Israel Defense Forces / Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0
Sticking-plaster politics has become a staple feature of successive British governments tinkering on the edges of ever-deepening crises. But Andy Burnham’s government seems to think it can stretch those plasters further than ever.
Whether that’s sending out an emergency alert over disposable barbecues while preparing to approve drilling at the Jackdaw gas field, or cracking down on unscrupulous subscriptions and vape shops while ruling out water nationalisation, council house building, a wealth tax, or indeed the Government’s ‘reset’ of relations with Israel.
Yesterday, Ed Miliband announced a ban on the import of goods from Israeli settlements and on arms export licences that “materially contribute to the occupation” and personal sanctions against violent settlers.
The British Foreign Secretary denouncing the “ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank, perpetrated by settler terrorists” which “all too often the Israeli government has turned a blind eye to” is not insignificant.
It follows from Burnham’s apology for Labour’s response to Israel’s “military action” in Gaza.
By contrast, the previous prime minister Keir Starmer will be remembered for proclaiming that Israel “does have the right” to cut off food, water and electricity from Gaza, and Rishi Sunak before him for pledging ‘“unqualified support” for Israel as it escalated its genocide.
But more than a ‘reset’, these measures are the basic obligations Britain has long had (and ignored) under international law. Then there is the question of how much they will actually achieve.
Campaigners have pointed out that illegal settlement goods and services are exported as Israeli – how will the Government separate the lawful from the unlawful?
Any reduction in arms sales to Israel is of course a good thing.
But let’s be clear that any and every weapon or military component exported to Israel materially contributes to its occupation – and its genocide, a term the government still refuses to acknowledge, three years on.
Starmer’s government suspended 30 arms export licences to Israel shortly after coming to office in 2024.
It later transpired that, despite this, Starmer’s government exported more arms to Israel in its first three months in office as the Tories had in the three preceding years.
The separation of offensive and defensive weapons, or of weapons used in specific ways in the expansion of settlements in the West Bank from the vast and sprawling military architecture of the Israeli state is a smokescreen which allows British weapons to continue being used in the mass murder and displacement of the Palestinian and Lebanese people.
The conveyor belt of weaponry from Britain to Israel is entirely enmeshed in the British state’s drive to rearmament at home.
Last year, the Government defended its right to produce the F-35 fighter jet component parts that were being used by Israel in its bombing of Gaza because they were entangled in Nato supply chains.
In May this year, British and Nato military personnel conducted war games under a central London Tube station, in which they announced their use of AI targeting systems developed in partnership with tech companies including Palantir, likely to have been trained and tested by Israel in Gaza and Iran.
Even more recently, the Ministry of Defence launched the Defence Universities Alliance (DUA), which will see universities enter multi-million-pound partnerships, research projects and graduate training schemes with the same arms companies facilitating Israel’s genocide.
All the while cutting whole courses and sacking hundreds of staff. It’s why students are organising a mass day of action on November 20 against the DUA, as part of an International Youth Strike against militarism and conscription.
One of the key demands of the Palestine movement that has dominated the streets of Britain for nearly three years has been for a total two-way arms embargo with Israel. Opinion polling has consistently shown that a majority of the British public back this.
It is also worth mentioning that despite making this statement on Israel, the Government has indicated it has no intention to repeal the designation of Palestine Action as a terrorist group. If it does not, the Government will be imprisoning peaceful protesters for taking action in line, at least rhetorically, with the Government.
And absurdly, under UK law, there will be an equivalence between those carrying out pogroms in the West Bank and those seeking to disrupt the weapons that they are using.
But, although lacking material impact and far from being enough to end Britain’s role in facilitating Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people, the new measures do show just how isolated Israel now is, how strained the special relationship between the UK and US is, and how untenable it has become for the Government to not do anything at all.
This is a direct product of the huge pressure the Palestine movement – now one of the most sustained mass movements in British history – is exerting. The Government’s change of direction in its relationship with Israel, however limited, is an opening for the movement to push them back further.
Next month will mark three years of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. It will be a shameful milestone in world history and for British foreign policy. At the International Conference Against War in London earlier this year, activists and trade unionists from at least 27 countries called for an international day of protest on October 10. In the UK, there will be a national demonstration in London, assembling on Embankment at 12pm.
It will be an opportunity to push forward when the Government is on the back foot. It will be an opportunity to show that all the marches, blockades of ports, general strikes and university occupations were not isolated actions but the component parts of an international, united mass movement that is capable and determined to defeat the warmongers.
Source: The National