War on Gaza: How Starmer’s Labor government enabled Israel’s genocide

When a new Labor government was elected in the UK a hundred days ago, some held a glimmer of hope that it might be marginally better than its Tory predecessor. Would there be significant changes in British policy on Gaza and towards the Palestinians?

The bare minimum hope was that Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his Foreign Secretary David Lammy would show greater urgency to stop the Israeli genocide.

Instead, the last 100 days have witnessed political complacency and complicity as Palestinians and Lebanese experienced carnage, devastation and death – and in Gaza, extinction and annihilation – including the gruesome video of 19-year-old student Sha’ban al-Dalou being burned alive in a tent where he was displaced by an Israeli airstrike that hit Al-Aqsa Hospital.

Israel’s promises to do to Lebanon what it did to Gaza are being fulfilled. No number of statements about the British government’s “concern” about leaving office can ever match the growing list of Palestinians and Lebanese killed, maimed and displaced by Israeli bombing.

“Gaza is being wiped out before our eyes,” a group of 15 NGOs said this month, citing the British government’s failure to comply with international law.

Many of these organizations, with local expertise and personal commitment, had already submitted a 100-day plan to the government in July. This included an end to all arms sales to Israel, securing a permanent ceasefire and respecting the independence of both the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

It was welcome news that the British government reversed some of the previous government’s appalling decisions: it restored funding to UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, and dropped its objection to the ICC’s request for arrest warrants against the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Ministry fall Minister Yoav Gallant.

That even the previous government considered sanctions against far-right ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Belazel Smotrich shows that the current government has failed to act, especially when the genocidal rhetoric of these extremists is so clear.

There are no excuses for the Labor government not to sanction these ministers and stop all arms sales to Israel. But British policy needs to go much further in tackling Israeli impunity and lack of accountability.

Relations with Israel, which is neither a bona fide actor nor an ally, must be fundamentally realigned.

Free crimes

If the British government believes in the human rights and dignity of Palestinians – that they too deserve justice and accountability – then Israel’s impunity must end.

Until now, Israeli crimes have been free. The world’s failure to hold Israel accountable in Gaza and the West Bank meant Netanyahu was confident the same would be the case in Lebanon. If the UK believes in the United Nations, why the silence when Israel wanted to designate one of its organizations, UNRWA, as a terrorist organization? The Knesset votes for his withdrawal from Jerusalem and elsewhere in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

A similar silence followed Israeli attacks on UN personnel in southern Lebanon.

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Governments and politicians often accuse human rights and aid organizations of lacking gratitude. Their accusations against the Palestinians are even more strident: that decisions that are kept to a minimum or a small change of course warrant a lot of praise and congratulatory statements – or that the government should be a little more lenient simply because it is not as outwardly hostile as it is the previous one.

Even after 100 days in power, Starmer’s government continues to downplay the extent of the suffering of Palestinians and Lebanese, as it did when in opposition. She doesn’t seem to understand people’s sadness and anger over what is happening to them.

The British government and its allies are at odds with what their public thinks and demands. According to a recent opinion poll commissioned by Medical Aid for Palestine and my organization, the Council for Arab-British Understanding, 58 percent of the British public support a complete ban on weapons against Israel. Fully 84 percent believe that ICC arrest warrants should be respected. Such numbers exist all over Europe, even in Germany.

This spinelessness has consequences. The US government will take Britain for granted. Israel will also only see weakness

There appears to be a complete lack of understanding of the national and international anger over the position of the UK and Labor on this issue. Britain’s response to Israel’s war on Gaza has destroyed its reputation.

While some expected Labor to do significantly better than the previous government, the reality is that it did only marginally less poorly. While the Tories had nothing to lose politically over Palestine, which is not a key concern for their voter base; In contrast, the core of the Labor Party supports Palestinian rights. Starmer has lost their support.

The UK’s failure to comply with international law regarding Israel has undermined the credibility of the party’s claim that international law is at the heart of Labor policy. This is despite the fact that the Prime Minister, Foreign Minister and Attorney General are human rights lawyers and are certainly aware of how Israel has flouted international law.

Starmer may never truly recover from his comments in October 2023, when, as leader of the opposition, he said Israel had the right to cut off water and electricity supplies to Gaza. He later supported Israel’s months-long war and called for a ceasefire only after tens of thousands of Palestinians were killed.

His actions since then have shown that the party leadership has never learned from these disastrous positions, despite the anger of Labor MPs, party members and the public.

When Starmer became Prime Minister he had a small window to prove the doubters wrong. He failed.

Out of sync

Israel is on trial at the International Court of Justice for genocide. The government says nothing and considers evidence of genocide to be unhelpful. Would ministers feel the same if they were victims of Israel’s atrocities?

The Labor government has also been largely silent on the International Court of Justice’s opinion that the occupation is illegal, that Israeli practices amount to systematic discrimination, that Israel must pay reparations to Palestinians, and that a system of apartheid likely exists in the occupied Palestinian territories, and Although at the international level, complicity with Israel’s illegal acts must come to an end. That was in July.

It states that it agrees with the core findings of the ICJ, but does not specify what these are. The government has not declared that the occupation was unlawful. There was no call to dismantle illegal settlements. It should take measures to ban trade with settlements and its failure to do so must be viewed as complicity.

A stunning lack of urgency coupled with complacency characterizes the approach of this government, like its predecessor. British policy is completely out of step with the catastrophic emergencies on the ground, despite endless warnings that the failure of a ceasefire in Gaza would lead to a wider regional war. This is the case now, and the consequences will be global.

Britain’s political leadership was woefully ill-equipped to deal with the horrors faced by Palestinians in Gaza. Calculations were probably made that things would never be as bad as they were, or that Netanyahu would ultimately behave rationally; The Labor leadership expected it would all be over before they took office.

Instead of preventing this regional disaster, Starmer and Lammy have focused on cozying up to Washington because they are nervous about the outcome of the November election. This is both political stupidity and spinelessness, and it has consequences – especially when Israeli government officials frequently announce to the world who they are, including numerous genocidal statements about Gaza and Lebanon.

The US government will take Britain for granted. Israel will also only see weakness.

The United Kingdom is also involved in the ongoing war, as parts of the F-35 fighter jets bombing Gaza and Lebanon are manufactured in Britain. When Lammy said last month “with regret” that around 10 percent of Britain’s arms licenses to Israel would be suspended, it was as if he was embarrassed to call Israel to account, even in this tenuous form – a far cry from the staunch defense of it People lives, rights and dignity that should have been.

Israel is still rewarded with ally status, its “right to self-defense” is still praised despite the genocide, an interpretation of “self-defense” that is a cruel fallacy and synonymous with atrocity.

Regrettably, the dehumanization of Palestinians and Lebanese underlines the lack of action to end this genocide, which has been exacerbated by the anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab racism of the British political class.

The experiences of those suffering from apartheid, occupation and genocidal violence – all broadcast live to the world – continue to be denied.

We cry out for principled and compassionate political leadership that stands in solidarity with those who endure genocide and seeks to urgently end it, rather than shamelessly siding with those who perpetrated it.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.