So Keir Starmer has announced the UK’s recognition – along with that of Canada and Australia – of the Palestinian state.
A Palestinian state: no change over genocide
The recognition of the Palestinian state means Britain joins the vast majority – more than three quarters of UN member states – and in the recognition and that four out of five permanent UN Security Council members now recognise Palestine, leaving the US, of course, as the only hold-out. This is symbolically significant, but it does not change Britain’s obligation to prevent or end Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its slaughter of the Palestinian people.
That obligation already existed and exists whether Palestine is officially a state or not.
Israel, of course, condemned the three countries’ recognition as ‘rewarding Hamas’ and – because Zionism has no shame – that it means the UK recognises a genocidal entity as a state. It also called it ‘performative’.
Within hours of Starmer announcing that the UK recognition was imminent, the RAF was again flying spy flights over Gaza and enabling Israel’s bombing attacks that have slaughtered approaching half a million children and 700,000 people, almost entirely civilians, so far during its genocide. Such flights have continued for more than a year, with RAF planes providing surveillance as Israel has targeted civilians, children, journalists, aid workers (some British) and medics for slaughter.
Starmer’s government still refuses to recognise Israel’s genocide as genocide – because that would leave it no wiggle room to avoid intervening or else breaking international law.
Israel is right
So for the first time in its history, Israel is right about something, at least as regards the UK government – though not in the way it wants us to take it. Starmer, who to all intents and purposes appears incapable of honesty and humanity, is being performative over the Palestinian state. He is never anything else.
Recognising Palestinian statehood without recognising Israeli genocide only allows Starmer to claim he is doing something when in fact he is doing the opposite: not only standing by and doing nothing, but actively collaborating in Israel’s extermination and, at best, expulsion of the Palestinian people from Gaza so that, as Israel’s fascist ministers have said, there is nothing left to recognise.
Meanwhile, as Starmer performs, scenes like this – an older brother weeping over the body of his little sister, murdered by Israel in the Buraij refugee camp, central Gaza, just moments after Starmer’s announcement:
‘My little sister! O world! I seek refuge in Allah!’
Until Starmer recognises what 99.9% of the world knows – that this is genocide, a Holocaust – everything else he does or says about Israel and Palestine is performative. Just not in the way Israel means it.
Featured image via the Canary
