
Starmer: Palestinians have inalienable right to statehood
The Prime Minister made the comment on Thursday evening as he came under growing pressure from Labour MPs over the worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza.
In a statement, Sir Keir also condemned the 'unspeakable and indefensible' suffering in the strip and called it a 'humanitarian catastrophe'.
The Labour Government backs Palestinian statehood but has argued for months that it should be formally recognised at the right moment to further peace in the region.
The statement falls short of a promise to declare Palestinian statehood – something the French are pushing to be done next month.
Sir Keir said: 'We are clear that statehood is the inalienable right of the Palestinian people. A ceasefire will put us on a path to the recognition of a Palestinian state and a two-state solution which guarantees peace and security for Palestinians and Israelis.'
Cabinet ministers have reportedly been pushing privately for Sir Keir to announce UK recognition while Sir Sadiq Khan, Labour's London mayor, publicly joined the calls this week.
Pressure on Sir Keir is likely to intensify after Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana launched a new hard-left party to challenge Sir Keir.
The pair have accused the Government of enabling genocide and are expected to link up with several independent pro-Gaza MPs.
A UN conference on the issue, planned for June but delayed by the Israel-Iran war, is now due to take place next week.
Critics of immediate recognition have said that it should not happen until Hamas is removed from any leadership role in Gaza and all Israeli hostages are released.
Israel's government has characterised any recognition by the UK and France as a 'reward' for Hamas 's Oct 7 atrocities.
The US had been leading efforts to broker a Gaza ceasefire in recent months but Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump's Middle East envoy, cut them off on Thursday.
He said the US was bringing home its negotiators, saying Hamas 'clearly shows a lack of desire to reach a ceasefire'.
Mr Witkoff added that the US would now 'consider alternative options to bring the hostages home', without clarifying what they would be.
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The Independent
a minute ago
- The Independent
‘One in four councils could lose money' under Government's funding proposals
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Daily Mail
2 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Millions of households will be hit with council tax hikes to pay for Angela Rayner's Government funding reforms
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Spectator
14 minutes ago
- Spectator
Mossad's secret allies in Operation Wrath of God
More than half a century ago Palestinian terrorists stormed the 1972 Munich Olympics, murdering two of the Israeli team and taking another nine hostage. The West German authorities, ill-equipped to deal with such incidents, agreed to fly the terrorists and their hostages to Egypt. Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, offered to mount a rescue operation. The Germans launched their own, resulting in the deaths of a police officer, four of the seven terrorists and all the hostages. One consequence was the Israeli government's Operation Wrath of God, a programme to assassinate any leaders or planners associated with the massacre. Ten missions were organised in Europe, each signed off by the Israeli prime minister Golda Meir on condition that no innocent bystanders were killed. There have been several books about the operation and a 2005 film by Steven Spielberg. Aviva Guttmann's account does not merely rehearse the stories, though each operation is outlined. Rather, she shows how the security services of European nations cooperated in identifying, monitoring and investigating international terrorists in general and how this aided Mossad in its pursuit of vengeance. Cooperation was via the Club de Berne, an intelligence exchange between eight countries founded in 1969 in response to the growth of international terrorism. Soon expanded to include other countries, among them Israel, it handled communications via encrypted telegrams (which Guttmann calls cables) using the code word Kilowatt. Guttmann found these communications in publicly available Swiss archives. She analyses each assassination, showing how the exchange of Kilowatt information helped Mossad identify and locate their targets, how the various security services learned about terrorist tactics, such as the recruitment or duping of young European women, and how hitherto unknown plots to murder or hijack were prevented. The first assassination was only a month after Munich. Wael Zwaiter, a young Palestinian translator in Rome, returned to his flat to find two men on the stairway leading to his apartment. They shot him 11 times, a bullet for each Munich victim. Journalistic opinion at the time and since concluded that Mossad got the wrong man – a bit-part player at best. But the Kilowatt telegrams show that he had an important logistical role. One operation that Mossad very definitely got wrong was in the small Norwegian town of Lillehammer in 1973 when they shot an innocent Moroccan waiter alongside his seven-months pregnant wife. Not only that, but the assassins were caught. Contributing factors to this debacle were an inexperienced, hurriedly assembled team and insufficient research – the poor man was confused with a real terrorist solely on photographic resemblance. Mossad teams generally comprised about 15 people – two to do the killing, two to guard them, two to organise cover and facilities, six to eight to research the target's routines and movements and two to communicate both within the team and back to Israel. Guttmann's principal concern – oft-repeated – is that European security services 'played a vital role in the organisation and execution of Operation Wrath of God'. The extent to which they did so knowingly is not always clear, although they could not have failed to know after Lillehammer. There is no doubt, though, that the information they exchanged with Israel (including their own investigations into Mossad killings) facilitated assassinations within their own borders. 'One would simply not expect Europeans to help kill Palestinians… Governments… failed in their duty to keep safe all citizens,' Guttmann notes. Her disapproval is evident throughout, though not explicitly stated or argued. This is a pity because the opposite case – whether it can be justifiable to murder those seeking to murder you – is nowadays too prevalent to be dismissed without argument. We witness its effects daily on our screens. She concedes, however, that all participants benefitted from the exchange and that Israel was itself a significant contributor. But in claiming that the various agencies 'did not need to respect the same normative considerations as official foreign policy lines' she implies that they acted independently or against their own governments' policies. On this side of the Channel at least, actions by the intelligence agencies, including exchanges with liaison services, require government approval. MI5 does not simply do what it likes. It is not the case that relying on 'foreign intelligence shows… weakness and dependency', as Guttmann says of Mossad. Nor are attributing information to 'friendly services within the region', or claiming a source has 'direct access', forms of boasting; they and other formulae are necessary and conventional guides to assessing reports. She is on firmer ground in questioning the effectiveness of targeted killings, as assassinations are now often called. In the short term they can be highly disruptive and satisfy an understandable thirst for revenge; but in the longer term leaders may be succeeded by those with renewed determination and security. Half a century on, the causes that prompted Wrath of God are with us still.