UK PM Starmer to recognise Palestinian statehood before UNGA meeting

You can disagree with Starmer, that’s the easy bit – it’s understanding him that’s much harder.

Today the UK Government will announce it is officially recognising a Palestinian state.

It’s not the act itself that is surprising. For years it has been the settled intention of the UK Government, and largely all-party backed, that the only future for peace in the Middle East was, is, ‘the two state solution.’

The argument made to Israel and by some in Israel, is that their foundation principles would come into conflict if that wasn’t the solution. Israel is the Jewish homeland. Am Israel chai.  Israel is a functioning democracy – whatever your views on the current government. But with a growing Palestinian population, a single state solution would force a choice: Israel could be a democracy or a Jewish homeland but not both.

It’s also true that the Palestinian ‘leadership’ of Yasser Arafat’s era fumbled the ball on peace deals too many times. Their tendency towards eleventh hour retreat from the best deal on the table, on the off chance they might get a bit more if they said no, was as tragic as it was hard wired.

Fatah, Arafat’s political movement, is now an uninspiring gerontocracy under Mahmoud Abbas and has played a bit part in recent events, and no part in Gaza, since Hamas murdered their representatives after elections in 2006 – and none held since. A small footnote of history. The party name Hamas contested those elections under was “Change and Reform”.

However skip forward to October 6^th, 2023, and whilst there is very little sign of Benjamin Netanyahu as Prime Minister doing any kind of two state deal with Hamas – a murderous genocide advocating terrorist group – it is still the back-burner policy of the UK government that one day, if the circumstances of a deal looked right, they would offer recognition of a state of Palestine.

Then October 7^th happened. And changed everything.

Touring the media studios in the days after, and about to travel to Israel as a key ally, the then Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, came face to face with his opposition counterpart in the offices of Sky news. David Lammy had already been on several outlets and we greatly appreciated that in tone and position you couldn’t put a cigarette paper between the two on the specific subject at hand.

I thought they’d pass a respectful nod or quick handshake. They actually had a brief hug. Both recognised, whatever the political flak – remember the Met police got calls for permission for a pro-Palestinian protest whilst the attacks were still under way – the right respectful line in support of the victim, Israel, was going to need to be held and defended by both, by all.

That’s when genuine grown up politics sees real value in that ‘uni-party’ trope.

After the rape, murder and kidnapping that had unfolded and been filmed at the hands of disgustingly jubilant Hamas killers – the worst single loss of Jewish lives since the holocaust – there was a unity of purpose in supporting Israel’s right to defend itself and the strongest possible condemnation of the terrorists.

And now, after very nearly two years of brutal warfare, a conflict that has echoed in our streets, frightened our Jewish citizens, angered our Muslim citizens and stoked division in all parts of the country it still has to be said out loud as if everyone forgot it was an option:

You can support Israel and its right not just to exist but defend itself, and still be critical of its Government. Not least Netanyahu’s recent position – the man on whose watch Oct 7^th occurred – that the two state solution is off the table.

You can support and sympathise with the Palestinians and a brighter future for them and still wish nothing but obliteration for the terrorists of Hamas.  They condemn themselves in their own words, and we are told by our own Prime Minister have no part in the future of a Palestinian state.

So Starmer’s decision to do this now is not a case of why, but why now?

Firstly by his own logic it’s a flawed timing.

If the recognition is because an arbitrary deadline he set has passed -there is still no ceasefire, not all hostages handed over, no end to the appalling death toll in Gaza – it is ok to recognise and regret the staggering losses in a population Hamas cynically hide – then that might exert some pressure on Israel. Not much though. Even with France, Canada, and others joining in.

But Starmer said in front of Trump, that there is ‘no future for Hamas’ in this newly recognised Palestinian state – so what possible incentive is there for Hamas to cease firing, hand over hostages, or even blink because of it?

The US, who are against our doing this, though Trump trod lightly on this in Downing Street, see it as Kemi Badenoch does– a pure propaganda victory for terrorists. PR they badly needed in the info war they are better at than actual kinetic war.

It can be argued that to Hamas, with the twisted logic they have applied before, that all this murderous mayhem ‘works’. Commit acts of unmitigated barbarism, fight a brutal conflict, see your citizens killed in the thousands and sell Hamas’ victimhood to the world’s useful idiots  and presto – at last you have a recognised state. The Brits might say you have no part in that future, but then they say a lot of things and you are still on the ground, just.

Second, what Palestinian state exactly is Starmer recognising?

It doesn’t exist yet in any geographic cohesion, and is unlikely to be redrawn in a way that will satisfy the intifada-fans on the left, or the likes of Smotrich & Ben-Gvir on the right. The exercise of drawing and redrawing maps and boundaries has an unhappy history in that part of the world.

Third who will administer this state, right now?

One of my biggest criticisms of Benjamin Netanyahu, and others in the Israeli system early on, was their insistence that whilst they were working on a plan for the future of Gaza post-war, they wouldn’t talk about it in any detail because  ‘if nobody minds, we have a war of survival to fight first’. That worked in 2023, not now.

Sure enough despite protestations they did not want to occupy Gaza, and that Hamas was ‘destroyed’ then some kind of future settlement would be needed, Israel’s government doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to leave the strip any time soon.

As time has dragged on, the death toll mounting –  and despite the IDF telling their government that an attack on Gaza City may not achieve the stated political aim – Netanyahu seems wedded to ploughing on, and in the background shelving any two state solution in a sealed vault.

Interestingly, the ‘Tony Blair plan’ for an independent authority to administer Gaza alongside a new Palestinian Authority leadership – Abbas is not up to this task – is remarkably similar to the Arab plan for the future, where they might supply the third party authority – which I can tell you is very like the British Foreign Office plan under discussion post Oct 7^th but pre-ground-war. However any discussions at that stage would be warped by a ground incursion by the IDF and the expectation moods in Arab countries would shift dramatically.

They did.

However, what is still true is Egypt doesn’t want to do it. The Saudis – whose once imminent normalisation deal with Israel probably pushed Hamas to act in the first place – do not seem inclined as much as they might have been, if at all. Many Gulf states were not nearly as tied to “support for Palestine” as they used to be but this war and its consequences for the people of Gaza has forced them further away from Israel and those Abraham accords many signed.

Iran can play no role whatsoever having helped bankroll  Gaza’s transformation into a form of fortress. Syria is in no fit state, nor it’s government suitable for the task. Qatar can’t, Turkey wouldn’t be allowed by Israel. Problematically for Blair the UN similarly.

‘Who will run Gaza, or this Palestine state?’ is not a question I’ve heard Starmer answer, or be asked. And whilst that is moot, the whole enterprise of recognition is questionable. The cart appears to be before the horse.

So we are left with the cynical option that maybe Starmer just thinks it’s politically popular and helpful. Actually I don’t think that is the reason he’s done it, but trying to shore up votes Labour lost and is still losing to the further left – however much Jeremy and Zarah, the MPs for Gaza West, and Rafah South manage to sabotage themselves – has to have been an argument made to him. More of a political bonus than main reasoning.

But is it even sound reasoning?

YouGov say the public back a recognition of a Palestinian state by 44 per cent to 18 percent. However Research by James Johnson, our US columnist in the run up to the last presidential election says 90 percent of Brits are against recognition ‘with no preconditions.’

So I return to where I started.

At some point yes, a UK government might have nudged peace and reconciliation talks by leveraging the offer of Palestinian state recognition. But now? It makes no sense.

It’s not just that I disagree – I genuinely don’t understand it.