UK may recognize Palestinian State at UN in September: Starmer

LONDON: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Tuesday that Britain is ready to recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly in September unless Israel takes a series of steps to improve the lives of Palestinians.

Britain, if it does so, would become the second Western power on the UN Security Council to do so, after France, reflecting deep isolation over Israel’s conduct in its war against Hamas in Gaza, where a humanitarian catastrophe has occurred and the Palestinian death toll has surpassed 60,000.

Starmer said Britain would take the step unless Israel takes concrete steps to allow more aid into Gaza, made clear there would be no annexation of the West Bank and was committed to a long-term peace process that provides a “two-state solution” – a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel in peace.

Starmer told reporters that the Palestinian people have suffered terrible suffering. “Now, in Gaza, because of the catastrophic failure of aid, we see images of starving children, children too weak to stand, images that will stay with us for the rest of our lives. The suffering must end.”

Starmer said his government would assess in September “the extent to which the parties have delivered on these measures”, but that no one would veto the decision.

He made the decision on Tuesday after recalling his cabinet from the summer recess to work with other European leaders on a new proposed peace plan and how to deliver more humanitarian aid to Gaza’s 2.2 million people.

Successive British governments have said they would formally recognise a Palestinian state when the time is right, without setting a timetable or specifying the necessary conditions.

With international aid agencies warning that people in Gaza are facing food shortages, a growing number of lawmakers from Starmer’s Labour Party are stepping up pressure on Israel to recognise a Palestinian state.

The move comes as President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that France would recognise Palestine as a state in areas it captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

Israel and the staunch supporter of the United States condemned the French move, calling it a reward for the Palestinian Hamas militants who attacked Gaza and whose attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 sparked the current war.

At the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, when Starmer was opposition leader, he fully supported Israel’s right to defend itself. But his stance has become increasingly hardline towards Israel over the years, especially since he was elected prime minister just a year ago.

His government rejected the previous government’s challenge to an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and has suspended some arms sales to Israel.

Last month, Britain imposed sanctions on two far-right Israeli cabinet ministers, Itamar Ben-Governor and Bizet Smotrich, accusing them of repeatedly inciting violence against Palestinians.