theguardian:
The tipping point for Sayeeda Warsi came in the aftermath of one of the most notorious incidents of this year’s Gazan war: the killing of four Palestinian children by Israeli shells as they played football on the beach. Warsi hoped that David Cameron would condemn the attack as beyond the pale. Instead, she heard only the dry language of diplomacy.
Two months on, Warsi walks over to the lounge window of her home outside Wakefield and points at a set of goalposts in the back garden.“My kids go out there playing in their shorts, looking pretty much like those kids on the beach. It was too close to home; it made it very real.
“The lack of movement even in our [government’s] language …” Warsi’s voice trails off before she reconnects with the fury that made her resign after eight years in the shadow cabinet and on the frontbench, the first female Muslim cabinet minister. “I wasn’t naive enough to think we could resolve that matter but I did think we could be human enough to show compassion. Our inability to condemn that act in clear terms was a turning point.”
In her first major interview since stepping down, Lady Warsi, 43, the daughter of a businessman who emigrated from Pakistan as a mill worker – or in her words, “the girl from Dewsbury who ended up at the top table in the land” – says she has been relaxing since resigning in August as a Foreign Office minister, after criticising the government’s “morally indefensible” stance on Gaza.
It is soon evident, however, that much of her time has been spent grappling with one of the most intractable issues in geopolitics: the Middle East peace process.
Categories: Arab World, Europe and Australia, Israel, Middle East, Political, Politics, UK