The UK (and other countries) finally recognise Palestinian statehood

Sir Keir Starmer has finally announced the UK’s formal recognition of Palestinian statehood. Canada, Australia and Portugal have done the same, with France and other countries expected to follow. The recognition is based on 1967 borders, meaning Israel needs to give back an awful lot of stolen land, but still nowhere near enough.

The recognition of Palestine paves the way for a full embassy in London. It makes it harder for Israelis to dismiss every Palestinian official as a “terrorist” and justify their murder. By legitimising Palestinians, we deligimitise the murder of Palestinians. It’s almost like we have finally decided Palestinians count as human. Isn’t that nice of us?

Starmer insisted Hamas can have no future role in governing Palestine, but strangely, he did not say Likud can have no role in governing Israel. Anyway, it’s pretty much irrelevant. Hamas is just a name, and whatever party replaces Hamas will be labelled a terrorist organisation by Israel. The important thing is we don’t go along with it this time.

The UK says it will support the Palestinian Authority’s role in holding elections within a year, but I’ll believe it when I see it. Unsurprisingly, Itamar Ben-Gvir is calling for the West Bank to be annexed and the Palestinian Authority to be dismantled. If you look closely, you can see the dream of a greater Israel being washed away in those tears. Poor thing.

Seventy-five percent of UN member states now recognise Palestine and that number is growing. The US remains the only permanent member of the UN security council to refuse to recognise Palestine. It will continue using its veto power to prevent Palestinian entry into the UN.

Predictably, Netanyahu called our recognition of Palestine a “huge reward for terrorism”. He needs to read a history book to see how Israel was established because he’s gonna be so mad when he hears about Irgun. Just wait until he reads about the King David Hotel. Wait until he finds out the Haganah paramilitary group became the IDF.

While recognising Palestine might seem like a nice gesture, we have waited until there is almost nothing left to recognise. Israel is currently demolishing Gaza’s last major city after demolishing all the others.

It’s worth remembering that Starmer has been using Palestinian statehood as a bargaining chip for months. Self-determination is an inalienable right, but bizarrely, the prime minister used the threat of recognition of Palestine as a stick to beat Israel with. A way of saying, “We will punish you by recognising them, if you don’t behave”.

Starmer said back in July 2025 that the UK would recognise Palestine by September, unless Israel took substantive steps to end the “humanitarian crisis”, agreed to a ceasefire, committed to a long-term peace process, and halted illegal settlement expansion in the West Bank.

When the international arrest warrants come, Starmer will hope his belated recognition of Palestine will make the judges forget the arms he sent to Israel, and the intelligence he shared, and the surveillance flights he ordered. He will hope this is enough to let him off the hook. I sincerely hope it isn’t.

Starmer used the “growing horror in the Middle East” as his reason for recognising Palestine, but he still can’t say “genocide” because that would implicate him. At the very least, he needs to explain why so many Palestinians had to die before he recognised their right to exist.

The Palestinians were occupied by the Ottoman empire, and then they were occupied by the British empire, and then they were occupied by the Israeli settler-colony. In all this time, they have never been allowed to live independently. This is why Zionists love to say “there is no such thing as Palestine”.

If Zionists can say there is no such thing as Palestine, we sure as hell can say there is no such thing as “Israel”. Palestinians are the continuous inhabitants of the land that Zionists started colonising in the early 1900s. Zionists committed terror attacks against Europeans until we gave them land that was not ours to give. At that point, Zionists focused their terror on Palestine and the Middle East. They have not stopped doing their terror attacks since.

This is not what we’re told though. We’re told that we gave Israel Palestinian land because we felt sad about the holocaust. It’s ironic that Jews were victims of a holocaust prior to getting their own state and Palestinians were victims of a holocaust prior to getting their own state.

The difference is we gave Zionists someone else’s land whereas we allowed Palestinians small slivers of their own land. Surely, if we are to apply consistent logic, Palestinians should be given Israeli land too. I mean we gave Palestinian land away to Israel. Why can’t the Palestinians have that land back? After all, giving land away is what you do after a holocaust, right?

At the very least, we should say to Israel that if you are going to stay, and you are going to be recognised as a state, you need to stop your holocaust, stop your terror across the region, and show you can live like civilised people.

We used Palestinian violence as an excuse to avoid recognising Palestine, but Israel’s violence is orders of magnitude greater. The genocidal settler-colony has no legitimacy.

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