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International Editor in Jerusalem
EPAPrime Minister Sir Cayer Starmer’s announcement that the UK will recognize Palestinian statehood is a major change in the United Kingdom foreign policy.
He proposed to postpone the recognition if Israel took “essential steps to end the horrific situation in Gaza, to agree to the cessation of the fire and to engage in a long -term, sustainable peace, reviving the prospect of a two -country decision.”
The immediate rejection of Israel to his statement meant that Starmer’s speakers could now start working on what he would say at the UN General Assembly in September. The recognition of the United Kingdom of Palestine seems “irreversible,” according to a senior British employee.
Starmer will not expect a change in Britain’s policy to draw up an independent Palestinian country soon – from the perspective of many Israelis, the best time to do this would never be – but the intention, the diplomatic sources say, is to enable moderates on both sides, Israelis and the Palestinians. The British hopes they can shake them to believe that peace can be possible.
It will not be easy, not only because of the way Hamas killed about 1,200 people, including hundreds of Israeli civilians, and took hostages on October 7, 2023, followed by Israel’s revenge response, which killed tens of thousands of civilians and left a gas in ruins.
This is also because every attempt to make peace has failed. The years of peace talks in the 1990s ended with bloodshed. Any attempt to revive them has collapsed since then.
Israel’s rejection came minutes after Kayer Starmer ended to speak on Downing Street. Later in the evening, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publishes a fierce formulated denial on social media.
“Starmer rewards Hamas’s monstrous terrorism and punishes his victims. The jihadist state on the border of Israel today will threaten Britain tomorrow.”
“Calm for jihadist terrorists always fail. This will also fail you. This will not happen.”
Netanyahu denies that Israel caused hunger and a gas disaster. If he had accepted the UK’s conditions for postponement, his government would have broken up. It depends on the support of ultra nationalist extremists who want to annex the occupied territories and force the Palestinians rather than give them independence.
But Netanyahu is not their prisoner. He built a career opposed to the decision of two countries, the idea that peace could be built by creating an independent Palestinian state with Israel. Earlier this month, he said that the Palestinian state would be the “Starting Chamber” for more October 7 attempts to destroy Israel.
Netanyahu will hope for the strong support of the US government. His position is that the recognition of the Palestinian state is now rewarding Hamas’s terrorism.
Donald Trump told reporters as he flew back to the United States after Golf Intermedia in Scotland that he did not support the Movement of Britain.
The issue of Palestinian sovereignty can become another factor that is divided into transatlantic relations.
By the last few weeks, Keyer Starmer was not convinced that time was correct to recognize Palestine. But photos of Palestinian children in Gaza, starving to death, were the last straw after so many murders and devastation.
The attitudes have hardened in Downing Street and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as in the Labor Party and wider in the UK.
The UK’s decision to join France in recognition of Palestine is another sign of Israel’s growing diplomatic isolation. Two of its main Western allies, the United Kingdom and France, and the two permanent members of the UN Security Council, rejected Israel’s attempt to block their recognition of Palestine when the General Assembly met in New York in September.
In New York, just after Starmer’s statement, David Lamie, the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary, received a large range of applause when he announced the UN decision of the UN Conference on a bilateral decision and recognition of the Palestinian state.
His accusation that Palestinian independence could be deadly to Israel.
“There is no contradiction between Israel’s security support and support for Palestinian statehood. In fact, the opposite is true.”
“Let me be clear: the rejection of the Netanyahu government by a bilateral decision is wrong-the wrong is moral and is wrongly strategic.”
A British employee said the atmosphere was electric, as Lami told the delegates that the UK’s message was made “with the hand of our shoulders history.” Lami continued to deepen in the Imperial Past of the UK in Palestine, which is deeply intertwined with the roots of the conflict between Jews and Arabs to control the land that the UK once rules.
The UK took over Jerusalem from the Ottoman Empire in 1917 and controlled Palestine until 1948, exhausted and beyond the ideas of dealing with what was then a full -scale war between the Arabs and the Jews, she handed over the UN and left Palestine. Immediately, Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion declared independence, and Israel defeated an invasion of Arab armies.
To the United Nations David Lamie reminded that Arthur Balfur, his predecessor as an external secretary in 1917, signed a writing letter promising to “watch with the benefit of the establishment in Palestine of the National Home for the Jewish People.”
But the document, known as Balfour’s declaration, also says that “that nothing will be done, which can hurt the civil and religious rights of non -Jewish communities in Palestine.” He did not use the word Arabic, but it was understood.
Lami said the UK could be proud of the way it helped to lie the foundations of Israel, but the promise of the Palestinians, Lami said, was not respected, and it “is a historical injustice that continues to unfold.”
The British conflict promises nourish and form the conflict. The time traveler, who returned from a century to Palestine in the 1920s, will find tension and violence suppressingly familiar.
The way the United Kingdom hopes to end the misery in Gaza, to create peace in the Middle East, and to eliminate the historical injustice described Lami is to revive the decision of two countries.
The New York conference he was talking to was presided over by France and Saudi Arabia. He prepared a seven -page document aimed at creating a way forward to revive the decision of two countries, which included a conviction by the Arab states of Hamas and his attacks on October 7 against Israel.
The peace window, through the bilateral decision, seemed closed after the collapse of the peace process, which began with real hope in the 1990s.
The UK’s decision to recognize Palestine is a diplomatic shovel to try to open it again.

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