Dear The Orkney News,

The many Orkney residents who have over a period of 15 months participated in the vigils each Saturday on the Kirk Green calling for an end to the killing and injuring of thousands of civilian Palestinians in Gaza, many of them women and children, are delighted that a ceasefire was eventually agreed and that it is still holding, albeit somewhat precariously.

There is, however, a serious risk that the ceasefire will not proceed to the proposed second phase and that the Israeli military will resume the indiscriminate destruction of Gazans’ lives, homes, livelihoods and infrastructure. Should this happen, the weekly vigils will need to resume.

There is the further, massively important, matter of a permanent, long-term solution. With the declared, extremist policies of the Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, and of the US president Donald Trump, it is quite possible that Gaza will be ethnically cleansed of Palestinians and that the increasingly destructive activities of the Israeli military in the West Bank will accelerate further. Israel might well also annex the West Bank that it currently occupies and confine Palestinians to a number of separated areas within which they are granted a local autonomy. Whatever claims might then be made for such an arrangement, it would be a travesty  of a genuinely independent Palestinian state. 

Those of us who are deeply concerned about these possible outcomes will need to indicate these concerns to the UK government. Orkney Friends of Palestine, and the Orkney branch of Amnesty International, therefore, intend to hold vigils on the first Saturday of each month in support of a long-term solution that fully respects the rights of Palestinians, in Gaza, in the West Bank, and indeed in Israel itself. This would not only bring to an end decades of Israeli oppression and discrimination but would also best secure peace and security for Israel.

All who share in the above concerns are warmly invited to participate in these monthly vigils which are to commence on Saturday March 1^st, 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. on the Kirk Green.

Bryan Milner, , Secretary, Orkney Friends of Palestine