By Anne-Marie Simpson | Fri 15th November 2024 | Lib Dem Voice
In September, Liberal Democrat Conference passed an emergency policy motion on Gaza and the wider Middle East conflict. We were proud to reaffirm our support for UNRWA, for international courts, and for our policies to suspend arms exports to Israel, cease trade with illegal settlements, and immediately recognise the state of Palestine.
There is, however, an unfortunate final clause in the emergency motion passed: “Conference further calls on Liberal Democrats to engage with all their ALDE and Liberal International sister parties to secure a two-state solution based on 1967 lines in the region, including Israel’s Yesh Atid party.”
Unfortunate, because Yesh Atid stands against almost everything the motion calls for.
Many Liberal Democrats will look to Gaza and think: ‘what difference can we make?’ But even in the absence of meaningful action by the government, and even from our position in opposition, there is something that we can do as an influential member of the family of liberal parties.
We can show that ‘business as usual’ cannot continue for and with those parties which completely disregard everything liberals believe in. We can and should begin moves to end Israel’s Yesh Atid party’s observer status within Liberal International.
In October 2024, the Israeli Knesset passed two Bills outlawing the operations in-Israel of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), responsible for the co-ordination of aid programmes for Palestinian refugees.
UNRWA’s over 30,000 employees oversee a vast programme of humanitarian aid, not least of all in Gaza, where UNRWA plays an indispensable role supporting the nearly 2 million Palestinians displaced and subjected to a preventable famine. The Knesset Bills are certain to force the cessation of UNRWA’s Gaza operations, upon which all UN humanitarian aid operations rely heavily. They have been described by UNICEF as a death sentence for Gaza’s children.
Every single one of Yesh Atid’s Knesset members (MKs) voted in favour of these bills. One went so far as to describe the Bill’s passage as an “important moment of national unity”!
In mid-October 2023, when over 1,000 children had already been killed, supposed ‘liberal centrist’ Yesh Atid MK Meirav Ben-Ari told the Knesset that “the children of Gaza have brought this upon themselves”.
Yesh Atid’s leader, Yair Lapid, made clear his full support for the ‘total siege’ of Gaza. When told in a November 2023 Sky News interview, that 12,000 people in Gaza had been killed, Lapid replied “good riddance”.
It is true that Yesh Atid now sit in opposition to Netanyahu, and have pushed for the Israeli government to accept a ‘hostage deal’ to end this war. But look at its record in government (from March 2021 to November 2022). Lapid’s administration is recorded as having an approach to the occupied Palestinian territories which “not only continue[d] the policies set by the previous Netanyahu governments, but deepen[ed] the settlement project” – overseeing a higher rate of settlement constructions than in the eight prior years under Netanyahu, on average.
In August 2022, Lapid ordered ‘Operation Breaking Dawn’, without seeking Cabinet approval. Airstrikes killed 17 children, but Lapid subsequently stated that Israel “will not apologise” for using force. His administration oversaw the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, with Lapid himself refusing calls for an independent investigation and offering the alleged shooter the “full backing of the government”.
Liberal Democrats who refer to Yesh Atid as a sister party should clearly stop doing so. And, while the Liberal Democrats cannot unilaterally move for the expulsion of Yesh Atid from Liberal International, to which it was admitted as an observer member in 2021, we should begin the process of ending this engagement, as was argued for in Lib Dem Voice almost three years ago. We should instead be looking to alternative Israeli partners, perhaps such as the Democrats, who, at the very least, abstained on last month’s UNRWA vote. On issues of life and death, liberals should know where we stand – and who we stand with.
* Anne-Marie Simpson is a member of Didcot & Wantage Liberal Democrats and Chair of Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine