Though the Gaza war started under the Tories, it has inherited the UK’s involvement in the war and its failure to stop the bloodshed.
Twelve months of fighting speaks for itself:
According to Al Jazeera, an estimated 42,612 Palestinians died in Gaza and 742 in the West Bank have been killed over the last twelve months.
Israel, by comparison, has suffered 1200 civilian casualties, with 796 deaths reported by the IDF and security forces.
Lebanese casualty reports approximate those of Israel, standing at 2000 as of 4 October, doubling in September.
It’s not as though the United Kingdom could stop what has happened. That would be an imperial conceit of the worst kind.
The fact is that under Rishi Sunak, the British government did nothing constructive to influence the course of the conflict.
Nevertheless, Britain remains on the side of Netanyahu’s war government.
“We stand with Israel and her right to self-defence in the face of this aggression,” Keir Starmer told the country last week.
The British army had just helped defend Israel from a shower of almost 200 missiles fired from Iran, a joint effort with the United States and France.
Throughout the war, the RAF has been providing Israel with intelligence and logistics support from its bases in Cyprus, Akrotiri and Dhekelia.
These two colonial-era bases—still part of British global sovereignty—are convenient launching pads for Middle East operations.
This should be very awkward for the Labour Party since its leadership has been pretending to want a ceasefire and a two-state solution.
The former was a concession in the face of massive protests; the latter is a mere fig leaf for a failed vision.
Antiwar Consensus
The year of bloodshed for Palestinians has been a year of double-speak and equivocation for Keir Starmer.
The premier opposed calls for a ceasefire for as long as possible, preferring to argue for meaningless “pauses” in the war.
Starmer argued a complete ceasefire would leave Hamas in power.
The fact that it would end suffering in Gaza and serve as leverage to secure the release of Israeli hostages was lost in the aftermath of 7 October.
This put Labour at odds with public opinion, which has only become more sympathetic to the Palestinians during this war.
Most Britons – about 76% – wanted a ceasefire last year, but this demand was portrayed as support for Hamas by the right-wing press.
The pro-ceasefire demonstrations in London were condemned as Antisemitic hate marches and even as a sign of a coming ethno-conflict by rightwingers.
This slander didn’t stop the demonstrations, and a new antiwar consensus emerged.
However, this consensus is locked out of Westminster with the help of courtiers in the media.
The Labour Party started to feel the pressure from the start, as some of its safest seats were suddenly threatened.
As a result, over 50 Labour MPs rebelled against Starmer to support a ceasefire in November. But it wasn’t until January that the Labour Party began to change its position and adopt a ceasefire policy (albeit with caveats).
None of this would have happened without months of demonstrations, including protests outside Labour HQ.
But campaigners have not been satisfied with the concessions.
One day in April, Starmer found peaceful protesters had laid shoes of children outside his front door to draw attention to the suffering of Palestinians.
Naturally, the former human rights lawyer called the police.
Now, the Labour leadership pretends it was always for a ceasefire and always on the side of Palestinian rights.
Keir Starmer tore up Labour’s commitment to recognise Palestine in January and later pledged to do so once in power.
No matter what Foreign Secretary David Lammy says on Twitter, the truth is the Labour government wants to continue backing Netanyahu.
Like most EU and NATO member states, the United Kingdom largely agrees with Israel’s strategic vision of the Middle East.
The plight of the Palestinians, as this war has so far shown, is a secondary consideration, if it matters at all.
Cosmetic Adjustments
The Labour government has restricted the sale of specific military components to Israel.
While it’s a welcome gesture, the restrictions are mainly symbolic and have been heavily criticised for being inconsequential.
If Starmer was truly serious, the MoD could suspend its numerous contracts with Israeli defence concerns, which, for example, supply the British army with anti-tank missiles and vehicle countermeasures.
Few topics have become hotter on the British left than the military’s growing reliance on Israeli equipment.
Like many NATO member states, the UK has a growing appetite for Israeli weapons systems, in no small part due to the war in Ukraine. Even the Spanish government, which is highly critical of Bibi’s war in Gaza, buys an enormous amount of Israeli kit.
The story of Labour’s decision to withhold arms began officially in the summer.
The government initially tried to kill it. Lammy suggested the government would not be cutting off arms exports, anticipating Iran’s response to the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
Lammy was one of the loudest voices against a ceasefire on the Labour frontbench – until this position became untenable.
The foreign secretary has since gone from defending the Israeli air strike on the Jabalia refugee camp as “legally justified” in 2023 to restoring funding to UNRWA in July.
This journey maps exactly how Labour wants to have it both ways on Israel and Palestine. The party of the working class is also a party of the British state and its long history of imperialism.
Just as it has faced protests, the British government has undoubtedly felt the pressure in backroom lobbying from Arab Gulf states. These countries were fostered by the British Empire and still have some influence in the Foreign Office.
Even before Labour came to power, Rishi Sunak carried out a similar policy.
Sunak pledged full support for Israel against Hamas while quietly, the British government was dragging its heels on arms exports without formally suspending sales.
Past British governments have done the same during Israel’s wars. Margaret Thatcher imposed an official arms embargo at the start of the 1982 Israel-Lebanon war.
Thatcher’s embargo lasted until 1994.
What’s changed since the mid-1990s is that Britain has favoured more significant trade with Israel for straightforward economic reasons.
But it’s only since the War on Terror that the UK became increasingly pro-Israel.
New Labour later sold arms components to Israel used in Operation Cast Lead. After this became public, the Foreign Office rowed back on sales, and Foreign Secretary David Miliband was forced to own up to lying about the exports.
Five years later, David Cameron imposed restrictions during Operation Protective Edge. By contrast, Keir Starmer was slower and more timid, preferring to wait until the pressure became irresistible.
This decision concerned the export licenses for components used in ‘offensive’ military technology while allowing the export of parts used for ‘defensive’ weaponry and equipment.
Meanwhile, most of Europe has withheld arms, except Germany, which is ranked the second-largest arms supplier to Israel after the US.
British flexibility on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has never been more limited. Whatever the reason – Holocaust guilt or realpolitik – Labour lacks the will to act independently.
The best it can do is condemn Israelis and Palestinians to perpetual conflict.
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Photograph courtesy of Alisdare Hickson. Published under a Creative Commons license.
