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maltatoday | SUNDAY • 27 MARCH 2022 OPINION 3 LETTERS & EDITORIAL maltatoday | SUNDAY • 31 DECEMBER 2023 Mikiel Galea Letters & Clarifications Europe's role in Gaza EUROPE had overwhelmingly support- ed Israel's right to defend itself after the attack by Ha-mas on 7 October where almost 1,200 Israeli citizens were killed and 240 kidnapped. But since then, the citizens of Europe took to the streets in protest against their governments' offi- cial position in the conflict. Many protesters demanding an im- mediate ceasefire in Gaza. In an inter- view on Al Jazeera, Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek economist and politician, mentioned how many in Europe have described what is happening in Israel and Gaza as 'brutal, inhuman and bar- baric'. However what Europeans had committed in the past is by far much worse. He added it was Europe-an culture that created the pogroms that killed Europe's Jews for centuries. Later, several European countries (not just Germany, but Nazis all over Europe) subjugated Jews to the Holocaust. Mandatory Palestine was a geopoliti- cal entity that existed between 1920 and 1948 in the region of Palestine under the terms of the League of Nations. In 1917 the British Balfour Declaration promised the establishment of a Jewish national home in Ottoman-controlled Palestine, advocating the dogma of a "land free of people for a people with- out a land". Thus, overlooking the fact that Palestine was already populated and by declaring it 'terra nullius' when it wasn't, the British turned away from the plight of the Palestinian indige-nous population. The forced evacuations of the Pales- tinians from their homes described by the Israeli histo-rian Ilan Pappe in his book 'The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine' is now common knowledge available to all. How much longer will Europe turn away from the suffering of the Pales- tini-an people before their collective guilt at the horror that was committed to European Jews in World War II is assuaged? Do we as EU citizens today want to see peace in these lands or further bloodshed? If there is to be solu- tion to the Israel/ Palestinian conflict, EU citizens should start by demanding from our heads of state that its citizens insist on a total cease-fire in Gaza; that we want civil and political rights for all peoples in Israel and in Palestine; that secular governments should be installed and there should be an end to any discrimina-tion on religious, ethnic grounds and that all peoples Jews, Mus- lims, Christians, Arabs, Pal-estinians, Druze, men, women, gays and transgen- der alike: all are equal before the law. Let us start with this, so Europe should be part of the solution. Let us demand a change to a legal system that has been the source of all the violence in Israel and Palestine. The Peace Pro- cess must be restored and see installed a two-state solution based on equal civil and political rights for all who live in these lands. The European demand is that there is not going to be any more violence. We won't tolerate any more bloodshed! But just focusing on Gaza will not guaran- tee lasting peace or that there won't be another escalation in the future. Should Israel and Hamas be held accounta-ble for their crimes? Of course, they should; however, an end to this protracted violence and guarantees of civil and political rights for all peoples living in Palestine and Israel has to happen. Let us ensure that the peace process is fol- lowed by equality for all in the eyes of the law. Madeleine Gera Valletta