The symbolism of Palestinian statehood matters. For months, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his far-right coalition allies have cruelly laboured to make Gaza an uninhabitable hellscape. In the West Bank, the relentless expansion of Israeli settlements is likewise intended to foreclose, for ever, the possibility of a viable, independent Palestinian state. Mr Netanyahu’s approach to calls for a two-state solution in the Middle East has been to systematically work to ensure it never happens.
Sir Keir Starmer has thus sent a welcome signal by declaring that, in the absence of a ceasefire and a revived peace process, Britain will move to formally recognise Palestine. Against a backdrop of images of starvation in Gaza that recall the 20th-century horror of Biafra or Ethiopia, Sir Keir’s intervention (and that of the French president, Emmanuel Macron) gestures to the necessity of creating a different future to the one envisioned by Israel’s extremist government.
