UK Recognising Palestine – too little and a century late
JVL Introduction
Professor Emeritus Avi Shlaim is clear that the UK’s recognition of Palestine is too little and too late. He outlines Britain’s historic complicity from Balfour to the current genocide.
The media is full of the anger of THE (sic) Jewish Community, Israel and the USA; the Daily Express said it was an insult that Labour issued a ‘Shana Tova’ message after recognising the State of Palestine but there is limited attention given to the Palestinian response to the decision, Meanwhile, in their fury, government figures in Israel respond by calling for the annexation of the West Bank. This is who we are dealing with, keep on punishing Palestinians even when you are angry at other countries, although they might expel UK’s Ambassadors (see eg The Guardian.)
To the arms embargo that he advocates, we would add full trade, financial, academic and cultural sanctions; as always we call for these sanctions to be against the State, not individuals. Consider, eg as Israeli conductor Ivan Volkov who used his platform at the BBC proms to express his opposition to what Israel is doing in Gaza. (He was later arrested protesting peacefully at the border with Gaza.)
LL
This article was originally published by TRT World on Sun 21 Sep 2025. Read the original here.
Britain’s recognition of Palestine is pathetically little and a century late
PM Starmer’s acknowledgement of Palestinian statehood cannot obscure the country’s century-old complicity in dispossession and war.
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‘In 1917, Britain, in the infamous Balfour Declaration, pledged its support for the establishment of a “national home” – that is, a state – for the Jewish people in Palestine.’
[HMG] ‘pledged its support’ NO it did not. The text went through half-a-dozen iterations so that if things got tricky HMG could welch upon the declaration. HMG ‘viewed with favour’ and ‘would use its best endeavours’ seeking plausible deniability, w[r]iggle room.
“national home” – that is, a STATE – “ emphatically NO. Neither HMG or the Zionists wanted STATE explicitly named in either the 1917 Declaration or the 1922 Mandate… for fear of ‘frightening the (Arab) horses’.
To add insult to injury, the Balfour Declaration referred to the Palestinian majority as “the non-Jewish communities in Palestine”, thereby negating their existence by defining them in terms of what they were not
More tinkering: NOT “the non-Jewish communities in Palestine”, but ‘the EXISTING non-Jewish…’.
https://www.makan.org.uk/hub/glossary/balfour-declaration/
In the words of Lord Balfour, “the four great powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desire and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land. In my opinion that is right.”
“The debate about recognising Palestine was reignited by Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza following the Hamas cross-border blitz of October 7, 2023”. BLITZ? It was was a RAID, a razzia. Israel went straight into hasbara mode… genocide, invasion by land sea and air, existential threat. Who took the trouble to ask: ‘What in the Name of all that’s Holy could conceivably have driven people to commit such barbaric acts of violence? Were they provoked?’. Who knows that they’ve been provoked since1820. Not 1920!
ETHICAL DISCREPANCY
Now that Keir Starmer has recognised Palestine
He might also recognise genocide
And war crimes, the widening gap between
What Israel says and what is really happening
The role that British weapons play in killing
People who are innocent of everything
But breathing geographically. The moral
Inconsistency of bodies buried under rubble