palestinian state with a stable democracy and transparent fi- nances. Israel, by agreement with Prime Minister Blair, would not attend. The conference, Blair explained, would not substitute for the "road map," but be a bridge to return to it. British enthusiasm for peacemaking had been invigorated by two events in November, the U.S. presidential election and the death of Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. The need to revitalize the peace process was "the sin- gle most pressing challenge in our world today," said Blair, urging Pres- ident George W. Bush, beginning his second term, to launch a fresh Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative. And in her speech opening Parlia- ment, Queen Elizabeth promised, "My government will continue to sup- port efforts to build peace in the Middle East, to promote democratic reform, and reduce conflict and extremism." To this end, November saw Foreign Secretary Jack Straw on the West Bank assuring Palestinian leaders that the UK, as a key member of the EU and the UN Security Council, would help the Palestinians conduct their elections. The following month Blair was in Ramallah telling the new Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, that there could not be "successful negotiations or peace without an end to terrorism." Britain's positive attitude toward Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon's proposed unilateral pullout from Gaza was an integral element of her pol- icy. To be sure, Blair met criticism in March when he joined Bush in wel- coming the plan as a "potentially positive development." Some 50 former British diplomats signed an open letter to the prime minister, published 318 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 2005 in the newspapers, calling his endorsement "a backward step." But Blair noted, in June, that the planned disengagement could be the start of a process toward peace, and not just a "de facto final settlement." A new British initiative building on the withdrawal to jump-start Middle East peace moves, he revealed, had emerged at the G8 summit, where Britain took the lead in urging participants to address the need for peace in the region. The keys, Blair said, were security for Israel and proof, for the Palestinians, that Israeli disengagement could lead to a viable and de- mocratic state. In October, Downing Street welcomed the Knesset's vote of approval for Sharon's plan, and Foreign Secretary Straw declared that Britain was ready to work with the Palestinian Authority "to ensure that Israeli disengagement from Gaza is successful for the Palestinians." The UK was the Jewish state's "closest friend in the European Union," Israeli foreign minister Silvan Shalom told the Jewish Chronicle in Feb- ruary. "Britain will be a true and constant friend," agreed Chancellor Gordon Brown. Notwithstanding such professions of friendship, sec- tions of British public opinion remained opposed to aspects of Israeli pol- icy. In February, July, and again in December, a growing number of MPs (210 by December) signed parliamentary motions calling on Britain to urge Israel to halt construction of the West Bank security barrier. Israel's security measures were destroying the Palestinian economy and creating widespread poverty, according to the House of Commons Select Com- mittee on International Development, which published a report, Devel- opment Assistance and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, in February. The proposed fence, the report stated, would destroy "the viability of a future Palestinian state," and furthermore, "the despair and anger felt by ordinary Palestinians at being denied the semblance of ordinary life were likely to further increase the supply of militants and suicide bombers." Great Britain joined with the U.S., Israel, and other states in opposing the hearings before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the legality of the fence, but it did so on jurisdictional rather than substantive grounds, arguing that submission of the case to the ICJ politicized the international judicial tribunal. In fact, Britain supported a UN General Assembly nonbinding resolution calling on Israel to dismantle the bar- rier, a move that induced Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs to call in the British ambassador for an explanation, and the Board of Deputies of British Jews to write Foreign Secretary Straw in protest. "We have no objection to the construction of the barrier," responded Straw, "on con- dition it is built on internationally acknowledged borders or within Is- raeli territory." But to build it on occupied land, he said, was "unlawful." GREAT BRITAIN / 319 In March, Straw, in Brussels for EU talks on tackling terrorism, ac- knowledged Israel's right to self-defense, but called its assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yassin "unacceptable, unjustified, and very unlikely to achieve its aims." Britain abstained on the UN Security Council vote condemning the assassination (a position denounced at a pro-Palestinian rally in London), but Middle East minister Baroness Symons summoned Israeli ambassador Zvi Shtauber to the Foreign Office, arousing protest from Jewish communal organizations. In May, more than 70 MPs tabled a Commons motion condemning the destruction of Palestinian homes and the "wide-scale devastation" caused by the Israeli army's incursion into the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza, claiming it breached international law and could not be justified by Is- rael's claim of "urgent military need." After further Israeli incursions into Gaza in October, Straw voiced deep concern at "the level of violence and the number of deaths, including children .... While Israel has the right to defend itself against terrorism, it must act within international law." The same month, Straw criticized Israel's "disproportionate" response to the Qassam rocket attacks on Sderot in the Negev. Individual cases sustained the unease about Israeli policy. In January, Israel arrested one of its soldiers for shooting British photography stu- dent and peace activist Tim Hurndall in Gaza in April 2003; a Scotland Yard team had launched an inquiry into the incident after the Westmin- ster coroner requested the Metropolitan police to establish the facts about Hurndall's death in a London hospital. Hurndall's death had other reper- cussions as well: in June, Israeli officials investigated claims that Israeli troops fired at two British MPs and a peer visiting the site of Hurndall's shooting. In May, the widow of British filmmaker James Miller, killed by Israeli gunfire in May 2003, urged Straw to press Israel to prosecute those responsible (see AJYB 2004, pp. 158, 281). Nor did Britain's Jewish community unanimously approve Israeli pol- icy. A survey conducted in June by the United Jewish Israel Appeal (UJIA) among moderately identifying Jews revealed that fewer than a quarter of respondents supported Israel's current policies, though 78 percent "cared deeply about Israel." The same month, 340 British Jews signed an open letter calling on the Board of Deputies to represent the views of those critical of Israel's policies toward the Palestinians.