‘Starmer has rewarded the terrorists and abandoned the hostages’

Keir Starmer’s recognition of a Palestinian state raises far more questions than it answers. Palestine, after all, has none of the qualities of a state, having no settled borders and no legitimate leadership. Worse, Starmer’s decision has angered key allies in Israel and the US, while delighting the Islamist terrorists of Hamas.

Andrew Fox – former British Army officer and co-host of The Brink – sat down with Fraser Myers to discuss the grave implications of Starmer’s decision. What follows is an edited version of that conversation. You can watch the full interview here.

Fraser Myers: Starmer insists his recognition of Palestine is of no benefit to Hamas. Do you agree with that?

Andrew Fox: Well, Hamas certainly doesn’t agree, having described it as a reward for 7 October. On top of that, it’s also being reported that Palestine now plans to sue the United Kingdom for up to a trillion pounds in compensation for the way it divided up the land in 1948. So all in all, Starmer has rewarded terrorism, potentially put us into an international court battle with the Palestinians, extended the war in Gaza and probably killed the hostages. A phenomenal day’s work by our prime minister.

Myers: Some are saying the recognition of Palestine is merely symbolic. How do you respond to that?

Fox: It’s quite disingenuous to imply that this doesn’t have real-world implications. Formal state recognition opens the door to a whole raft of sanctions and other actions to potentially be taken against Israel in future. So we can park that argument. But in terms of the war in Gaza, neither side now has any incentive to cease fire. Hamas is getting exactly what it wants on the international stage, so has every reason to keep fighting. And Israel, of course, is now backed into a corner, so I expect it to continue prosecuting the war in Gaza.

Anyone outside Washington now has almost no leverage with Jerusalem, so anything we do is not going to deter the Israelis for as long as the White House holds firm for Netanyahu. I would expect to see, if not firm moves for more annexation, certainly moves in that direction, as Israel will do everything it can to make sure that a Palestinian state doesn’t appear on anyone’s terms without Israel’s agreement.

Myers: And what would this state look like?

Fox: Legally, it doesn’t meet any of the criteria needed by the non-binding international treaty that gives a description of what a state should be. The Foreign Office has updated its travel map to show, essentially, the 1967 borders, which is just wishful thinking due to the amount of Israeli settlement within the West Bank area. Quite curiously, the British map also puts every single sacred site of Judaism inside the Palestinian area and not the Israeli area. So straight away, the UK is playing fantasy politics. The days of us drawing lines on maps in the Middle East are long gone, and I think it’s incredibly colonialist – not to mention presumptuous – for Labour to think that it can dictate this to Israel and not have any comebacks. It’s also distressing to think about what this means for Britain, to be betraying an ally in this way. Surely this can’t be good for us in the long term.

All of this shows we have a government that is prepared to put domestic considerations ahead of our international position. It’s clearly a decision driven by the far left in the labour cabinet and the electorate that it is so terrified of alienating. It demonstrates that the UK is not a reliable partner, which puts our intelligence-sharing with Israel at risk. We do give the Israelis some intelligence, but they give us far more. On top of that, our defence industries are intricately tied to Israel. It has vital military equipment that we need, like the Typhoons. Our Typhoon squadrons don’t operate without the Litening Pod, an Israeli piece of equipment. Royal Navy ships have Israeli radar components. Starmer’s decision has made us less safe – and it’s made the Middle East less safe because peace now looks further away than ever.

Myers: Is it fair to characterise this as a kind of ‘Neville Chamberlain moment’?

Fox: I think it’s cruel to Neville Chamberlain to compare Starmer to him. All Chamberlain did was believe he’d come to a peace agreement with the Nazis, whereas the Palestinians had to make no concessions whatsoever to Starmer to get this deal. Recognition of Palestine was always one of the levers that could incentivise a peace movement in the Middle East, and now it’s gone. Turns out, all Palestinians had to do was go on a rampage of rape, murder and slaughter – the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust – and Mr Starmer sees fit to reward them. Frankly, Chamberlain looks like a titan of diplomacy in comparison.

Myers: Should we read into the fact that so many states have chosen to do this at the same time?

Fox: There certainly seems to be some backroom coordination behind all of this – even down to the use of language. I noticed that Canada’s copy-and-paste announcement failed to use its own spelling for ‘recognise’ using an S instead of a Z.

There is a clear network of think tanks which are incredibly pro-Qatar, that have hosted a number of these progressive leaders from Australia, Canada, the UK. These announcements and synchronisation seem to be very in keeping with the dates of these conferences – so we can expect to see more of that going forward, as yet another one of these conferences is coming up in the next week.

Myers: Is there anything mainstream commentators are failing to pick up on here?

Fox: I think the recognition is being framed as a good thing for Palestine, but actually, it strikes me as more of a deliberate punitive measure against Israel. When Starmer first made the announcement, he said it was only going to happen if Israel adhered to certain conditions. There was no mention of any requirements of the Palestinians other than vague notices about releasing the hostages, which is obviously unhelpful – because there have been two years of diplomacy attempts from much more powerful players than Keir Starmer, and it still hasn’t happened. This suggests to me that the recognition was always going to happen, no matter what Israel did.

I think this is a way for the ‘progressive’ consensus worldwide to have another crack at Israel, rather than trying to do anything that would actually make the Middle East more peaceful – or to help Palestinians, for that matter.