Last month, a senior Hamas official referred to the decision by Britain and other credulous Western nations to recognize a Palestinian state as ‘one of the fruits of October 7’.
In an interview with news channel Al Jazeera, Ghazi Hamad, a member of the terrorist organization’s political bureau, mentioned: ‘We proved that victory over Israel is not impossible, and our weapons are a symbol of Palestinian dignity.’
The annals of British statecraft are littered with decisions that have been naive, foolish and downright shameful.
But none, to my mind, reeks of the moral degeneracy of recognizing a Palestinian state—as this government is expected to do today—while 48 hostages remain in the hands of Hamas.
This is to say nothing of the horror of October 7, the worst atrocity committed on the Jewish people since the Holocaust, which has now been rewarded by the British state.
‘One of the fruits’, as Hamas says, of their sickening barbarism.
But don’t get me wrong – I am a strong supporter of the so-called ‘two-state solution’.
I am a proud British Jew who was born here, has lived and worked here all my life and will die here.
Last month, a senior Hamas official referred to the decision by Britain and other credulous Western nations to recognize a Palestinian state as ‘one of the fruits of October 7’. Pictured: A Palestinian boy next to a burning Israeli vehicle Palestinian gunmen brought to Gaza after infiltrating Israel on October 7, 2023.
The annals of British statecraft are littered with decisions that have been naive, foolish, and downright shameful. But none, to my mind, reeks of the moral degeneracy of recognizing a Palestinian state. Pictured: Israelis take cover from rocket fire on October 11, 2023.
But as a Jew, I also have a strong emotional attachment to Israel and see its safety and security as vital not just to the future of the Jewish people but to the West itself.
And for this to work, Israel and a Palestinian state have to find a way of existing side by side.
More often than not, that prospect seems vanishingly unrealistic. There have been many false dawns, but even when it seemed that an agreement was on the cusp, such as at the Camp David summit in 2000 during the tail end of Bill Clinton’s presidency, the Palestinians rejected the terms.
As former Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban once put it, the Palestinians have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Whatever your opinion of Israel’s conduct of the Gaza war – and it is perfectly possible for good and well-intentioned people to have different views on this – peace looks as far from achievable as it ever has been.
But at some point, the war will end and attention will turn to what comes next. How will Gaza be governed and rebuilt? What about the West Bank? How can we move towards giving the Palestinians a state that will exist peacefully alongside Israel?
Each of these questions may seem insuperable – which is why the only sensible and serious approach to tackling them is step by step. Slowly, carefully and considered.
Peacebuilding is a dirty endeavour that requires making queasy moral choices, stomaching compromises and looking beyond each other’s crimes, as we saw in Northern Ireland.
At some point, the war will end and attention will turn to what comes next. How will Gaza be governed and rebuilt?. Pictured: Destroyed buildings after Israeli air strikes in Gaza City on October 12, 2023
In releasing from prison terrorists who had committed acts of unspeakable evil, the Good Friday Agreement effectively wrote off the debt in blood each side owed.
But that point was only reached because just enough trust had been built between Republicans and Nationalists in the years and months prior, principally through the laying down of arms.
Self-evidently there is no prospect of trust between Israel and Hamas and the progress that would bring.
So it is disastrous for Keir Starmer to recognise a Palestinian state now – without any peace agreement, any acceptance that terror and violence must stop, or any concern with the fate of the remaining hostages in Gaza.
It will not stop the war – and it will make future terror more likely by bolstering Hamas’s repute among Palestinians at the very time it is being destroyed militarily by Israel.
Think of the context. For decades, large-scale peace negotiations have been thwarted, for any number of reasons.
None of the historical attempts – be it at Camp David (1978), Oslo (1993) or the Annapolis process in 2007 – prompted the UK to change its stance on recognition.
Then, on October 7, 2023, Hamas committed a massacre of 1,200 Jews. And what is now happening? The UK (along with a number of other countries such as France and Canada) is about to serve a propaganda coup to Hamas, so it can tell the Palestinians: ‘Where the work of past politicians has failed before, we have delivered. Our tactics – to terrorise and massacre our enemy – work.’
Peacebuilding is a dirty endeavour that requires making queasy moral choices, stomaching compromises and looking beyond each other’s crimes. Pictured: Rockets fly over destroyed buildings after Israeli air strikes on Gaza City on October 19, 2023
It is a repugnant act of diplomacy but one that shouldn’t surprise those who have become aghast at Labour’s determination to drive Britain’s reputation on the world stage into the ground.
Starmer’s capitulation to the Indian Ocean nation of Mauritius over the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands is shameful enough.
But he took national gutlessness to another level in July when he first announced plans to recognise Palestine.
Instead of placing conditions on a terrorist organisation to disarm and free its hostages, Starmer said recognition would go ahead ‘unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, reaches a ceasefire, makes clear there will be no annexation in the West Bank, and commits to a long-term peace process that delivers a two-state solution’.
The Prime Minister has ripped up decades of understanding that any negotiations are founded on the principle of ‘land for peace’.
This means that only when there is a state of peace between both sides can the issue of Israeli withdrawal from land the Palestinians claim be discussed.
Of course, the reason why Starmer has jettisoned this formula is his government’s craven fear of the sectarian Muslim vote that was such a striking feature of last year’s General Election.
Some 37 constituencies have a Muslim population of more than 20 per cent and, in 73 more seats, the Muslim population is between ten and 20 per cent.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas committed a massacre of 1,200 Jews. And what is now happening?The UK is about to serve a propaganda coup to Hamas. Pictured: Abandoned and torched vehicles at the site of the attacks
In those constituencies where the Muslim population is above 15 per cent, Labour’s vote fell by more than 14 per cent between the 2019 and 2024 elections.
The party is terrified of losing further support from these voters, and sees recognition of Palestine – without the need for any peace agreement – as a way of damming the deluge.
This is moral and political cowardice of the worst kind. But as we have come to see since Labour took office, it is par for the course.
I sorely want the war in Gaza to end and for all sides to think soberly about how a two-state solution can work.
But none of that has been hastened by a Labour government cynically playing to its electoral gallery.
