CrossFireArabia
By Avi Shlaim
In a historic shift, Britain has officially recognised the state of Palestine, a century after the Balfour Declaration set the course for its dispossession.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer first announced in July that the UK would take this step at the UN General Assembly’s annual meeting in September unless Israel met certain conditions, including agreeing to a ceasefire in Gaza, lifting the ban on humanitarian aid, and reviving the prospect of a two-state solution.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted furiously to the announcement, saying the decision rewarded “Hamas’s monstrous terrorism”. His Foreign Minister, Gideon Saar, threatened “a unilateral decision”, like formally annexing the occupied West Bank, if British and European recognition of Palestine were to go ahead.
At this historical juncture, Britain’s recognition of Palestine as a state is pathetically little, and a century too late.
In 1917, Britain, in the infamous Balfour Declaration, pledged its support for the establishment of a “national home” – that is, a state – for the Jewish people in Palestine.
At the time, the Jews made up just 10 percent of the population of Palestine, and they owned only two percent of the land. Yet, in British eyes, the 10 percent merited the right to self-determination, whereas the 90 percent did not.
To add insult to injury, the Balfour Declaration referred to the Palestinian majority as “the non-Jewish communities in Palestine”, thereby negating their existence by defining them in terms of what they were not.
As Edward Said pointed out, it was a classic colonial document. From 1922 until 1948, Britain ruled Palestine under a League of Nations Mandate, said to be a “sacred trust of civilisation”, to prepare the country for self-government as per their duty under the Mandate.
Instead, Britain betrayed this trust by preparing the country to be taken over by European Jews.
Jewish refugees land at Haifa, Palestine, May 19, 1946; a reminder of the early waves of Jewish immigration that Britain’s policies facilitated while sidelining the Palestinian majority (AP/File).
The history of the British Mandate in Palestine is essentially the story of how Britain stole Palestine from the Palestinians and handed it over to the Zionists.
The cornerstone of the Mandate was to prevent elections until the Jews became the majority.
Britain enabled the tiny Jewish population to embark on the systematic takeover of the whole country, a process that continues to this day. It also thwarted the peaceful coexistence of Jews, Muslims, and Christians that prevailed in Palestine before the imposition of British colonial rule.
Britain abused the Mandate to sponsor and promote Zionist settler-colonialism on the one hand while suppressing Palestinian nationalism on the other.
In this sense, the current Israeli incursion into Gaza is a direct consequence of the Balfour Declaration, which mandated unbridled Zionist takeover of the whole land of Palestine.
This is why Britain’s decision to recognise Palestine today, while carrying historical weight, rings hollow unless it is matched by meaningful action to undo the damage of a century of complicity.
From hollow gestures to present-day complicity
Since 1948, under both Conservative and Labour governments, British policy has been marked by conspicuous support for Israel and total indifference to Palestinian rights, most notably the natural right of the majority to national self-determination.
In 2014, the House of Commons passed a motion for recognising Palestine as a state, supported by 274 MPs with 12 voting against. The vote was a clear reflection of the views and sentiments of Britain as a whole.
Then-prime minister David Cameron, however, dismissed the result as just a symbolic and non-binding gesture that would not affect in any way the foreign policy of his government.
In 2017, on the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, 13,500 people signed a petition calling on the British government to issue an apology for the Balfour Declaration.
Then-premier Theresa May replied that the government had nothing to apologise for; on the contrary, it was proud of the vital role that Britain had played in creating a state for the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland. There was no mention of the Palestinians or of their right to their homeland.
After 1967, a deep contradiction marked British policy on Israel/Palestine. Britain ostensibly supported a two-state solution to the conflict, that is to say, an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, consisting of Gaza and the occupied West Bank, with a capital city in East Jerusalem.
But while advocating a two-state solution, Britain recognised only one state – Israel –ignoring Israel’s consistent rejection of a Palestinian state.
The prospect of a hazy two-state solution remains a convenient but hypocritical cloak for failing to act against creeping Israeli annexation of the occupied territories.
The prospect of a hazy two-state solution remains a convenient but hypocritical cloak for failing to act against creeping Israeli annexation of the occupied territories.
Avi Shlaim
The debate about recognising Palestine was reignited by Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza following the Hamas cross-border blitz of October 7, 2023.
Since that day, the Israeli military have rained death and destruction on the tiny enclave: killing over 64,000 people (mostly women and children); bombing 89 percent of the houses and civilian infrastructure; seriously damaging the healthcare facilities; targeting schools and universities and UN facilities; forcibly displacing 90 percent of the civilian population, in some cases upward of ten times; and using starvation as a weapon of war.
In the course of waging this savage war – ‘Operation A Thousand Swords’, to give it its official name – Israel is also committing the crime of all crimes: genocide.
The Israeli genocide in Gaza is the darkest chapter in the history of the twenty-first century. Despite the horrors that are unfolding daily in front of our eyes, British policy continues to lean strongly in favour of Israel, providing the offender with diplomatic, logistical, intelligence, and military support.
Britain abused its position as a permanent member of the Security Council by vetoing resolutions for a ceasefire in Gaza. The Royal Air Force continues to fly surveillance missions over Gaza and to supply the Israeli forces with valuable intelligence.
The RAF base in Akrotiri, Cyprus, is placed at the service of the Israeli military. Israeli transport planes can stop in RAF bases in Scotland on their way to pick up arms and ammunition from the US.
These same bases are used as a logistics hub for US special forces flights to and from Israel. Yet, British complicity in Israeli war crimes does not stop there.
Even more disturbing is the fact that Britain is Israel’s third biggest arms supplier, after the US and Germany. In September 2024, the UK suspended some licences for arms sales to Israel, but these amounted to less than 10 percent of the total.
So this move amounted to little more than a token gesture to placate the angry public.
Britain’s most egregious moral failure in relation to the war in Gaza lies in shirking its responsibility under the 1948 Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
“Genocide” is defined in the convention as the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”. Most Israeli experts in Holocaust studies, notably Omer Bartov, believe that what Israel is doing in Gaza is a classic case of genocide.
The International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled that the charge of genocide is plausible and ordered Israel to take a series of steps to prevent genocidal rhetoric and actions.
And just last week, a UN investigation confirmed what was known all along: that Israel is committing genocide in Palestine.
Israel defiantly ignored these orders. The British government maintains that there is no conclusive evidence that Israel is perpetrating genocide in Gaza, so it is business as usual.
But under the convention, signatories do not have the luxury of waiting until genocide has taken place before bemoaning it. They have a duty to act to prevent genocide; in Gaza, the British government has singularly and lamentably failed.
Recognition without action
It is against this horrifying backdrop that the British government has decided to recognise the state of Palestine. This recognition is long overdue, but it is still welcome.
It means that four out of the five permanent members of the Security Council now support Palestinian statehood − the other three being Russia, China, and France. The odd one out is the United States, Israel’s closest and most powerful ally.
Although British recognition by itself will change nothing on the ground, it represents a strong political statement, and it removes the contradiction in advocating a two-state solution while recognising only one.
What it will not do is to stop the carnage and destruction, the humanitarian disaster, the genocide in Gaza, and the ethnic cleansing of the occupied West Bank. Diplomatic recognition is, in fact, being used by British policy-makers as a cloak for inaction.
What Britain should do is sanction Israel, suspend all military and intelligence cooperation, and end all arms sales to Israel, as well as the purchase of military hardware and technology from Israel.
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Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza is the most burning issue facing Britain and the rest of the international community today. Failure to act only contributes to Israel’s impunity. It also undermines the rule-based international order, which was put in place after World War II to prevent another Holocaust.
Britain’s half-hearted recognition of Palestine as a state, whilst aiding and abetting the monstrous Israeli war machine, brings to mind the apocryphal tale of Emperor Nero, who played his lyre while the Great Fire of Rome (AD 64) ravaged the city.
Will the British Government continue to play its fiddle whilst Gaza is razed to the ground, or will it finally listen to the masses whom it claims to represent, and acknowledge its own legal and moral obligation to act?
