Yesterday, Keir Starmer announced that ‘unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza’, the British government will recognise the state of Palestine by September this year. While Starmer will claim that this half-commitment represents major action taken to address the horrors being faced by Palestinians in Gaza, in reality this announcement will do nothing to end Israel’s genocide or British complicity in its war crimes.

Facing increasing pressure from the public horrified by the scenes of Palestinian children being starved to death by Israel, Starmer has been forced into this position. Last week, on 48-hours’ notice, the Palestine Solidarity Campagin (PSC) mobilised over 10,000 people to Downing Street for an emergency protest, with thousands more people protesting in over 50 local actions across the country.

Together, we laid pots and pans on Starmer’s doorstep to represent the more than 1,000 Palestinians who have been killed queuing for food in the shooting galleries of the so-called ‘aid distribution centres’. Even previously silent public figures, organisations and media outlets have in recent weeks found it impossible to ignore the outpouring of disgust at Israel’s actions. And certainly, Starmer is feeling the pressure of Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s nascent party, which threatens to claim hundreds of thousands of dissatisfied voters from Labour, at least in part due to his positions on Palestine.

But Starmer’s announcement promises no real action to address the scenes of forced starvation that have gripped the British public. There will be no immediate pressure on Israel to force them to allow in the aid required to end this forced starvation. There will be no end to the massacres at aid sites. The British-made F35s will continue to drop 2000-pound bombs on displaced Palestinians sheltering in tents, and the British government will continue to consider Israel an ally.

The British government currently bemoans the images of horror, but it continues to act as partner in the genocide by sustaining trade with Israel — including weapons and other munitions and by implementing limited sanctions on a few individual ministers, as though Israel’s genocide is being engineered and carried out by ‘a few bad apples’.

Last month, dozens of Palestinian civil society groups, including the Palestine New Federation of Trade Unions and the Palestinian BDS National Committee, signed a unified call to action ahead of the originally scheduled ‘High-Level International Conference on the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine’. Yesterday, after conclusion of the conference, the groups reiterated their demand, stating:

This is not the time for repackaged failures. It is a long-overdue moment for concrete action: meaningful accountability, sustained international pressure, and urgent sanctions to dismantle Israel’s unlawful regime and uphold the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people’.

This coalition has laid out, unequivocally, what is required from Britain and other states to end Israel’s genocide. That means doing everything in its power to secure an unconditional ceasefire, the withdrawal of Israeli military forces from Gaza, and the immediate, unrestricted provision of humanitarian assistance. It means an immediate and comprehensive arms embargo on Israel, including an end to all military cooperation. States must also cut off economic aid and cancel any cooperation or trade agreements that help sustain Israel’s occupation and apartheid regime.

The call is equally clear that sanctions must target the Israeli state as a whole, not just a handful of individuals, including measures such as expelling ambassadors, suspending all official contact, freezing assets, issuing travel bans, and pushing for Israel’s expulsion from the United Nations. Governments must back accountability efforts in international legal forums like the ICC and ICJ. And crucially, they must affirm the full rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination and return — rights which cannot be replaced by a conditional or symbolic gesture of limited state recognition.

This latest announcement fails to meet any of these demands. Starmer cannot even commit to the largely symbolic gesture of recognising a Palestinian state, without using it as a bargaining chip with Israel in a futile attempt to convince them to end their genocide and kicking the can down the road to September to assess if they are meeting his, in any case inadequate, criteria. If the government is to pursue the recognition of a Palestinian state, it must be unconditional. The Palestinian people have an unalienable right to self determination and return, and the illegal occupation of their land must end immediately.

It is obvious to anyone who has followed the Israeli government’s actions and genocidal statements over the past 21 months that they have no interest in taking steps to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian people. Instead, they have strengthened their blockade and starvation of Gaza, escalated murderous attacks on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and openly committed to the wholesale ethnic cleansing of Gaza. It is precisely due to the impunity that has been afforded to Israel by inaction from the UK and other Western governments that they have been empowered to escalate their onslaught. How many more Palestinians need to be killed for Starmer to finally admit that Israel will not end this genocide of their own accord? 

Collectively we have dragged Starmer and his government to this point. By continuing to build this mass movement we can force them to end all British complicity in Israel’s genocide.

As part of the coalition that has organised the National Demonstrations for Palestine, PSC has called a Summer of Action for Gaza. This Friday, we have also called for pots and pans protests to take place in every local community; next Saturday, we will be marching in our hundreds of thousands in London again; and on 16 August, we will be bringing supporters from across the country to RAF High Command in High Wycombe to protest our military’s complicity in Israel’s genocide. We cannot allow Starmer to claim he is taking action without doing so, and we must do everything that we can to urgently bring an end to starvation, murder, and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.