Interim Measures

How long can an interim last? The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon has been going since 1978. Deployed, of course, in the South, one of the biggest contributors to it has been, and remains, the Irish Army, which is stationed all the way down by the Border.

The Irish have suffered the most casualties in UNIFIL, with their 48 fatalities comprising more than half of all 88 fallen members of the Irish Defence Forces since 1960. Who bombs Southern Lebanon? Whoever it is, they will soon kill a great many more of the Irish, not least because any passer-by's handheld communication device might now have been booby-trapped by, oh, who is it?

While this has long been an element in forming Irish public opinion around these matters, it has had no impact in general in Britain, in the United States, or in Australia, nor any impact in particular within a Labour Party that was still quietly quite Irish (especially in Scotland, where it has just made significant gains), within a Democratic Party that was still organisationally very Irish, or within a Labor Party that was still very, very, very Irish, indeed.

Well, it has had no such impact so far. There is no reason why that should remain the case, and every reason why it should not. Not until 2001 was there a monument to the British Peacekeeping Force in Palestine, nor were its veterans permitted to march past the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday, because the creation of Israel was seen as a British defeat, and that by mere terrorists, unspeakable in having been so embarrassingly soon after the victory over the mighty Third Reich and Empire of Japan. The newer victors had attempted to assassinate Winston Churchill and Ernest Bevin, and they had sent letter bombs to the White House of Harry S. Truman. They were still murdering British citizens on 1 April this year, along with an Australian, and they most recently murdered an American on 6 September.

Having already brought down Suella Braverman, the entirely peaceful Gaza ceasefire marches led to the re-election of Jeremy Corbyn, to the election of four more Left Independents, to the defeat of Jonathan Ashworth and Thangam Debbonaire, to the halving of Keir Starmer's constituency vote, and to the near-defeat of Wes Streeting, Shabana Mahmood and Jess Phillips, leading in turn to the British Government's resumption of the funding of UNRWA, to its withdrawal of its objections to the International Criminal Court's arrest warrants, and to its hints at the restriction of arms sales to Israel and at the recognition of Palestine. There has not been such a successful movement from the streets of Britain since the Poll Tax and its Prime Minister were swept away.

That movement's focal point is Trafalgar Square, where the fourth plinth has been booked up to 2028. Thereafter, let it be a permanent memorial to the fallen of the Mandate and to all British, Irish, Commonwealth and American victims of those who overthrew it by inventing modern terrorism. Yes, the USS Liberty. Yes, the 40 or more American agents in the Soviet Union who were killed after Israel swapped the intelligence that Jonathan Pollard had sold it to fund his cocaine habit, for the often questionably Jewish Russians who were now such a hardline racist force in Israel. Yes, the victims of Menachem Begin's explicitly vengeful arming of Argentina during the Falklands War. Yes, James Henderson, John Chapman, James Kirby and Zomi Franckom. Yes, Rachel Corrie, Shireen Abu Akleh, the barely grown Furkan Doğan, the child Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, and Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi. And yes, by then, even more than 48 Irish stalwarts of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.