THE WAY THINGS ARE

In an old Irish song, a wealthy America asks an Irishman, ‘How can I buy Killarney?’ an Irish beauty spot. The answer, ‘How can you buy all the stars in the sky?’ Our beloved homeland whose freedom many fought and died for was not for sale.

How things change. There have always been private buyers moving abroad to settle as citizens. But the norm shifts when swathes of strategically situated private land become attractive to outside influences for purposes unrelated to residence.

Ireland sprouted data centres as American high-tech companies settled in. They brought wealth at a cost to the environment. Cyprus is also selling land. I grew up in a divided island, another adopted me. Unity for both hangs in the political atmosphere like a humongous, procrastinating question mark.

Cyprus’ situation is more dangerous, more urgent. In Ireland people found a way to cooperate. Cyprus balances on a divided fence with one leg raised, will I, won’t I jump? Prevarication for Cyprus merely embeds a bigger threat to a future in which Donald Trump has unsettled political and economic ground rules while boasting of deserving the Nobel Peace Prize.

He likes President Erdogan’s status in the tough guy club, as Cyprus swings towards Erdogan’s enemy Israel, while offering token aid to Palestine where once we offered kinship as victims of occupation. Another Irish saying, chase with the hounds, run with the fox.

In the Sunday Mail on October 18, Patroclos wrote of Diko deputy Chrysis Pantelides saying it was unfair to compare the Palestinian issue with the Cyprus problem, because there had never been a Palestinian state. Israel was created on Palestinian lands. People were evicted. It was resettled. Place names changed. They wanted their land back. Sound familiar?

Today’s settlers are not traumatised Holocaust survivors, but ruthless thieves. But if one’s interests align with a powerful political force while Palestine has nothing to offer but cries for help and justice, one can interpret history and illegality as one sees fit.

Pantelides used the word ‘unfair’. Yet our politicians travel the world telling people how unfair it is that Turkey occupies Cyprus. Lior Raz and his team of excellent actors bring the Fauda series to Netflix. He has always given a certain space to Israel’s actions against Palestinians. The recent series centred on the October 2023 massacre and most of the Palestinians were portrayed as savages.

Not being an antisemite, despite knowing the history of the Israeli state, I respected their grit, surviving in a hostile area to become a major power of self-protection – with help from friends in high places, and a decades-long que sera, que sera attitude to its bullying actions from Europe and the US.

That too has changed for me. During the first Intifada, I interviewed Eliza Savvidou of KYPEA, (Cyprus-Palestine Association). She and others visited the Occupied Territories. She tackled one question that often arises, why bring children to demonstrations. There is no guarantee of safety in their homes she was told. The women of Palestine do not raise their children under normal circumstances, she said.

The trauma Palestinian youth will carry forever is no less harsh than that of Holocaust survivors. What if Sabra and Shatila happened that grim October, 2000 people dead with Israel’s assistance? Tel al-Zaatar, 2000 dead, again with Israeli help to proxies, Deir Yassin 254, Khan Younis summary executions 275 and then Gaza. If Palestinians had had the power to take revenge as ferociously as Israel, would the West have reacted as they did to the Hamas atrocity? Or would Palestinians taking Israeli-style revenge still be labelled ‘terrorists’. Thousands of innocent deaths are unfair, Mr. Pantelides especially those of children.