{"id":440607,"date":"2025-09-21T09:26:24","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T09:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/440607\/"},"modified":"2025-09-21T09:26:24","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T09:26:24","slug":"britain-expected-to-recognise-palestinian-state-with-ceasefire-prospects-in-tatters-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/440607\/","title":{"rendered":"Britain expected to recognise Palestinian state with ceasefire prospects \u2018in tatters\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Britain<\/a>\u2019s deputy prime minister said on Sunday that recognising a Palestinian<\/a> state would not bring one into existence \u201covernight\u201d, stressing that recognition must be part of a broader peace process<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny step to recognise it is because we wish to keep alive the prospects of a two-state solution,\u201d David Lammy told Sky News, adding that prime minister Keir Starmer<\/a> would be making a decision on recognising a Palestinian state later on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Mr Starmer said in July that Britain would recognise Palestine unless Israel<\/a> reached a ceasefire with Hamas, let more aid into Gaza<\/a>, made clear there would be no annexation of the West Bank and committed to a peace process delivering a \u201ctwo-state solution\u201d – a Palestinian state co-existing alongside Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince that announcement in July, in fact, with the attack on Qatar, a ceasefire at this point lays in tatters, and the prospects are bleak,\u201d Mr Lammy said, adding that Israel had also moved forward with a settlement plan. <\/p>\n

The senior Palestinian diplomat in the UK said recognition would correct a colonial-era wrong dating back to the Balfour Declaration supporting the creation of a Jewish state in 1917.<\/p>\n

The Palestinian head of mission Husam Zomlot told the BBC: \u201cThe issue today is ending the denial of our existence that started 108 years ago, in 1917.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I think today, the British people should celebrate a day when history is being corrected, when wrongs are being righted, when recognition of the wrongs of the past are beginning to be corrected, and when taking responsibility of that colonial era, because that era has led us directly to the genocide in Gaza today, and that era has led to the ethnic cleansing of two-thirds of the Palestinian people during the Nakba and during the British mandate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nakba is the term used to describe the mass displacement of Palestinians during the Arab-Israeli war in 1948 after the end of the British Mandate.<\/p>\n

Mr Zomlot said \u201cthe hands of British history\u201d were on the whole conflict.<\/p>\n

He added that recognition was a \u201cfoundational step\u201d towards establishing a sovereign state of Palestine \u201cand anybody who argues against that is somebody who wants to see us moving backward rather than forward\u201d.<\/p>\n

The UK\u2019s health minister, Dr Zubir Ahmed, said, in comments made before his appointment to cabinet earlier this month, members of the Israeli government have \u201cgenocidal intent\u201d.<\/p>\n

Dr Ahmed, the MP for Glasgow South West, was appointed as a health minister in the prime minister\u2019s re-shuffle brought about by the resignation of Angela Rayner in early September.<\/p>\n

The UK government has been reticent to describe the crisis in Gaza as a \u201cgenocide\u201d, despite activist calls and Scottish first minister John Swinney taking such a step.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Holyrood magazine in an interview conducted days before he was appointed as a minister, Dr Ahmed said: \u201cThe arc of this, even in the last couple of months, has gone into places that are unconscionable, horrendous and really are, you know, things I thought I would never see in a so-called western democracy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have members of that government [Israel] who certainly have genocidal intent \u2013 members of that government indicted by the International Criminal Court. It\u2019s an unprecedented diplomatic position to be in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr Ahmed said he would have been in Gaza with the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians the day before the election last year had the Rafah crossing in the south of the territory not been closed two weeks before.<\/p>\n

The MP added that he felt \u201crelatively powerless\u201d about the situation in Gaza.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s not a singular military solution that the British government can enact to stop this and that is a really, really painful thing to say, to be in the place of power like we are right now and to tell you that I am relatively powerless in this conflict,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat does not mean I\u2019m not responsible.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t mean I don\u2019t have any agency and I don\u2019t need to strive to make a difference, but to tell you that I feel relatively powerless in the place of power in the UK is painful.\u201d<\/p>\n

The UK government has been contacted for comment. – Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain\u2019s deputy prime minister said on Sunday that recognising a Palestinian state would not bring one into existence…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440608,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[748,393,10982,4884,837,20418,807,1144,1814,712,16,15,1764,13131],"class_list":{"0":"post-440607","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-gaza-strip","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-israel","15":"tag-israel-hamas-conflict","16":"tag-keir-starmer","17":"tag-northern-ireland","18":"tag-palestine","19":"tag-scotland","20":"tag-uk","21":"tag-united-kingdom","22":"tag-wales","23":"tag-west-bank"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115241575045932700","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}