Bowen: UK move to recognise Palestinian state is a diplomatic crowbar to revive peace process

BBC News

4 days ago

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer's announcement that Britain will recognise Palestinian statehood is a major change in UK foreign policy.He offered to postpone recognition if Israel took "substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, agree to a ceasefire and commit to a long-term, sustainable peace, reviving the prospect of a two-state solution."Israel's immediate rejection of his statement meant that Starmer's speech writers can start work now on what he will say at the UN General Assembly in September. UK recognition of Palestine looks "irreversible," according to a senior British official.Starmer won't be expecting Britain's change of policy to produce an independent Palestinian state any time soon – from the perspective of many Israelis, the best time for it would be never – but the intention, diplomatic sources say, is to empower moderates on both sides, Israelis and Palestinians. The British hope they can jolt them into believing that peace might be possible.It won't be easy, not just because of the way Hamas killed around 1,200 people, including hundreds of Israeli civilians, and took hostages on 7 October 2023, followed by Israel's vengeful response that has killed tens of thousands civilians and left Gaza in ruins.It is also because every attempt to make peace has failed. Years of peace talks in the 1990s ended in bloodshed. Every attempt to revive them since then has collapsed.
Israel's rejection came minutes after Keir Starmer finished speaking in Downing Street. Later in the evening, Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted a fiercely worded denunciation on social media."Starmer rewards Hamas's monstrous terrorism and punishes its victims. A jihadist state on Israel's border TODAY will threaten Britain TOMORROW.""Appeasement towards jihadist terrorists always fails. It will fail you too. It will not happen."Netanyahu denies Israel has caused starvation and catastrophe in Gaza. Had he accepted Britain's conditions for a postponement, his government would have disintegrated. He depends on the support of ultra nationalist extremists who want to annex the occupied territories and force Palestinians out, not grant them independence.But Netanyahu is not their prisoner. He built a career opposing the two-state solution, the idea that peace can be built by creating an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. Earlier this month he said a Palestinian state would be a 'launchpad' for more 7 October style attempts to destroy Israel.Netanyahu will be hoping for the strong backing of the US government. Its position is that recognising a Palestinian state now rewards Hamas terrorism.Donald Trump told reporters as he flew back to the US after his golfing interlude in Scotland that he didn't support Britain's move.The issue of Palestinian sovereignty could become another factor cracking apart transatlantic relations.Until the last few weeks Keir Starmer was not convinced the time was right to recognise Palestine. But pictures of Palestinian children in Gaza starving to death were the last straw after so much killing and devastation.Attitudes hardened in Downing Street and the Foreign Office, as well as in the Labour party and more widely in the UK.Britain's decision to join France in recognising Palestine is another sign of Israel's increasing diplomatic isolation. Two of its major western allies, the UK and France, both permanent members of the UN Security Council, have dismissed Israel's attempt to block their recognition of Palestine when the General Assembly meets in New York in September.
In New York just after Starmer's statement, David Lammy, the UK foreign secretary, was given a big round of applause when he announced Britain's decision at the UN's conference on a two-state solution and recognition of a Palestinian state.His dismissed the accusation that Palestinian independence could be lethal for Israel."There is no contradiction between support for Israel's security and support for Palestinian statehood. Indeed, the opposite is true.""Let me be clear: the Netanyahu government's rejection of a two-state solution is wrong – it's wrong morally and it's wrong strategically."A British official said the atmosphere was electric as Lammy told the delegates that the UK's announcement was being made "with the hand of history on our shoulders." Lammy went on to delve into Britain's imperial past in Palestine which is deeply intertwined with the roots of the conflict between Jews and Arabs for control of the land Britain once ruled.Britain captured Jerusalem from the Ottoman Empire in 1917 and controlled Palestine until in 1948, exhausted and out of ideas to deal with what was then a full-scale war between Arabs and Jews, it handed over responsibility to the UN and left Palestine. Immediately, Israel's first prime minister David Ben Gurion declared independence, and Israel defeated an invasion by Arab armies.At the UN David Lammy recalled how Arthur Balfour, his predecessor as foreign secretary had in 1917 signed a typewritten letter promising to 'view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.'But the document, known as the Balfour Declaration, also stated "that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of non-Jewish communities in Palestine." It did not use the word Arab, but that is what was meant.Lammy said Britain can be proud of the way it helped lay Israel's foundations, But the promise to Palestinians, Lammy said, was not kept, and that "is a historical injustice which continues to unfold."Britain's conflicting promises fuelled and shaped the conflict. A time traveller going back a century to Palestine in the 1920s would find the tension and violence depressingly familiar.The way the UK hopes to end the misery in Gaza, create peace in the Middle East and remedy the historical injustice Lammy described is to revive the two-state solution.The conference in New York at which he was speaking was chaired by France and Saudi Arabia. It has produced a seven-page document aimed at creating a way ahead to revive the two-state solution, which includes condemnation by Arab states of Hamas and its 7 October attacks on Israel.The window for peace through the two-state solution appeared to be locked shut after the collapse of the peace process that started with real hope in the 1990s.Britain's decision to recognise Palestine is a diplomatic crowbar to try to reopen it.