Palestine: is it too late for two states?
At the United Nations General Assembly in September, three members of the G7 — France, the UK and Canada — are set to recognise the State of Palestine. They will join the 147 of the 193 UN member states who already recognise a Palestinian state. The UK’s own announcement of support on 29 July was influenced both by France and by pressure from the Parliamentary Labour Party, as well as Labour’s own members. Canada followed suit. Japan might be next. Italy is Israel’s largest trading partner in Europe, but Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni says it is too early.
Keir Starmer was careful to make the shift in policy towards Palestine a whole Cabinet decision. But there was a touch of the Hebrew saying chai b’seret, (“lives in a movie” i.e. unrealistic optimism) in the official British statement. The UK will recognise Palestine “unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, agrees to a ceasefire and commits to a long-term, sustainable peace, reviving the prospect of a Two State Solution”. Benjamin Netanyahu is more likely to bomb the Damascus Road than experience a Pauline conversion to the solution he has always rejected.
In the real world, the necessary conditions for Palestinian statehood no longer exist — arguably not even within the terms of international law. Since 1967, Jewish settlement on the West Bank, now violent and encouraged by religious extremists in government, has been rising inexorably. Israel is unlikely to meet UK terms for reversing the decision to recognise a Palestinian State. Britain lacks “leverage” or, as Donald Trump put it “doesn’t matter”, though the announcement did have some impact. It also evoked outrage in Israel.
Trump and the US State Department repeated the refrain that Britain was “rewarding Hamas”, whilst Netanyahu denounced the UK Government’s announcement as “terrorist appeasement”. These are well-crafted, resonant slogans aimed mainly at the Israeli public, of whom over 75 per cent want a ceasefire and a sustainable peace. And the British Prime Minister has repeatedly demanded that Hamas release the hostages, while also saying that Hamas should play no part in a future Palestinian State. The Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, said much the same in his recent announcement.
American policy positions knock on to allies such as the UK, Australia and to a lesser degree the EU. Germany for understandable reasons has been highly supportive of Israel. France, like the British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, has gone beyond asserting Israel’s right to self-defense to roundly condemning the IDF’s actions and stopping export licenses for parts to Israeli jets, helicopters and drones. As antisemitic incidents increase nationally, popular protest is closely monitored for hate speech. Whilst the language and tone of Western governments’ support for Israel has shifted markedly, American military support notably has not been withdrawn.
But Britain carries an historic responsibility for the origins of the conflict. The then British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, sent his letter to Lord Rothschild, President of the British Zionist Federation, in November 1917 at the height of World War I. HMG viewed “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people with favour”. The word “state” was missing. What the Balfour declaration meant by Palestine was vague, but the population at the time is usually estimated at 85,000 Jews and some 300,000 Arabs. Concerning the latter, “it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities in Palestine”. A fudge.
Britain was given League of Nations mandatory authority over Palestine in April 1920 at a conference in San Remo, Italy, to carve up the remains of the Ottoman Empire. And in 1946 there were still 100,000 British troops in the area. Britain was exhausted, bankrupt, short of food and under pressure from the USA. Irgun terrorist militia, led by Menachem Begin (later the first Likud Prime Minister), inflicted significant casualties: 90 were killed in the bombing of the King David Hotel which housed the mandatory authority. Ernest Bevin, the British Foreign Secretary, and the Prime Minister Clement Attlee himself were initially opposed to a Jewish State as a possible danger to the UK’s political and economic interests in the Middle East.
By late 1947 a brutal Arab-Jewish war was breaking out in Palestine. Led by David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, the Jewish settler community, the Yishuv, more than held their own thanks to their foresighted preparations for war, an ample arms supply from the West, plus support from Stalin, and superior strategy. On the 29th November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz (Land of)-Israel.
Israel declared its Independence on 14 May 1948. Minutes later the USA and Soviet Union recognised the new State. Bevin wanted to think about it and took until January 1949 to follow suit. Predictably Independence inaugurated a new phase of the war, with Arab states involved, military setbacks and massacres on both sides. It resulted in the exodus of some 750,000 Palestinians, many believing they would return. This is now known by them as the Naqba (“the disaster”). In Jaffa and Haifa British troops were left as onlookers.
The rest is history. But history repeats itself. Some five million Palestinians still have refugee status today. Not just Putin’s war in Ukraine but Netanyahu’s destruction and killing in Gaza, his spurious explanations, are normalizing the abandonment by states of moral restraints in war. We are back to Might is Right, with the American government adding to the instability.
Only Trump can exert effective pressure on Netanyahu to stop the starvation and killing of Palestinians. But he seems worryingly reluctant to do so. Starmer does seem to have achieved some influence over him. This may prove more important than his clear intention to return to the Labour Party’s commitment to see the Palestinians’ right to self-determination made real within a state of their own. And that intention should be rewarded with the return to the Labour fold of many disaffected Muslim voters.
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