UK to Recognize Palestine If Israel Doesn't End Gaza War
Well, last week we were talking about President Macron and France and making a similar announcement, but perhaps a little bit more explicit, saying that they will actually move to recognize a Palestinian statehood come September at the U.N. General Assembly. A lot of pressure has been building on the U.K. prime minister to do the same. He sort of did, but with a few caveats. What maybe. Walk us through what what he announced yesterday. Yeah, he didn't go quite as far as Emmanuel Macron did last week when he made that announcement of plans to recognize a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly, which is usually the third week in September. But Keir Starmer making it clear that he he is acknowledging the political pressure he's under from his own party to do more, to put pressure on Israel to to stop the conflict in Gaza. Starmer saying he will go ahead and recognise a Palestinian state if Israel doesn't wind down operations there, get itself set on a pathway toward peace that ends with a two state solution. So it's it looks like he's basically walking up to the line Macron put out there. This would if the two countries go forward and do this in September, they would be the first two of the G7 nations to officially recognize a Palestinian state. And it would it does add some pressure to Benjamin Netanyahu and his government to to get more aid flowing into into Gaza and to try to wrap up that conflict there as soon as they can. Yeah, well, you know, you bring up the flow of humanitarian aid and the passage of food into the Gaza enclave, but there are many within the Israeli coalition who are not happy to see Israel ease some of those curbs over the course of the weekend that members on the far right pushing back against the decision. So how likely is it that these big announcements coming from the likes of President Macron, from UK prime minister, a lot of push from international aid agencies as well? How likely is that to actually impact Netanyahu and his next moves? Well, we have seen periods since this conflict started with Hamas following Hamas's attacks on Israel in October 2023. We have seen periods where Israel has come under a lot of pressure internationally to either change its tactics, to pause the fighting, to do make other changes in its strategy. And it by and large, has has ignored much of that and and just kind of proceeded with its plan. The Netanyahu government continues to say their goal is to eliminate the political and military power of Hamas. It has not done that so far. And so it continues its operation. So I don't know that this is this is going to be enough to really persuade Netanyahu's government to do things differently, although they are, as you mentioned, working to get more aid in. We'll have to see whether that has the impact that the outside groups and foreign governments are looking for.
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