Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [316]
Before leaving Jordan I was taken out to see a Palestinian refugee camp. Denis used to say to me that these camps always tore his heart out. This was no exception. It was clean, well organized, orderly — and utterly hopeless. It was in effect run by the PLO who had, of course, a vested interest in making such camps a permanent recruiting ground for their revolutionary struggle. The most talented and educated Palestinians would not remain long there, preferring to join the Palestinian diaspora all over the Arab world. I talked to one old lady, half blind, lying in the shade of a tree outside her family’s hut. She was said to be about 100. But she had one thing above all on her mind, and spoke about it: the restoration of the Palestinians’ rights.
Israel
I had been to Israel several times before I became Prime Minister; and each time I visited what for the world’s three great religions is ‘the Holy Land’ it made an indelible impression. Anyone who has been to Jerusalem will understand why General Allenby, on taking the city from the Turks, dismounted to enter it on foot, as a mark of respect.
I have enormous admiration for the Jewish people, inside or outside Israel. There have always been Jewish members of my staff and indeed my Cabinet. In fact I just wanted a Cabinet of clever, energetic people — and frequently that turned out to be the same thing. My old constituency of Finchley has a large Jewish population. In the thirty-three years I represented it I never had a Jew come in poverty and desperation to one of my constituency surgeries. They had always been looked after by their own community.
I believe in what are often referred to as ‘Judaeo-Christian’ values: indeed my whole political philosophy is based on them. But I have always been wary of falling into the trap of equating in some way the Jewish and Christian faiths. I do not, as a Christian, believe that the Old Testament — the history of the Law — can be fully understood without the New Testament — the history of Mercy. But I often wished that Christian leaders would take a leaf out of the teaching of Britain’s wonderful former Chief Rabbi, Immanuel Jakobovits, and indeed that Christians themselves would take closer note of the Jewish emphasis on self-help and acceptance of personal responsibility. On top of all that, the political and economic construction of Israel against huge odds and bitter adversaries is one of the heroic sagas of our age. They really made ‘the desert bloom’. I only wished that Israeli emphasis on the human rights of the Russian refuseniks was matched by proper appreciation of the plight of landless and stateless Palestinians.
The Israelis knew when I arrived in their country in May 1986 that they were dealing with someone who harboured no lurking hostility towards them, who understood their anxieties, but who was not going to pursue an unqualified Zionist approach. Above all, I could be assured of respect for having stood up to terrorism at home and abroad. (It was only a matter of weeks since I had been one of the very few to support the American raid on Libya.) The Israelis were also aware of the tough line we were taking with the Syrians about the attempt of Nezar Hindawi, who had clear links to the Syrian Embassy and Government, to place a bomb on an El Al aircraft at Heathrow. So if anyone was in a good position to speak some home truths without too much fear of being misunderstood it was I.
I was looking forward to seeing Prime Minister Shimon Peres again. I knew him to be sincere, intelligent and reasonable. I had met him many times. It was a great pity that he would shortly, under the arrangement reached with the Likud Party in the national coalition, hand over the premiership to the hardline Yitzhak Shamir. Both Mr Peres and I wondered in the light of past history how people would react to seeing the Union Jack and the Star of David flying