Our family has lots of old stories set in Palestine. My mum’s dad enjoyed long walks in the beautiful countryside – hikes Palestinians today couldn’t take – when he was posted there before the Second World War. My dad’s parents had their honeymoon there after meeting in Egypt during the war. Both sets of grandparents lost friends when Zionist terrorists blew up the King David Hotel in 1946.
The reason so many British families have similar residual memories is obvious: the crisis in Palestine was made, at least in part, in Britain.
As Nicola Perugini, a senior lecturer in international relations at Edinburgh University, put it to me: “Britain was the original sin.” Perugini previously led the human rights programme at Al Quds University in Jerusalem and lived in Palestine for several years studying the conflict.
