Mick Hartley

The JC on Starmer and Palestine:

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has threatened – there seems no better word – that Britain will recognise a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September unless Israel reaches a ceasefire and meets other conditions. If we understand the logic correctly, it runs as follows: if Hamas – after months of rejecting ceasefire proposals – were to reverse course, accept a deal, and release its hostages, Britain will not recognise a Palestinian state. But if Hamas continues to torture captives in its tunnels, reject diplomacy, and prolong the war, Britain will.

It is difficult to imagine a more counterproductive approach to foreign policy. These upside-down incentives, if they influence anything at all, will encourage Hamas to harden its position and further delay the very ceasefire the British government claims to seek. This is not diplomacy, it is diplomatic malpractice….

Worse still, the broader push to recognise a Palestinian state at this moment reflects a fundamental misdiagnosis of the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It also implies, if not explicitly states, that the lack of a Palestinian state is what provoked Hamas’s atrocities. That is historically and morally backward. The conflict long predates Israel’s conquest of the West Bank and Gaza. And Israel unilaterally withdrew from the strip 20 years ago. Palestinian leaders have rejected every serious offer of statehood, including those made by Israel. The central obstacle has never been the exact contours of future borders. It is the refusal to accept Israel’s existence in any borders….

To look at the long arc of this conflict and conclude that October 7 should become effectively Palestine’s independence day is an abdication of strategic judgment, driven by ideology and domestic electoral considerations. It does not advance peace. It undermines Britain's credibility and weakens the moral authority of this country on the world stage.

Yep.

Added: Giles Fraser at UnHerd.

Hamas is getting exactly what it wants. Why, now, would it give up hostages? What reason does it have to agree to a ceasefire? It only needs Israel to keep on fighting for a few more months to achieve its ultimate goal. The paradox is, if Hamas refuses peace, then the UK will recognise Palestine. This is batshit crazy: Starmer’s announcement will only prolong the agony of the Palestinian people. Whether the West wants to hear it or not, since October 7, Hamas has used the agony of its own people as a way of manipulating the rest of the world into supporting it. Whereas Israel is doing everything it can to bring its people home, Hamas uses the grotesque suffering of the people of Gaza as a means to its own end. And it will be done with renewed confidence now that this wicked strategy is so obviously working.

What is particularly shabby about Starmer’s announcement is that he is playing with people’s lives — with Palestinian and Israeli ones — not because he believes recognising a state of Palestine is the right thing to do at this moment, but because of his own troubled domestic political situation. With Corbyn’s new party on his shoulder and a few hundred of his own MP’s lobbying him, Starmer has caved.