According to Keir Starmer's government this morning, the UK cannot recognise Palestine as a state until Hamas releases all its hostages.
Think about what that means for a moment. Apart from the fact that the demand is not reciprocal, which means it is obviously pro-Israeli, what they are saying is that Hamas is not just the elected government of Gaza (but not Palestine as a whole), but that the two are synonymous. In other words, Hamas (which was initially a Netanyahu-sponsored organisation intended to overturn the Palestine Liberation Organisation) is apparently the only possible government in Palestine. By implication, they are saying Hamas and Palestine are the same, but they clearly are not.
Again, think about the implications of this, and why it so suits them to say it. Applying the same logic to Israel, that country and Netanyahu's government are obviously one and the same in Starmer's opinion. That, very conveniently in their warped way of thinking, means that criticising Netanyahu is by their definition (but not, of course, in reality) anti-Semitic, because he, apparently (and very obvously incorrectly), provides the only possible government in Israel, and they also think Israel is necessarily a Jewish state, which ignores the significant minorities living within it.
And then there is another implication. If to be Palestinian does, by definition, mean you are a part of Hamas, as seems to be the UK government position, then there has been no genocide, but only a war against Hamas, as Israel would have it, and everyone who is Palestinian, even the dying children, are enemies of Israel and so legitimate targets, as Israel often claim.
In other words, the deliberate conflation of these issues by the UK government has four consequences.
It denies the reality of Palestine as a people and their land as a country.
It denies the autonomy and agency of the Palestinian people and their future right to choose their own government.
It explicitly supports the Israeli line that every Palestinian of any age and whatever their political affiliations, including the absence of any, is a legitimate Israeli target for attack.
And, in that case, the UK government is, by implication, supporting the line that there is also no genocide, but just a war.
All of those claims are incorrect, and profoundly so, both legally and ethically. But Starmer and his Cabinet poodles trot them out.
Is it any wonder I loathe them?
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B’Tselem the Israeli Human rights group and Al Jazeera estimate about 10,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons (often with no access for international groups to check)
So far as I recall, we have only had hostages released during a ceasefire.
It suits Israel’s apologists to ignore anything before October 7th attack and anything going on outside Gaza itself. You rightly point out the number of Palestinians held hostage without trial in Israeli prisons. I like to think that recent events have gradually made people pay more attention to what else Israel has been doing. Much of which is terrorist in nature when one looks at what Israelis have been doing in the West Bank, supported by their state and the military.
“Is it any war I loathe them?” It’s no wonder. And no wonder you made that slip.
Edited 🙂
Do you have a source/link for Starmer’s latest bit of lunacy about recognition and hostages, please?
Peter Kyle on the news round this morning.
Aah, Mr. Kyle… that explains a lot!
Dear Mr Murphy
Have you perhaps mistakenly put ‘war’ instead of ‘Wonder’ in the last line of your post above?
Yes, and edited now.
A peevish, lying, authoritarian coward who was fortunate to run against the frothing maw of venom and idiocy that is the modern Tory party.
“Is it any war I loathe them?” For ‘war’, I think you mean ‘wonder’.
Edited, thanks
My youngest son can’t even decide what cereals to eat in the morning, but, according to Starmer’s logic, children younger than my son can actively choose to be a part of Hamas and choose to starve to death in solidarity with them.
Apparently the crew (including a British citizen) of the humanitarian vessel Handala are currently being held hostage by the Israelis, having been taken captive in international waters. Any mention of that by Starmer?
Starmer was the security services choice of UK prime minister.
Interesting. If this is the case it would explain Starmer’s breaking of his pre election promise to entirely legally rescind Johnson’s heinous cover up of state collusion and continuing unjust trashing of Northern Ireland’s Troubles victim’s human rights, in the 2023 N.I. Troubles (Legacy & Reconciliation Act).
Our best hope is that a new UK (or possibly English) gov will decide to ship Starmer and his cabinet off to The Hague on the basis of aiding & abetting genocide. Starmer is a vile zionist & utterly in the pay of the state of Israel – which makes him also guilty of treason against the British state.
Doubtless, as in the mid-2000s & following the invasion of Iraq by B.Liar the warmonger, UK citizens will pay with their lives – through assorted terrorist acts. But Starmer won’t care (& neither did B.Liar). The UK state, dying an inch at a time.
HAMAS should not have taken hostages. Not only is it typical of what is called terrorism (for which the rules of engagement can vary), but it played directly into Israel’s hands. That was a very bad idea indeed. The double standards are horrendous but we know that fascist states always overreact and justify doubling down in response to anything.
Notwithstanding that, I totally understand your feelings about Starmer.
This is the politics of dis-interest and non-engagement with the issue. It betrays that Starmer has already made up his mind. His intransigence is made worse by the disproportionate suffering of Palestinian women and children which he does not take into account. What he should be doing as a politician of international quality is taking into account how both sides have conducted themselves and shepherd both sides to peace and a two-state solution – the latter being the only legitimate way that Israel can exist where it is in my opinion.
If Palestine is to be eradicated before it is recognised as a state or not – this will be a huge stain on the world and it has been done in broad daylight. And it will never be over. Never. That is what Starmer and the other oafs do not realise. And the rest of us will pay for it – Palestinians included.
My feelings on Starmer? It takes a lot of energy to loathe someone. For me, he is beneath contempt, he is a nobody, I mean john Major was portrayed as grey, but Starmer – he is like…………..tracing paper………….? He’s there but…is he? If you saw him in the street as an ordinary person, you’d pay no heed, you would not even acknowledge him because you wouldn’t even notice him I wager.
This is the result of letting rich people decide who our politicians are.
Well said PSR, you have provided thoughtful words where I am speechless. And RJM, it had slipped from my memory that Hamas were once supported by N for his purposes. I’m mentally crumpling up tracing paper and binning it.
‘Sir Keir’s spokesman also told reporters the Palestinian right to statehood was “inalienable” and it was a “question of when, not if” the UK would agree to recognition.
Speaking to BBC Breakfast, Science Secretary Peter Kyle said statehood recognition “has to be part of a process, it has to be used wisely and it has to be done at exactly the right moment to bring maximum influence.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly6zgyy0wjo
So, not inalienable then. He’s just playing games.
Richard – don’t know what your policy is on linking to other sites – would fully understand if you don’t allow.
But this Youtube commentary on Hamas and Israel by the former Swiss/UN intelligence official Col. Jacques Baud from yesterday makes a lot of sense to me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhg0V4Z_TXE
It’s very long but worth listening to the first 20 minutes at least.
I will take a look
Thank you, good information and analysis
This is well worth a watch:
“Prof. Ralph Wilde on the International Court of Justice and why Israeli occupation must end” (July 2025)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgNM0us6EsY
Israel itself is holding over 10,000 detainees:
❌1,419 security prisoners serving sentences imposed by the courts.
❌3,260 detainees who have not yet been convicted (remand detainees).
❌3,629 administrative detainees, who are held without charge or trial.
❌2,454 “unlawful combatants,” a designation given to Gazans arrested during the October 7 attack and subsequently inside the Gaza Strip during the war.
Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/scabies-outbreak-plagues-prisons-as-number-of-security-inmates-hits-new-high/
Thanks
Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds, asked whether the recognition would come in this parliament has said: “In this parliament, yes. I mean, if it delivers the breakthrough that we need.”
Apart from the convenient excuse for not recognising Palestine by the end of the current parliament, if it is possible to argue that it would not deliver a breakthrough, this procrastination would mean that there would be no possibility for any follow up with practical measures by the Starmer government to make a Palestinian state a realistic possibility.
Reynolds should answer the question: Why would further delay make a breakthrough more rather than less likely?
The foot dragging of Starmer’s government is repulsive and inadequate to the needs of the case.
The British government should recognise a Palestine state now, as over 100 countries have already done, and then specify further practical measures it proposes to take, unilaterally and acting with others, during this parliament to make a Palestinian state a reality.
Most people when looking at an empty goal take the easy shot and claim the win.
Starmer instead has picked up the ball, tried to throw it, instead somehow hit the floor in front of him and hit himself in the face.
There are so many easy wins fornthis government and it’s plainly obvious more of the same is exactly what we all did not want.
Do we understand that Starmer would immediately recognise the Palestinian State if Hamas released all the hostages? Somehow I don’t think that’s what he meant. What a brilliant way to put pressure on Hamas if he did make that commitment.
Maybe Starmer feels we’re rushing things. After all, its only 77 years since the Naqba, and a mere 58 years since the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and E Jerusalem. These things take time.
Just because Starmer said these things are a matter for international courts, not politicians, and even though the ICJ declared the occupation illegal over a year ago, we can’t rush things, not even “for the sake of the children”.
(I think I’m getting a bit cynical…)
Justifiably so
I find Jacques Baud to be an excellent source of reasoned, expert commentary.
He is well worth checking in on.
I would be surprised if they’ve thought this through to the degree that you have. As they have regularly shown (highlighted by you) , thinking things through doesn’t appear to be one of their strong points! Hence the u-turns, muddled comms, half-baked policies, etc.
I’m not defending their stance, as it’s inhumane if nothing else. Yet could it just be that they haven’t considered the wider implications and are simply representing the wishes of the Israeli lobbyists that have funded Labour? We know Labour under Starmer are *very* receptive to lobbyists’ money.
Take heart, muddled comms will no longer be a problem. Starmer has personally appointed David Dinsmore (editor of The Sun 2013-15), as Downing St. Director of Communications (just in time for the Liverpool party conference).
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/keir-starmer-the-sun-government-liverpool-mps-b1240129.html
If you attended any Labour leadership hustings in 2020 you would have heard Starmer pretending to hate The Sun. I attended one in Bristol – he tried to sound sincere about it but failed.
Once he became leader he started writing columns for The Sun. Now a former Sun editor will run his comms team and all that confused comms will be a thing of the past. We can benefit from the clarity of banner populist right wing headlines, all financed by the government.
(IT WAS THE SUN & YVETTE WOT STOPPED THE SMALL BOATS!! etc etc)
I put Starmer well below Johnson in terms of morality.
Way below…
Wow RobertJ, Starmer cannot even fake sincerity. That is what separates him from Blair, the most brilliant faker of the lot. I am beyond disgusted with Starmer, even an automatom must have certain charms. He has none. Labour is finished, whether or not he is ousted, as the rest of the front bench are equally loathsome.
One successful bit of Hasbara (Israeli propaganda) that Wesyern media outlets are happy to perpetuate, is that Hamas (or Palestinians in general) are always the ones who sabotage the peace process in general, and Gaza ceasefire negotiations in particular.
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/1/22/how-israel-has-repeatedly-rejected-hamas-truce-offers
It is also regularly asserted that Hamas refused to recognise the 1967 borders of Israel and Palestine.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/5/2/hamas-accepts-palestinian-state-with-1967-borders
Both these assertions are untrue.
The Likud charter is the document claiming Israeli sovereignty from the Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea whereas Hamas wete proposing concessions to their own position back in 2017.
From the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, to the assassination of Hamas’s chief negotiator during a critical phase of the current slaughter, it is Israel who has always sought to disrupt anything that looked like progress towards a ceasefire or a sustainable just peace.
https://decolonizepalestine.com/myth/palestinians-sabotaged-the-peace-process/
Netanyahu does not want peace now and he never has.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2024/05/02/netanyahu-hidden-recording/
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-07-10/ty-article-timeline/.premium/how-netanyahu-has-systematically-foiled-talks-to-release-hostages-from-hamas-captivity/00000190-9b91-d591-a7ff-fff341120000
(note the source)
Right now Netanyahu is arming Islamist militias to create havoc amongst a starving population, much the same way as he boasted of financing and encouraging Hamas in Gaza with Qatari cash, to weaken the Fatah-led Palestinian authority years ago.
This is what Starmer is helping to sustain.
This is what Starmer lies and dissembles about.
This is the UK state is complicit in.
UK politicians like to invoke the “Blitz spirit” and quote Churchill (we will fight them on the beaches… we will never surrender) – yet they seem to forget that OTHER peoples are capable of the same, and even greater determination. Palestinians are still resisting occupation after 77 years. They will never surrender, and Netanyahu, his terrorist government and his criminal IDF have added tens of thousands to the roll of Palestinian martyrs, and given new generations of Palestinian youth reasons to hate and to kill. Does Starmer think that battle can be kept from our own shores even with Yvette Cooper’s most repressive legislation?
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-05/ty-article/israel-arming-isis-affiliated-anti-hamas-gaza-militia-ex-defense-chief-claims/00000197-3f88-d079-ab97-7fcdd7120000
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/netanyahu-confirms-arming-gazan-clans-whats-wrong-with-that/
Violence begets violence but our leaders are not the slightest bit interested in peace, let alone peace with jutice and reconciliation, because that takes statesmanship, real political courage and moral fibre, and we ran out of that YEARS ago.
Thank you.
Great read all of it.
I’m convinced Starmer without doubt is a supporter of Israel. Equally Starmer in foreign affairs follows the US line. Just like previous British PMs back to Thatcher/Blair.
I’m equally convinced he told Trump that he needed to do something because political pressure was building in the Labour Party and the media.
Trump gave permission after his guys went through the british plan to make noises in NYC by Lammy and in London by Starmer to look as if something serious was being said.
Nothing much will change on the ground I’m sure even though we would all like to see peace.
What animates me is that Starmer is doing this because of the threats to his position not the situation on the ground.
The situation on the ground demanded action long ago.