Stop dodging the Gaza issue, Prime Minister – get on the right side of history

What is required from this government is strong and unequivocal opposition to any plans to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their lands, writes Dr Sara Husseini, director of the British Palestinian Committee

This week has marked a new, horrifying phase in the long history of attempts to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people from their homeland.

Donald Trump’s comments made during Tuesday’s US-Israeli press conference in Washington – that he wishes to “take over” Gaza, to make it “the Riviera of the Middle East” – constitute the most explicit denial of the Palestinian people’s rights to self-determination and return by any US administration to date.

Away from the headline proposals on Gaza’s future, many Palestinians now fear the prospective Israeli annexation of the occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces have escalated attacks since the Gaza ceasefire agreement.

This moment urgently requires a fundamental shift in UK policy towards Palestine, which, dating as far back as the Balfour Declaration of 1917, has been directed towards the colonial subjugation and dispossession of the Palestinian people. Nothing short of an unequivocal condemnation of Trump’s announcements – and an immediate end to the UK’s own military, economic and diplomatic support for Israel – will suffice.

Yet, when presented with the opportunity at Wednesday’s PMQs to condemn Trump’s comments directly for what they are – an unprecedented call for direct US occupation of Palestinian land and the ethnic cleansing of millions of Palestinians – Keir Starmer dodged the question. There are currently no signs his government has any intention of ending its military support and economic cooperation with Israel, as it is duty-bound to do under a number of international treaties, including the convention on the prevention and punishment of genocide, to which the UK is a signatory.

Trump’s announcements came just hours after he signed an executive order prohibiting any future funding for UNRWA, an attempt to hammer the final nail in the coffin of the UN agency recently banned by Israel. Israel has long targeted UNRWA for its support for Palestinian refugees – a population Israel denies even exists – waging a campaign to discredit and delegitimise the institution.

Now, Israel has moved quickly to shut it down once and for all. Despite bearing historical responsibility for the creation of the original Palestinian refugee crisis, the UK has barely voiced its opposition.

A wounded Palestinian child is carried to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis (EPA)

It is thanks to decades of impunity on the international stage that Israel has been emboldened and enabled to carry out its overarching aims of expanding territorial control while dispossessing the Palestinian people of their homes and land. This has been fueled by the dehumanisation of Palestinians in policy and media discourse on both sides of the Atlantic – and has contributed to the steady erosion of international norms and humanitarian law.

Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets week in and week out, written to their MPs and expressed their strength of feeling at the ballot box. They will now be watching closely to see what Starmer’s government does next.

In the meantime, Palestinians in Gaza and across Palestine remain defiant. Despite having their homes and neighbourhoods razed to the ground – some for the third, fourth, or fifth time in the past decade – they are already rebuilding. Those standing up for Palestinian rights here in the UK will not be placated by mealy-mouthed pronouncements from the prime minister.

What is required from this government is strong and unequivocal opposition to any plans to forcibly displace Palestinians from their lands, immediate steps to end British complicity in Israeli violations and an urgent re-alignment with the majority of the international community in seeking justice and accountability.

As we enter a moment that looks set to shape the future of Palestine and the region, only this path will lead to a just peace. It is incumbent on the UK government to choose this course – and fundamentally break from the policy Britain has pursued for more than a century – to fall at long last on the right side of history.

Dr Sara Husseini is Director of the British Palestinian Committee, an independent organisation working to ensure that British Palestinian perspectives are integral to British public discourse and policy making on Palestine