The image stays with you: this week it has covered the front pages of the world’s newspapers. A mother, Hedaya al-Muta’wi, worn down and bruised by 21 months of conflict, cradles her child, Mohammed, who is swaddled in a bin bag. The child has lost a third of his body weight, he now weighs 6kg. Such images are not unique in Gaza, where starvation has proliferated since the blockade of humanitarian aid. The international community is watching in horror, pleading with Israel to reconsider. On Sunday, the Israeli government issued a temporary reprieve, allowing aid deliveries into parts of Gaza.
In the UK, there is pressure on the government to officially recognise the state of Palestine. This pressure originally mounted from the backbenches, but now, even members of the cabinet (Shabana Mahmood, Wes Streeting and Hilary Benn) are ramping up their private calls for Starmer to recognise Palestinian statehood. Over the weekend, 220 MPs from nine political parties – including 131 Labour MPs – signed a letter calling for the immediate recognition of Palestine. In the run up to the 2024 general election, the party’s manifesto included a pledge to recognise a Palestinian state as a contribution towards a renewed peace process which results in a two-state solution, but a year on, and both Starmer and his Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, are yet to make good on this promise.
The government’s current position is that the UK will acknowledge Palestinian statehood as part of a peace process, but only at the point of “maximum impact”. On Saturday, Starmer doubled down, rejecting renewed calls for the UK to reconsider and immediately recognise a Palestinian state, reasserting the UK’s alignment with the US on this issue (a move which one cabinet minister told The Times was “deeply inadequate”).
The opportunity for Starmer to recognise the Palestinian state has presented itself more than once. Most recently, it was thought that Starmer might wait to go ahead with recognition alongside the French President, Emmanuel Macron. The UK and France argue a historical responsibility for the continuation of a Palestinian community in the Middle East, and so plenty suspected the countries would make a dual statement. But the opportunity for joint Franco-UK recognition has now passed. On Thursday 24 July, Macron announced France’s intention to recognise Palestine at the upcoming UN general assembly. (Starmer, on the other hand, almost simultaneously released a statement sticking to the government line).
Backbench MPs are losing their patience. Rachael Maskell, who lost the Labour whip last week following her involvement in the welfare rebellion, believes “time is running out” for any governmental recognition of Palestine to have its desired effect. “We should have recognised Palestine many, many years ago,” she said, “it’s been Labour party policy since 2014”. Maskell was one of 60 MPs to sign a letter to the Foreign Secretary in July calling for Palestine’s immediate recognition. Ian Byrne, the Labour MP for Liverpool West Derby agreed: “We had a vote over a decade ago about Palestine. [Recognition] was in the manifesto. What we’re seeing now with the genocide, there’s the political will from all sides of the house to do something.”
Now is the time for the UK to step up and take international responsibility, Byrne said. “The UK has the opportunity to do the right thing. We are one of the world leaders. Sometimes you need a leader to take the lead.” He criticised the government for acting “extremely slowly” on Gaza. More moderate back-bench Labour MPs are also ramping up the pressure on the government. One member of the 2024 intake told me, “It’s beyond horrific, we have to seriously consider our relationship with Israel.”
Israel has now offered a brief cessation of its full scale aid blockade, and Lammy has said the channelling of aid into the Gaza strip must be “urgently accelerated”. But the government’s position on recognising Palestine has not changed.
Still, there are other levers which the UK could pull to put pressure on the Israeli government outside of the recognition of Palestine, and pressure is mounting on the government to use them. No country is likely to get involved in this conflict militarily, unless a UN peacekeeping force is assembled. Instead, more substantial diplomatic strategies could be implemented, such as suspending the UK-Israel trade agreement and imposing sanctions, not only on the most outspoken ministers (as the UK has already done with Bezalel Smotrich and Ben Gvir), but all Israeli political and military leaders involved in the conflict.
This is what Byrne, Maskell and others on the Labour backbenches have been calling for. Byrne said there must be an immediate “arms embargo” and “comprehensive sanctions” on Israeli officials. He also called for military cooperation to be ended. And it is not just Labour. Kit Malthouse, the Conservative MP for North West Hertfordshire said Lammy could end up in the Hague over his inaction on Gaza as he called on the government to press for an immediate ceasefire. This week the Daily Express carried a front page bearing the face of an emaciated Palestinian child crying “enough is enough”: concern over the plight of Palestinians now transcends party politics.
This is unlikely to be an electoral downfall for Keir Starmer. But, with the pro-Gaza independent MPs taking seats last summer that were otherwise ordained for Labour, it is obvious that this is damaging to the party on its left flank. The Prime Minister may continue to prevaricate. But were we at the polls tomorrow, votes would be shed because of it.
[See more: The abomination of Obama’s nation]
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