On Tuesday, I attended a talk by the noted Israeli-Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh, held in the flocked wallpaper glory of Westminster. What he said was interesting, relevant, and worthy of a larger audience than that which he attracted. He is not an impartial observer by any means – an Arab Muslim who lives in Jerusalem, and is West Bank correspondent for the Jerusalem Post – he is unashamedly pro-Palestinian. For him, though, being pro-Palestinian does not automatically mean vilification of Israel. As he put it, indelicately – if a man, woman or child in Gaza or the West Bank needs a heart transplant, the only country in the Middle East that will provide medical care is Israel. He excoriates the surrounding Arab countries for so completely abandoning their brothers in Palestine (Jordan is presently revoking citizenship for hundreds of Palestinian families who have been resident in Jordan since 1948 and before), and blames EU and American miscalculations in 2006 for the present situation.

If the US did not want Hamas in government, why did they encourage free and fair democratic elections in Gaza in 2006? Fatah went to Condoleezza Rice and said: “We are perceived as corrupt and spineless in Gaza. There’s a real possibility we might lose this”. The Americans ignored this, and when Hamas won by a clear majority, appeared to back-flip on its commitment to the democratic process – condemning the result and boycotting the new government of Gaza. The Palestinians in Gaza were all at once the victims of the most egregious hypocrisy – elect your own government, but if it’s not the one we want, we won’t be doing business with them. Meanwhile, Fatah groups in Gaza were coming under immense pressure from the new Hamas coalition, and fighting broke out on the streets of Gaza City between the rival factions. Hundreds of Fatah members fled Gaza, heading for the Egyptian border, which was promptly closed. Then they turned to Israel for rescue, and were allowed into southern Israel, only to be swiftly dumped in the West Bank.

Hamas swept to victory on an anti-Fatah, “time for change” platform – which Toameh thinks has now been largely dismissed in favour of hard-line Islamist policies and secretive international diplomacy (mainly with the Iranians and Syrians). The people suffer just the same, only now they are forced into Islamist contortions that many of them dislike and fear. There’s one good thing about Hamas though – they say pretty much the same thing in English as in Arabic. They stand for the destruction of Israel, entirely, and then, for a khalifa-style Arab kingdom, of the sort beloved by Muslim Brotherhood groups everywhere. Abu Toameh reminisces about a newspaper he picked up in Toronto, the headline of which proclaimed that Hamas was becoming more moderate, and about to recognise the state of Israel. Amazing! he thought – what have I missed at home? Upon his return, he headed straight to the house of a senior Hamas politician in Ramallah, and asked what had happened in his absence. The answer was nothing. The newspaper’s headline was the cause of much hilarity that week.

A two-state solution appears to have been implemented already –the Palestinians have two states: one in the West Bank and one in Gaza. Fatah is weak and divided, propped up by the desperate Americans and Europeans. Toameh is quite clear: Mahmoud Abbas calls for Israeli troops to be withdrawn from the West Bank on a daily basis; the moment this happens, he is likely to be dragged into Ramallah’s main square and hung. The bitterness of the Hamas/Fatah struggle is so acute, they appear to have forgotten about the Israelis – they now call each other pigs and dogs, and ignore the Jews. Unless significant pressure is put on both sides to compromise and come together there is no partner for peace for Israel, and more importantly, no chance of a true Palestinian homeland.

The last, and most depressing point: Toameh is constantly amazed by the level of anti-Israel vitriol he experiences in Britain and in Europe. He once telephoned British newspaper editors with a story about Fatah’s corruption and was asked, point blank, whether he was working for the ‘Jewish lobby’. What lobby? he exclaimed – and how much do they pay? Joking aside, he says he is saddened that being ‘pro-Palestinian’ in this country does not mean doing anything for the Palestinian people, it means hating Israel and settling comfortably into a morally righteous narrative that finds facts and reality confusing. When the situation on the ground is this complex, there can be no easy ‘right’ way to think about the conflict. He asked: what do boycotts do to help Palestinians? What do rallies do to help Palestinians? What do changing the lyrics to Christmas carols and passing anti-Israel motions at London universities do to help the Palestinians? Nothing. If you’re really interested in helping the Palestinian people, go to the West Bank and teach in schools, donate books about liberalism and freedom (if you’re a liberal and believe in freedom), donate money to organisations that encourage Arabs and Jews to sit down in the same room and realise their similarities and not their differences. And recognise that no Jew in Israel (who is not a lunatic) has no interest in re-occupying the West Bank or Gaza, and that no Jewish mother wants to send her son into street combat in Gaza.

The best we can hope for is a period of stability, coalition building on the Palestinian side, and improving the internal Palestinian economy. Netanyahu can freeze settlement building, or not, but it will make no difference to the quest for real peace in the region until the Palestinians resolve their rift and start a real campaign for statehood.

By Francesca Rose-Lewis.