The state of the nation

Click here for previous columns by A N Wilson

The Chief Rabbi wrote such a courteous, and moderate, reply to my perhaps intemperate words last week, that it would be churlish not to say some words in return. In addition to Jonathan Sacks, hundreds of you have written, either to the paper, or to me personally.

I wrote: "Israel is by definition an aggressor since it is occupying land which was already someone else's homeland." Many of you, including Dr Sacks, thought that I meant by this sentence that the state of Israel should be abolished (by whom?) and replaced by the state of Palestine. No one is asking me for my views, but an independent Palestinian state, which has never existed, would surely run into as many problems as the independent state of Israel.

Doesn't the region need to rethink the very concepts of the nation state, sovereignty, ownership of land, etc, etc? Lenin's old question - Kto, kvo - who does what to whom? - is the crucial one. In the vanished days of the Ottoman Empire, and during the British Mandate, there was at least some recognisable outside authority that could at least notionally exercise fair play between the different cultural and religious groups. As soon as a Jewish state was decreed, the Christians and the Muslims, in countless small ways, as well as in the large matter of land-occupation, became aliens in their own village. That is the nub of the problem - and it is made a million times worse by Israel's refusal to abandon its claims to Jerusalem and the territories conquered since 1967.

The present generation of Arab terrorists grew up in the stinking refugee camps in Gaza and on the West Bank. It suited the enemies of Israel to let the problem fester and for years, they did nothing to help their poor fellow-Arabs. Everyone in the world recognises the unimaginable chaos, following the murder and persecution of European Jewry during the Third Reich. In the light of that refugee-crisis of unbearable pathos, the "state of Israel" was recognised, without weighing the future consequences. No one questionsthe goodwill of generations of Israeli politicians who have tried to persuade neighbouring Arab states to accept peace settlements. It is not the benignity or otherwise of Israel which is the problem, it is its very existence as constituted.

As the histories of Africa, Ireland and the Balkans all show, merely to draw some lines on a map and say, "There - a new nation!" is not enough to make a nation. Real people are more complicated than diplomats and politicians understand. The best solution I've heard is from the Palestinian flatmate of a young Jewish friend of mine in New York - that all the Palestinians convert to Judaism and thereby achieve the unalienable right of entry and residence in the Land.

In truth, though, there simply is no solution now. The world botched it in 1948. It does not help to label every stone thrown by a Palestinian schoolboy as unpardonable terrorism; and every tank-bombardment of Bethlehem by Israel, as the perfectly reasonable right to resist terror. What we need is an Arab Gandhi, but so far he or she has not emerged.

We read that, according to a survey published by something called Christian Research, by the year 2013, there will be more regular mosquegoers than regular Church of Englanders. I wonder if that's true. As the reclusive in Borrow shows, Anglicans are not necessarily people who go to church all the time, nor do they necessarily think much of religious matters. They would not show up on a survey. Equally, one can be sure that there are plenty of "Vicar of Wakefield" Muslims who practise charity, rail at no one and find the present bally-hoo as baffling as the rest of us.

It is no surprise that in Kenneth Branagh's new play about the woefully unfunny Northern wags, today's showoffs are queueing up to take part. Naomi Campbell, Victoria Beckham and Sean Connery are all said to be "hopefuls" to play stooge to the pseudo-M and W at Wyndham's Theatre. How long before Cherie Blair or Edwina Currie beg to be allowed to trip down the Angela Rippon memorial staircase?