Sir Keir Starmer’s proposal to recognise a state of Palestine is welcome, but it feels too much like a well-constructed alibi to distance the UK Government from Israel’s starvation and mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza.
A strong stench of self-serving make-believe pervades Starmer’s policy demarche, the goal of which is “to pave the way for negotiations on a two-state solution”. But it is grotesque to speak of any such a “solution” when Israel has already turned Gaza into mounds of shattered rubble and members of the Israeli government have openly declared that it wishes to drive surviving Palestinians into a smaller and smaller area on the border with Egypt, described by former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert as “a concentration camp.”
A problem is that UK governments under Labour and Tories have so long been mute or mealy-mouthed about the horrors of Gaza – the greatest war crime of our century – that anything Starmer says now lacks punching power. And even if he uses tougher words, his Government’s current actions continue past complicity in and support for Israel’s destruction of Gaza. On a daily basis, this support is underscored by the arrest and handcuffing of peaceful protesters for holding up placards critical of Israel and supportive of Palestine Action.
A mistake often made is to see what happens in Gaza in terms of realpolitik – what influence can the UK really have? But it is also a moral issue in which those who ignore such cruel and savage actions by Israel are not just on the wrong side of history, but are on the wrong side of good and evil.
The Government gives a sense of lagging behind public opinion and seeking to placate it by acting as if the massacre in Gaza does not date back almost two years. On Monday, two Israel-based human rights organisations, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights, had no doubts in declaring that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and that Israel’s Western allies have a legal and moral duty to stop it.
“What we see is a clear, intentional attack on civilians in order to destroy a group,” said Yuli Novak, the director of B’Tselem. “I think every human being has to ask himself: what do you do in the face of genocide?”
Late in the day, the UK government is at last asking such questions, at least rhetorically, but Gaza has exposed a deeper failing in the British establishment – and Starmer is very much an establishment politician – and also in British society as a whole.
It is pervaded by a self-fulfilling sense of inadequacy and impotence that hobbles political action from right to left. Many people throw up their hands in anguish at what is happening in Gaza, but also a belief that Britain is too small, too broke and too dependent on the US to have any effective voice or impact in Gaza.
But this is not really the case. The Israeli government would like the rest of the world to believe that it is influenced solely by the US – and maybe not even then. But actually, Israel is highly sensitive and reacts strongly to criticism from anywhere in the world.
Proof of this is that the Israeli government arguably has paid greater attention to strong criticism by Ireland over Gaza than it does to anything said or done by Britain. It has not only withdrawn its ambassador from Dublin in high dudgeon, but has retaliated angrily to criticism from Irish political leaders.
President Michael D Higgins recently said: “If you criticise Netanyahu’s policies you are then described as being antisemitic. That is a disgrace and a slander and it has been a slander against Ireland, against individuals, including myself, people who for example who have worked all their lives in relation to human rights activity.”
square IAN DUNT Starmer is finally recognising Palestine - but it isn't enough
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He remarked on an active propaganda campaign against Ireland in the US.
“When we are seeking to have meetings with people who are investing in Ireland, they’re being contacted in advance with a suggestion saying, ‘You must open by asking why is Ireland so against the US position on Israel’?”
This sort of intimidation is an inevitable consequence of putting pressure on Israel, which has always had the default position of striking back furiously at any critic.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded with a tirade of abuse to Starmer’s conditional statement on the recognition of Palestine statehood. “A jihadist state on Israel’s border today will threaten Britain tomorrow,” he said. “Appeasement towards jihadist terrorists always fails. It will fail you too.”
Of course, it is absurd to pretend that a starving people in the ruins of Gaza pose a threat to Israel, but it is this sort of tainted argument that Starmer accepted as valid until recently. Side by side with Starmer, other European leaders have offered humiliating homage, larded with great dollops of flattery, to President Donald Trump, seeking to get him to put enough pressure on Netanyahu to force a cessation of the slaughter. So far this punch-pulling shows no sign of working and maybe it is not really meant to.
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