By Andy Daer | Thu 16th May 2024 – 5:25 pm
As was confidently predicted by military experts in the days following October 7, Israel has not destroyed Hamas by invading Gaza, and it’s clearly not going to. Despite having to re-engage with Hamas in the previously “cleared” northern Gaza, it has started to inflict further suffering on the one and a half million people seeking refuge in Rafah, in what Netanyahu says is the final stage of clearing Gaza of Hamas fighters. He knows most of the people are civilians, and that many are women or children, but he has no other plan, and would probably have seen the collapse of the fragile coalition he leads if he hadn’t pressed ahead. He may be hoping that if “finishing the job” won’t entirely get rid of Hamas, it may end up inflicting sufficient revenge on the people of Gaza for him to remain in office.
International condemnation of the proposed attack on Rafah was led by US President Joe Biden, and initially echoed by the British government, but although Biden has now sent a message to Netanyahu by halting the supply of bombs which are too big to be used in urban warfare, when the Rafah phase began, British government spokesmen became suddenly silent. As with Biden after his conversion to limited respect for international law, our government is driven by domestic politics, and Sunak may prefer to avoid the inevitable humiliation of being rebuffed by Netanyahu by keeping quiet about the invasion of Rafah. Others might say he has been influenced by lobbying groups which support Netanyahu’s Israel unconditionally.
In November last year, the inept James Cleverly was replaced as Foreign Secretary by David Cameron, and we saw a welcome shift in the government’s position on Gaza. Lord Cameron had one last chance to salvage his reputation before he disappeared from the political arena, and he quickly made the bold announcement that when the fighting ends, the ‘two-state solution’ will have to be a given, and on the table before peace talks begin, not as the prize for Palestinians at the end of the process, if they behaved themselves. Unusually, the British seemed to have made a foreign policy decision which diverged from the US position, although cynics would say Cameron probably had behind the scenes permission from the Americans to do so. However, when Israel crossed what had been a “red line” by attacking Rafah, the line was suddenly no longer red, and Cameron was no longer laying down the law to Netanyahu, his brief day in the sun having come to an abrupt end.
The talk in Westminster is that Cameron has been told by the Prime Minister’s office to tone down his criticism of the Israeli assault on Rafah, and to talk up the British excuses for refusing to halt our arms sales to Israel. Ending arms sales to a regime under investigation by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for genocide is a requirement of the Genocide Convention, but Cameron has now been forced into saying that depriving Israel of British-supplied weaponry would be tantamount to supporting terrorism, a form of twisted logic which had him squirming in his seat on last Sunday’s Laura Kuenssberg show.
Recognition of Palestine
On Tuesday of next week, it is expected that Spain, Ireland, Norway and Malta will formally recognize the state of Palestine. Sadly, no one expects the British government to follow suit, and they will probably still be saying now is not the right time for such an announcement.
Recognition of their state by Britain would be a hugely important moment for the Palestinians, and a blow to those in Israel who want to believe world opinion backs the idea that ‘all Palestinians are terrorists’ and that by extension that justifies the scorched earth policy in Gaza, including the wholesale slaughter of civilians and civilian infrastructure, by munitions and now by starvation, and even the targeted destruction of hospitals, a heinous and cold-blooded crime after so many innocent people have been injured by Israeli ordnance.
It is going to be incumbent on every member of Parliament, whichever side of the chamber they sit on, to tell the government they are wrong, that now is the time to recognize Palestine, and that to fail the Palestinian people at this desperate moment in their history would be a monumental failure for which there could be no excuse.
* Andy Daer is a member of the Liberal Democrats in South Gloucestershire, and Vice Chair of the Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine.