Published in the Jerusalem Post, 18 June 2024
Britain is in the throes of a general election. The nation goes to the polls on July 4. All the indications are that the Labour party will sweep the board with a resounding win, and that its leader, Sir Keir Starmer, will be Britain’s next prime minister.
On June 13 the party published the manifesto on which it is fighting
the election. Amid a plethora of domestic and international policy
commitments, the manifesto turns briefly to the Middle East.
"Palestinian statehood,” it declares, “is the inalienable right of the
Palestinian people. It is not in the gift of any neighbour” [in other words,
Israel], “and is also essential to the long-term security of Israel.”
The manifesto
commits a future Labour government to recognizing a Palestinian state “as a
contribution to a renewed peace process which results in a two-state solution,
with a safe and secure Israel alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state.”
Appalled by
the Hamas attack of October 7, Starmer stood shoulder-to-shoulder with UK prime
minister Rishi Sunak, US president Joe Biden, and most Western political
leaders, in proclaiming Israel’s right to defend itself. His stance was
not acceptable to two entities he faces on his own political terrain. One
is the powerful hard-left element within his party that, since taking over as
leader from Jeremy Corbyn, he has managed to disempower and partially
subdue. The other is the strong Muslim presence in some Labour-held
constituencies.
Labour’s pro-Palestine component began to assert itself on
October 7 itself, with scattered voices approving the Hamas attack. The
collateral civilian deaths and casualties arising from the IDF campaign was enough
for the party’s support for Israel to begin to slide. For a few weeks the
official Labour line was to call for humanitarian pauses in the fighting,
a position that was not anti-Israel enough for some, and prompted Labour
resignations in councils and from its parliamentary front bench. Finally,
on February 24, Labour policy officially changed to a call for “an immediate
humanitarian ceasefire”.
Then came
the first test of electoral opinion in the UK since October 7. On May 2,
2024 local elections took place across the country to select councillors, mayors
and other local government representatives. The results, no doubt to
Starmer’s dismay, indicated that Labour’s position on the Israel-Hamas war had
dented its support in Muslim areas
The BBC analyzed 58 local council areas where more than 20% of the residents
identify as Muslim. It found that Labour's share of the vote had slipped by 21%
on 2021, the last time most seats were contested.
Ali Milani, chair of
Labour Muslim Network, said Labour's positioning on Gaza "is going to have
a serious electoral consequence. If I was a Labour MP in Bradford or
Birmingham or Leicester or parts of London or Manchester [strong Muslim areas],
I would be seriously concerned.”
This is the background to the recognition pledge contained in the Labour party manifesto.
The composition of
British society is changing fast. In 2011 some 2.7 million UK citizens
identified as “Muslim”, making up 4.9% of the total population. By
2021 overall numbers of self-identifying Muslims had reached 3.9 million, forming
some 6.5% of the UK total That is a constituency that Labour
clearly believes cannot be ignored electorally, especially those areas where
Muslims congregate to form a majority of the local population,
By
comparison the total number of people self-identifying as Jews in the UK in
2021 was about 270,000, making up some 0.42% of the total population.
The
stark figures do not, of course, tell the whole story as regards political
clout. As in any society, British Jews punch well above their weight in
the many and varied fields they engage in, while all political and social
organizations formally abhor antisemitism or any form of discrimination based
on ethnic, racial or religious grounds.
The
main difficulty with statements about Middle East affairs from concerned, but
uninvolved, parties is the lack of flesh on the bones of advice. For
example, no one who has recognized Palestine as a sovereign state is able to define
its borders, while advocates of the two-state solution when speaking of borders
usually refer vaguely to the situation just prior to the Six Day War.
On June 5, 1967 the
whole of the West Bank and east Jerusalem was controlled by Jordan, while Gaza
was part of Egypt’s Sinai region. This position had remained unchanged
since the Israeli, Jordanian and Egyptian armies stopped fighting during
the course of 1949. Then, for nigh on twenty years, Jordan and Egypt
retained control of the land they had conquered after attacking Israel in 1948,
yet neither separately nor together did they make any move to establish a
Palestinian state.
In the Six Day War
Israel reconquered these areas, as well as a great deal more. Once in
Israel’s hands, the West Bank and Gaza somehow morphed into “occupied
Palestinian land” (which no-one previously claimed them to be; indeed West Bank
Arabs remained Jordanian citizens until 1988). The idea of an Arab
Palestine has since become a political reality.
Labour’s recognition
pledge takes no account of the fact that the Palestinian leadership is
currently divided between the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA) and
Hamas, that Palestinian opinion heavily favors Hamas, that the PA as a whole,
as well as its leader, President Mahmoud Abbas, are regarded as corrupt
and are deeply unpopular.
On the other hand, the
argument that eventually recognizing a Palestinian state would somehow be to
reward Hamas for its bloodthirsty attack of October 7 does not hold
water. The two-state solution is the last thing Hamas desires. If
it were ever established, it would represent a bitter blow to Hamas’s
fundamental purpose – to eliminate Israel altogether. As far as Hamas,
and its fundamentalist supporters are concerned, establishing two states
would be like a red rag to a bull. The fight to eliminate Israel would
continue unabated.
Unlike the recent
moves by Ireland, Spain, Norway and Slovenia which recognized the non-existent
Palestinian state outright, the Labour commitment to recognizing a Palestinian
state is nuanced. It will occur as part of a peace process, and as such echoes
the position outlined in January by Lord Cameron, the UK foreign
secretary. Palestinian statehood should be part of a process, he
declared, and recognition would come at what has been described as “an
appropriate time in peace talks”.
By adopting this more considered position, Starmer is certainly risking alienating both his left wing and his Muslim constituency. It is a fine line he is treading.
Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Keir Starmer is treading a fine line in pledging recognition of a Palestinian state", 18 June 2024:
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