Why Keir Starmer's government needs to urgently recognise Palestine
As the war in Gaza continues and civilians struggle to find food, it’s time for the UK to follow France’s leader and recognise Palestine
It seems that with every day the situation we see depicted in news footage from Gaza becomes more hopeless. More horrific. Every report to the UK Parliament becomes more difficult to listen to, more frustrating as we know that whatever calls we make to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are unlikely to be heeded.
What we’re seeing is difficult to believe because we want to hold onto the hope that it isn’t possible. We hear journalists describing the crisis are facing the same deprivations.
Increasingly there is agreement across Parliament that it is time we recognised Palestine as a state. We cannot wait for a peace process, one which has consistently failed to deliver its only aim, to come to an agreed path to statehood for the Palestinians. For too many people, it’s already too late. Palestinian and Israeli alike.
Students trapped in Gaza
This week I received a letter of thanks from a Palestinian academic. A writer and scholar, she wanted me to know how grateful she was that I had written asking the UK Government to ensure safe passage of students and researchers to the University of Edinburgh.
She has an unconditional offer to study for a PhD in English literature there, but the closure of the UK visa office in Gaza is denying her and others the opportunity to escape, leaving her stranded amidst the devastation of war.
The week before, I sat in Parliament with an Israeli mother who pleaded for MPs’ support to press for the release of her son’s body. He was one of the 251 hostages taken on October 7. The world they both knew, and we recognised, changed forever that day.
A world shocked by the brutality of the Hamas attack and murder of almost 1,200 people, the largest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust, stood in solidarity and mourning with Israel. Since then, the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry claims almost 58,000 people have died and 90 per cent of homes have been destroyed.
Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas after October 7 was in no doubt. But the scale of the destruction and acute humanitarian crisis in Gaza which ensued has brought widespread condemnation.
‘A concentration camp’
Many of us who have long regarded ourselves as friends of Israel are distraught at Netanyahu’s failure to heed international opinion. One of his predecessors, Ehud Olmert, has criticised the government’s plans for a so-called “humanitarian city” for the Palestinians in Gaza saying: “It is a concentration camp. I’m sorry.”
It has to stop. Myself and my fellow Liberal Democrat MPs have already written to the government calling for recognition of Palestine. And pressure has been mounting this weekend on Keir Starmer to follow French President Emmanuel Macron’s lead and announce immediate recognition as others have done.
We know that has not been the preferred timescale of this government. Foreign Secretary David Lammy said recently: “…I wish I could say that if we were to recognise tomorrow, it would bring this war to an end, but I am afraid I am not sure that is the case. What is required now is painstaking diplomacy to get to a ceasefire…”
For those whose lives have been destroyed, or whose loved ones have been lost, that may not be enough.
Christine Jardine is Liberal Democrat MP for Edinburgh West
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