The new reality of Britain’s more combative, strained relationship with Israel began at 5.52pm on Monday, when a Downing Street official pressed send on a statement by UK prime minister Keir Starmer.
Co-signed with prime minister Mark Carney of Canada and France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, the missive hinted at sanctions against Israel if it didn’t unblock aid to Gaza and cease bombing. It directly threatened sanctions over the building of illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
It also called out Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, by name. The diplomatic gloves were off.
“We will not stand by while the Netanyahu government pursues these egregious actions,” said the stern message, as the leaders lambasted Israel for imposing “intolerable” suffering.
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UK-Israel relations plunge as calls grow in Britain to recognise Palestine
Yet it was the final, less remarked-upon paragraph that truly stunned Israeli diplomats in London and angered their government in Jerusalem. There in black and white was a clear threat to recognise the state of Palestine that Netanyahu has sworn will never happen on his watch.
“[W]e are committed to recognising a Palestinian State as a contribution to achieving a two-state solution and are prepared to work with others to this end,” the statement concluded.
Britain is among those nations that have always acknowledged they would one day recognise Palestine, but only late in the peace process to help get a deal over the line. Now, the UK appeared to be vaguely saying it would do it sooner.
France has hinted it could proceed with recognition as soon as next month at a Saudi conference in New York. Britain is expected to hold off for now, but has left the possibility dangling. Yet as the weekend drew in, Starmer’s Labour government found itself under pressure from a growing cohort of its own MPs to step up the pace and hold a vote in parliament on the formal recognition of Palestine.
“I think Britain and France should recognise Palestine at the New York conference chaired by Saudi Arabia in June,” said Emily Thornberry, the senior Labour MP who chairs the UK’s foreign affairs committee, in remarks first reported in the Daily Telegraph.
Instead of this being, as Britain hinted before, a late move in peace talks for a two-state solution, Thornberry suggested it should be a “first step [for] a new peace deal proposal”. She is not seen as close to Starmer, who shocked her last July by leaving her out of his cabinet after she served as shadow attorney general. Yet her position on Palestine is virtually mainstream among her Labour colleagues.
MPs from across the house lined up to ask Lammy to speed up recognition of Palestine
Israeli officials this week were left seething over the change in tone. The ensuing barrage of brickbats that flew between Jerusalem and London illustrated the plunge in relations.
The UK’s tougher stance towards Israel, which has recently stopped the flow of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza amid a fresh military offensive against Hamas, is a new departure for Starmer personally. He first made his mark as Labour leader by tackling anti-Semitism. He is also married to a Jewish woman who has relatives in Israel. Yet this week, he warned its government it would be committing a war crime if it went ahead with a plan for the forced displacement of Gazans.
Starmer followed up his Monday statement with more pressure the next day. On Tuesday, Britain cancelled three-year-old talks with Israel on a new trade deal. Hamish Falconer, the Labour minister with responsibility for the Middle East, also summoned Israel’s ambassador in London, Tzipi Hotovely, to the foreign office in Whitehall for a dressing down.
Sources told The Irish Times he handed her an envelope containing a printed statement recording the UK government’s official disapproval of Israel’s actions, and read it to her. Hotovely, a radical right wing politician in Israel before she became a diplomat, is said to have responded by asking Falconer if he felt he would be “on the right side of history”.
The outspoken Hotovely’s term in London ends in the summer. Israel’s next choice as its ambassador to the UK – whether dogmatist or pragmatist – will say much about its intention, or otherwise, to repair relations. This week, meanwhile, the language between both sides grew increasingly undiplomatic.
On Tuesday afternoon, foreign secretary David Lammy made a statement to the House of Commons, where he condemned Israel’s “morally unjustifiable” behaviour. He called some members of Netanyahu’s cabinet “extremists” and their views “dangerous, repellent and monstrous”.
MPs from across the house lined up to ask Lammy to speed up recognition of Palestine, on which he wouldn’t be drawn. Yet he hinted liberally that the UK was “in talks” on the matter.
Israel’s government hit back hard, especially after two of its embassy employees in Washington were murdered by a gunman on Wednesday night.
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Gideon Sa’ar, the Israeli foreign minister, accused Starmer and other European leaders of “incitement to hatred”. Its diaspora affairs minister, Amichai Chikli, accused Starmer, Macron and Carney of “emboldening Hamas” with their “cowardice”. He said it would lead to a “price in Israeli blood”.
Then Netanyahu returned the favour to the three leaders who had called him out on Monday. On Thursday evening, he accused Starmer and the others of wanting to see power in Gaza kept by Hamas, which had welcomed their intervention.
“When mass murderers, rapists, baby killers and kidnappers thank you, you are on the wrong side of justice, the wrong side of humanity,” said Netanyahu.
Some of his growing band of critics in Britain say the same about him. Meanwhile, British-Israeli relations have entered a new and more unpredictable phase. Neither side seemed sure this week where it would lead.
