Parliament may have risen for recess but that doesn’t mean that Sir Keir Starmer is getting much of a break. It transpires that the Prime Minister is facing growing calls to immediately recognise Palestine as a state with a number of Cabinet minister understood to be piling pressure on the PM alongside dozens of his backbenchers. On Tuesday, just before MPs left Westminster for summer recess, Health Secretary Wes Streeting urged Sir Keir to recognise Palestine ‘while there’s still a state of Palestine left to recognise’. He went on:
I deplore Israel’s attacks on healthcare workers as well as other innocent civilians trying to access healthcare or vital aid. These actions go well beyond legitimate self-defence and undermine the prospects for peace. I sincerely hope that the international community can come together, as the foreign secretary has been driving towards, to make sure that we see an end of this war but also that we recognise the state of Palestine while there is a state of Palestine left to recognise.
Streeting isn’t the only member of the Cabinet understood to have pushed the issue in meetings. As reported by the Guardian, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn have also brought it up. The Health Secretary’s intervention follows that of nearly 60 Labour MPs, who sent a letter to Foreign Secretary David Lammy at the start of the month after Israeli defence minister Israel Katz proposed plans to force Gaza’s into a camp in Rafah. While Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard described the move was ‘about population transfer to the southern tip of Gaza in preparation for deportation outside the strip’, the MP group wrote: ‘Though an accurate description, we believe there is a clearer one. The ethnic cleansing of Gaza.’
Of course, it’s not just Labour politicians who have been vocal on the Middle East. As Mr S wrote in May, more than a dozen senior Tory MPs and peers broke ranks to write to Starmer to urge the PM to immediately recognise Palestine as a state. The seven MPs and six House of Lords grandees have signed a letter that insists ‘recognising Palestine would affirm our nation’s commitment to upholding the principles of justice, self-determination and equal rights’. The letter was signed by several Tory moderates – including MPs Kit Malthouse, Simon Hoare and father of the house Sir Edward Leigh alongside peers such as Nicholas Soames and Hugo Swire. Mr S was rather interested to note that there were some more surprising signatories, however, with right-wing Conservative MP Sir John Hayes backing the call.
Starmer hadn’t changed the UK’s stance after the Tory group or the Labour backbenchers reached out – but will he be swayed by his own Cabinet ministers? Stay tuned…
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