Telegraph editorial
The recognition of a Palestinian state is one of the gravest errors in our nation’s foreign policy in decades
Tomorrow Sir Keir Starmer will formally announce that Britain will recognise Palestinian statehood. While symbolic in most respects – Britain ceased to be the colonial power in the region in 1948 – there will be at least one real world impact: Hamas will be able to point to a tangible outcome of its terror campaign against Israel, and claim its tactics work.
The Prime Minister is also understood to be preparing further sanctions against Hamas, the first to be imposed by this Labour Government. Hamas is already a proscribed terror group in the UK, with multiple tranches of British sanctions against members and funders set out in the past, but these additional sanctions are welcome as far as they go. Yet we must accept that they will make no significant impact to Hamas’s prospects, and will do little to accelerate the defeat of a genocidal terror group that unleashed latter-day Einsatzgruppen on Jewish civilians on October 7 2023.
In doing so, it seems likely that Sir Keir is striving to appear even-handed, betraying our erstwhile ally Israel while hoping to sweeten the pill by simultaneously hitting Hamas. He surely hopes that this combination will placate the US administration and signal to pro-Israeli British voters that he isn’t singling out the Jewish state for opprobrium, while also demonstrating to far-Left and Israelophobic elements that he agrees with their absurd worldview.
Read also: Starmer’s Middle East madness: Why recognising Palestine is the ultimate in fantasy politics by David Blair, Telegraph
As long as the existence of Israel is seen as an insult, there can be no peace in Palestine by Jake Wallis Simons, Telegraph