RUTHFULLY YOURS

Keir Starmer’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state is being dressed up as a bold moral gesture. His supporters frame it as a step towards peace and justice in the Middle East – all very noble-sounding. But scratch the surface, and the move looks less like moral leadership and more like the latest instalment in Britain’s long, disastrous habit of meddling in the region.

The idea that statehood can be bestowed by Western fiat is pure imperial fantasy. We’ve been here before. From the Sykes-Picot Agreement in 1916, when Britain and France carved up the Ottoman lands like slices of cake, to the Balfour Declaration a year later, Britain has always presumed it could redraw borders and manufacture states with a stroke of a pen.

The results were disastrous. Britain and France artificially created Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, installing pliant kings and ignoring ethnic and religious realities. They split the Kurds across four different states, dooming them to a century of statelessness and persecution. During the Palestine Mandate (1920-1948), Britain swung between contradictory promises, first to the Jews, then to the Arabs, stoking resentment on both sides. In Lebanon, French colonial meddling hardened sectarian divides that still fuel political paralysis and violence today. In short, the imperial powers mistook maps for reality on the ground, and in doing so sowed the seeds of endless conflict.

It is astonishing that, after all this, Westminster still imagines it can ‘solve’ the conflict by declaration. Recognition of Palestine from London doesn’t bring peace closer. If anything, in the wake of the 7 October 2023 attacks, it rewards extremism while sidelining the difficult, grinding work of institution-building, negotiation and compromise.

What makes this even more absurd is the hypocrisy. The same anti-Israel activists who denounce Israel as a ‘colonial project’ are cheering Britain’s latest colonial gesture – a decision taken in Whitehall and imposed on the Middle East, without the consent of the people who actually live there. Apparently, colonial meddling is fine, so long as it’s in service of fashionable causes.

Nor does Starmer seem to have much understanding about the Palestinian cause. Its leaders have never been interested in establishing a state that will live peacefully alongside Israel. Neither the Palestinian Liberation Organisation nor Hamas have ever genuinely sought compromise and recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. Even the supposedly moderate Palestinian Authority, which currently governs the West Bank, has repeatedly rejected two-state offers.

Given this history, what exactly does Britain think it is recognising in Palestine? It is not recognising a functioning state, because none exists. It is not recognising a leadership committed to peace, because no such leadership has emerged. Instead, it is recognising a cause that has often defined itself precisely by refusing peace.

Britain’s move speaks to a political class that prefers easy symbolism to hard reality. It shows a government still stuck in the imperial mindset. It is convinced that it can declare legitimacy into being, that problems rooted in religious war, clan rivalries and ideological extremism can be solved by Westminster’s signature on a piece of paper.

It also shows cowardice. Western governments either do not understand what this conflict is about, or they do understand it and are happy to give in to the loudest mob and to narrow political interests. The chants on Britain’s streets – ‘From the river to the sea’ – echo the rhetoric of Hamas that seeks to erase Israel. To capitulate to those voices is not pragmatism, but appeasement.

The uncomfortable truth is that this conflict is not about lines on a map. Hamas is waging a religious war against Jews. To pretend otherwise is wilful blindness. To recognise a Palestinian state now is not an act of courage, but of weakness in the face of pressure from anti-Israel and anti-Western extremists.