The Prime Minister has received another letter from MPs, of all parties, demanding the official recognition of ‘Palestine’ as a state.
A constituent has emailed to express her surprise that my name was not among the signatories.
The Simple answer is that I had already sent just such a letter to the Prime Minister in May, signed together with the ‘Father of the House’ , Sir Edward Leigh.
The Government’s reluctance to comply with the request is based on the two arguments. First, one can only play the ‘recognition card’ once, so you need to be sure that you wait and choose the moment when it will have maximum impact. Second, UK policy is to recognise legitimate governments rather than ‘states’ and that, at present, there is no government of anywhere called Palestine.
That we want such a government and state, is not in doubt: it has been the cornerstone of our policy in the region for as long as I can remember. Parliament has already voted for it, but the Government, like its predecessor, continues to wait and watch, notwithstanding that France has now stolen a march, by beating us to it.
Will France’s action make any appreciable difference?
It is too soon to tell, but I am not optimistic.
I accept that were we to announce our recognition for a Palestinian State it would amount to no more than a political gesture. It would be a measure of our anger and frustration at the current state of affairs. Nevertheless, sometimes in politics such gestures are called for.
The reality is that, such has been the pace of illegal settlement by Israelis in the occupied West Bank of the Jordan, any glance at a map, will show that the prospect of an economically viable and geographically contiguous Palestinian state is now almost zero. When I had ministerial responsibility for this brief, I fulminated against the Government of Israel, but to no avail.
Were there to be a Palestinian State there would have to be very extensive rolling-back of Israeli settlements. Those of us who can recall the vicious opposition to the dismantling of some twenty Israeli settlements in Gaza under the orders of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2005, will know how difficult it will be to secure Israeli abandonment of the Occupied Territories to accommodate a Palestinian state. Particularly so, when the settler movement, including elements of Israel’s Government, are motivated by an ideological -even ‘divine’- belief in the restoration of ‘Greater Israel’.
I am deeply Pessimistic.
Hamas chose its moment when it launched the calculated barbarity of its grotesque attack on Israel: It knew that, having sown the wind, Gaza would reap the whirlwind; It did so, in order to scupper the rapprochement between Israel and its Arab neighbours, particularly Saudi Arabia, and to radicalise a new generation.
Israel, by the ferocity of its own response, has fallen into the trap laid by Hamas. I fear that Israel will now be subjected to another generation’s worth of terrorism, and I’m afraid that we are going to experience it too.