Mahmoud Abbas’s trip to London comes as Starmer’s office refuses to confirm whether the PM will meet the Israeli president when he visits later this week
September 8, 2025 13:59
Not that anyone needs reminding, but just in case the past 14 months have passed you by – the 14 months, that is, since Labour took office – then Mahmoud Abbas’s arrival in Downing Street this week is a useful aide-memoire about where UK policy now stands in relation to Israel.
Sir Keir Starmer was pictured shaking hands on Sunday evening with the leader of the Palestinian Authority, welcoming him to London. Nothing especially unusual there; prime ministers have to shake hands with all sorts of unsavoury figures. And Abbas certainly falls into that category.
He is now 20 years into a four-year term (you can tell this column is not written by AI, because such a phrase would blow its circuitry). He leads an administration which pays blood money as a reward to the relatives of terrorists who die in the course of their terrorism (known as “pay for slay”, which French President Emmanuel Macron erroneously says has ended). He leads an authority whose schools push antisemitic propaganda into the minds of young Palestinian children, doing its best to prevent any hope of peaceful co-existence. He leads a body which is either unwilling or unable to stamp out terrorists operating from the land it supposedly secures – as today’s terrible murders in Jerusalem show. The list goes on.
Were I to be more formal I should call him Dr Abbas, since he has a doctorate in Holocaust denial. Not in the study of Holocaust denial, that is, but a doctorate pushing actual Holocaust denial. But no matter how unsavoury Abbas may be, were Sir Keir merely welcoming him to London for general talks on the current situation in the region, the prime minister would be doing the job for which we pay him. Except that’s not why Abbas is here or what Sir Keir is primarily discussing with him.
He is here, of course, for talks about the imminent recognition of a Palestinian state by the UK government, which has rightly been described as a reward to Hamas for October 7. (Don’t be taken in by the sophistry that there is some kind of decision still to be taken about this; the UK will definitely be recognising a Palestinian state at or before the UN General Assembly later this month. It is too cowed by its fear of those Muslims who vote along sectarian lines not to go ahead.)
Contrast this welcome for Abbas, leader of an authority which inculcates and rewards terrorists, with the UK’s policy towards the leader of a nation still described (at least nominally) as an ally, which was the victim of the largest single massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and which is fighting to disable and destroy the terror networks in the Middle East.
Israel has taken out Iran’s nuclear programme, has defanged Hezbollah and is in the midst of removing the threat of Hamas. How has the UK responded to this? By blocking some arms exports to Israel, by re-funding UNRWA, the UN body which employed some of the terrorists who took part in Hamas’ massacre on October 7 2023, and by backing the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, the former Israeli defence minister.
In other words, while the UK rolls out the diplomatic red carpet for Abbas, its attitude to the leader of its supposed ally is that he should be arrested if he sets foot here. The contrast could not be more stark or more telling, or the conclusions anyone genuinely concerned with tackling terror in the Middle East more obvious.
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