‘Keir Starmer’s Palestine Recognition Delay Is Obscene – The UK Must Act Now Without Conditions’

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced that the UK Government will unilaterally recognise the State of Palestine. However, the announcement was tainted by a grim caveat: that his Government will move down this path unless Israel takes “substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza” and commit to a two state solution, effectively making the recognition of Palestine contingent upon Israeli good behaviour. 

This is of course obscene, considering that Israel has already massacred well over 55,000 Gazans, and is now subjecting them to what the World Food Programme has described as a “man-made famine,” in which “more than 500,000 people – nearly a quarter of Gaza’s population – are enduring famine-like conditions, while the remaining population is facing emergency levels of hunger.”

Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu – who, let us not forget, has an ICC arrest warrant out on him for crimes against humanity – has openly stated his intention to ensure the people of Gaza have no homes to return to.  

For decades, successive UK Governments have insisted that recognising a Palestinian state must wait until the right political conditions emerge, as part of a negotiated peace deal. Indeed, Starmer’s spineless announcement – in the face of what UN experts have called a genocide – is but a continuation of that same policy.

The Palestinians – who are being relentlessly bombed in their homes, hospitals and streets, and now starved to death en masse – must wait for the “right conditions” before their dystopian nightmare ends and they are finally given what they have been calling for since 1948: a state of their own.

There are, however, some signs of a rising tide of morality among British politicians: more than 200 MPs from across the political spectrum publicly called on the Government to recognise the State of Palestine.

Starmer’s weak-kneed policy looks a lot like an attempt to placate those voices, while at the same time not frustrating the Trump administration which would likely oppose any immediate recognition, as it has with France’s decision to recognise Palestinian Statehood in the upcoming UN General Assembly meeting in September. 

While Starmer’s aides are said to have dismissed the French move as mere “symbolism,”  this is trivial and misses the point. Across Europe, the tide appears to be turning: Spain, Ireland, Norway and others have given recognition and 147 of the UN’s 193 member states – that’s over three-quarters – now recognise Palestinian statehood. Canada is the latest UK ally to announce its intention to formally recognise Palestine.

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Change at Home

There is of course an almost incomprehensible brutality fuelling this urgency. Alongside the famine itself, since Israel canceled the UN’s aid delivery mechanism into Gaza in May, the IDF has shot dead over 1,000 Palestinian civilians trying to access the little bit of food that has managed to enter the war-torn strip. 

A leading expert on food health recently said, “there is no case since World War II of starvation that has been so minutely designed and controlled,” as what Israel is currently doing in Gaza. Cases of malnutrition among children have increased by over 300% since May of this year. 

In the face of this unbridled barbarity, British Government equivocation must end. The British public is no longer fooled by arguments that this is all in the name of Israel’s “self-defence”. Poll after poll shows that a growing majority among Britons want their Government to stake a morally decisive stance.

A recent survey found that 65% of the British public support a full arms embargo on Israel. Another revealed  that 55% opposed Israel’s aggression, with 82% of them framing Israel’s onslaught as “genocide”.

And among Labour voters – that is, the very base that brought Starmer to power – about  43% support the immediate recognition of a Palestinian state. Just 2% opposed it. Even usually right-wing outlets like the Daily Express have stood on the side of what is right and plastered their front pages with the words “stop this now”.

The British people are ahead of the politicians on what is one of the biggest issues in global politics today. Of course, they have already marched since October 2024 in their hundreds of thousands strong in cities up and down the country. Yet, they still wait for moral leadership.

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A Unique Responsibility 

Britain, which as the former colonial power with a deep historic responsibility to the people of Palestine, must not be left in the dust on the question of recognition.

Britain has something of a chance remaining to do the morally right thing by joining most UN member states and its closest European ally on the side of justice. We must affirm that the Palestinians are not a people to be endlessly managed, marginalised and mourned – but are a people like all others: entitled to sovereignty and self-determination.

It was Britain’s 1917 Balfour Declaration that promised a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, without consulting or compensating its indigenous Arab population. It was under British mandate rule that the seeds of this conflict were sown. 

Today, the UK remains a key player on the world stage: a member of the UN Security Council, a major arms exporter, and a close ally of both the US and Israel. Needless to say, we cannot undo history. But we can decide what role we play now. We can remain on the sidelines, watching as another generation of Palestinians is bombed, starved and dispossessed, or, we can act. 

Recognition of a Palestinian state will not end the genocide overnight, nor the occupation. Recognition alone is not going to dismantle Israel’s structures of apartheid, nor ground its fighter jets.

What it will do is contribute to the sea change that is occurring internationally around the recognition of Palestinian statehood which itself could change the terms of the conversation.

The hope is that this will help to instil greater proportionality and balance into international diplomacy between the Palestinians and Israelis. It will help to give Palestinians full access to the international forums and legal avenues which, up until now, have unjustly been denied. It will send a message to those Israeli ministers who have unashamedly expressed their intent to evacuate Gaza of all its inhabitants that Palestinian lives are not expendable. 

The time for Britain to recognise the State of Palestine is now,  not when Israel decides to halt its genocide. We cannot wait for another few thousand to be butchered, remaining healthcare facilities to be levelled or for the engineered starvation of more children.

Starmer must join the majority of UN members states and acknowledge the direction of UK public opinion by recognising a Palestinian state now. 

We must recognise Palestine for the simple reason that it is the morally right thing to do amidst the decades long occupation. Perhaps most importantly, unconditional recognition will send a signal to the long-suffering Palestinians that we acknowledge their right to sovereignty, self-determination and freedom from Israeli occupation. We must give the Palestinians the hope that they desperately deserve now, without conditions.