Keir Starmer could do case for Palestinian state more harm than good
Fast forward then to this week and the extraordinary public appeal on Monday by the presidents of five leading Israeli universities to prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In a joint letter and citing a moral imperative 'shaped by the trauma of the Holocaust,' the signatories to the letter called on Netanyahu to 'do all we can to prevent cruel, indiscriminate harm to non-combatant men, women, and children' in Gaza.
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Maybe it's just me, but there seems to be something of a contradiction here. For on the one hand we have the Chief Rabbi decrying Starmer's decision to suspend some arms shipments to Israel, barely weeks before a Holocaust education event.
Then this week we have senior Israeli academics referencing the lessons of the Holocaust in an effort to urge Netanyahu to uphold Israel's ethical and legal responsibilities.
Perhaps such a contradiction should be no real surprise, for when it comes to the global response to the horrors happening in Gaza, they have been pretty much 10 a penny over the past 21 months.
Starmer himself this week is precisely a case in point. His announcement that the UK will recognise a Palestinian state in September while tacking on a set of conditions such as Israel agreeing to a ceasefire and committing to a two-state solution before then, is so typical of him as a politician.
Mealy-mouthed, kowtowing and politically congenitally incapable of making a clear-cut decision, have always been Starmer's chief traits. Just look at the way for example he came scuttling up to Turnberry at US president Donald Trump's beckoning.
I don't know about you but I'm hard pressed to remember such an unedifying spectacle of a leader being summoned by a foreign head of state in his own country.
But back to that announcement about recognition of a Palestinian state, for another of Starmer's chief traits is his unerring capacity for serial U-turns, and who is to say that given the wording and conditions attached to the latest announcement we might well see another.
Even watching him make that announcement, I couldn't rid myself of the nagging feeling that this was yet another piece of Starmer window dressing rather than an act that would make a substantive change on the ground in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Just so I'm clear about this Mr Starmer – are you seriously suggesting that if Israel's onslaught in Gaza and seizing of territory in the occupied West Bank continue, then Britain will perhaps green light recognising a Palestinian state?
But on the other hand, if Netanyahu and his cohorts suddenly declare a ceasefire, then recognition is off the table?
The sheer arrogance of this– not to mention the stupidity – is mind-boggling. Such is the cynicism of such a strategy that it makes the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement – which initially placed Palestine under international control, before eventually, it was given to Britain to control – look like a benevolent gesture.
Don't get me wrong here, for as I've written before in this newspaper, I would heartily welcome the day when a Palestinian state is recognised.
As I also wrote in last Sunday's edition of The National, I'm firmly of the belief that there is just an inkling that the political ground is shifting on both sides of what the Israeli writer Amos Elon once described as an 'irresistible force colliding with an immovable body'.
Or to put this another way, such is the magnitude of events in Gaza, there is no going back to the way things were for Israelis and Palestinians alike.
(Image: Hatem Khaled, REUTERS)
In that regard then, almost any help forthcoming in the case for recognising a Palestinian state is welcome. But the framing of Britain's 'conditional' approach in contrast to that of France's declaration could just as easily hinder rather than help.
Try putting yourself in the position of how many Palestinians must view Starmer's equivocation. Writing in the Independent yesterday, Palestinian political analyst and writer, Ahmed Najar, who himself is originally from Gaza, hit the nail on the head.
'What kind of justice operates on those terms? This is not diplomacy. This is moral blackmail. It is Britain saying to Palestinians: your right to exist is not yours. It depends entirely on the behaviour of your occupier.'
Najar is so right when he says that what Starmer is offering is 'complicity dressed as strategy.'
Responding recently to French president Emmanuel Macron's insistence that recognising Palestine was a 'moral duty,' Israel's defence minister, Israel Katz, made quite clear what he thought of the move.
'They will recognise a Palestinian state on paper – and we will build the Jewish-Israeli state on the ground,' he said. 'The paper will be thrown in the trash can of history and the State of Israel will flourish and prosper,' Katz attested.
If that is Israel's response to Macron's unequivocal recognition of Palestine, then God only knows how much Netanyahu's cabal must have been chuckling at Starmer's timid, maybe, maybe not, announcement.
The Israeli leader did of course need to be seen hitting out at Starmer's decision.
'(UK PM Keir) Starmer rewards Hamas's monstrous terrorism & punishes its victims,' Netanyahu said in a post on social media. But outraged as Netanyahu appeared to be, he knows that much could happen before September and Starmer could find himself in a corner of his own making were Israel to agree to a ceasefire within the deadline, only to subsequently resume 'hostilities' under some pretext.
Starmer needs to wake up and realise that no country that subjugates millions of people who live in Gaza and the occupied West Bank can claim legitimacy as a democracy. He also needs to recognise that criticism of Israel does not by default make him or anyone else antisemitic.
What we have seen this week is classic Starmer. In short, prevarication in the face of irrefutable facts, and because of it he could still yet do the Palestinian cause more harm than good.
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