3 min read
When I read the text of the "Palestine" resolution passed by the House of Commons on October 13, my initial reaction was to laugh out loud. As worded, the motion was quite illiterate.
The full text, as approved by 274 votes to 12, ran thus: "This House believes that the government should recognise the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel as a contribution to securing a negotiated two-state solution." First, if the UK government did indeed "recognise the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel" there would already be a "two-state solution," wouldn't there? It might not be a "negotiated" solution. But what does that matter?
Then we have to ask which "state of Palestine" the UK government "should recognise?" If the 274 MPs who supported the motion meant the state of which Hamas is wholly or partly in charge, then they were asking for recognition of a terrorist state that practises torture and murder as instruments of everyday public policy. If they meant the state of which Mahmoud Abbas claims to be president, then they were asking for recognition of an unelected regime that persecutes gays and threatens to execute citizens discovered to have sold land to Jews. Is this the state that such noted democrats and anti-racists as Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott and Jack Straw had in mind when they signalled their support for the resolution?
And what about that reference - inserted on the initiative of Jack Straw - to a "negotiated two-state" solution? The only intelligible meaning I can put to it is that the House of Commons has actually voted to insist that Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas, and his Hamas partner-in-crime, Khaled Mashal, recognise the Jewish state - Israel - in return for recognition of a Palestinian state. This will never happen. It is, after all, the cornerstone of Hamas's existence that the Jewish state must be destroyed, to say nothing of Fatah's insistence on the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees, which would also spell the end of the Jewish state. We might note at this point that among the 358 MPs who voted neither for the motion nor against it was that distinguished friend of the Jewish people, George Galloway, leader of the "Respect" party, who made it clear that he could not support the motion "as it accepts recognition of the state of Israel, does not define borders of either state or address the central question of the right of return of the millions of Palestinians who have been forced to live outside Palestine."
Galloway's logic was impeccable. And when we add to this mix the fact that the motion attracted the support of merely two-fifths of the Commons, and that it is not binding upon this government or any other, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that its contribution to genuine peacemaking is, and is likely to remain, precisely zero, as I suspect that its original sponsor, my own MP Grahame Morris (another well-known friend of the Jews) must have known.
Miliband just wants Muslim voters to trust him
But that is not, of course, why it attracted support . However illiterate, however ambiguous, however vague, the motion has and will continue to have a certain symbolic potency. As the May 2015 general election approaches, and especially in constituencies with significant Muslim electorates, that motion will be trotted out, celebrated and displayed for all to see. That is one reason why Labour leader Ed Miliband voted for it (another was of course to prove that Muslim voters can trust a Jewish leader of the Labour party) and why he imposed a three-line whip on all other Labour MPs who chose not to abstain. Following the near disaster of the Heywood by-election, where UKIP came within 617 votes of taking a safe Labour seat, Miliband needs every vote he can grab, no matter at what personal cost.
Which brings me to the reaction of Israel's government to the Commons vote. During the October 13 debate, much was made of Jewish settlements on the West Bank. There is a strong case to be made supporting the legitimacy of these communities in international law. But in his BBC radio interview on October 14, Israel's ambassador to the UK, Daniel Taub, was repeatedly quizzed on this topic, and repeatedly failed to give a direct answer.