Will Israel annex the West Bank now Britain recognises Palestine?

0:01This is a Global Player Original Podcast. Ask yourself, Keir Starmer, why did you really take this step? What's really on your mind? What's your real motivation? History, Keir Starmer, will judge you harshly. That is Israel's ambassador to the US, Michael Later, after Keir Starmer's weekend announcement that the UK was ready to recognise Palestine. Israel is furious. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has said that what Keir Starmer has done is nothing short of rewarding Hamas for the horrors of October the 7th. Is that right? Welcome to the News Agents.

0:46The News Agents. It's Emily. It's Lewis. And this was really historically significant, what happened on Sunday. Keir Starmer had promised that this might happen earlier in the year, that Palestinian statehood would be recognised by the UK for the first time since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. First time ever. He promised earlier that he would do that if Israel did not do certain things to improve the conditions of humanitarian situation in Gaza. They haven't done that. Keir Starmer, therefore, recognised for the first time Palestine as a state. And we should say this is not just something that the UK is doing alone.

1:27Australia is doing the same thing. Canada is doing the same thing. A clutch of other European states, including France, have either already done it or are going to do it in the next 24 hours or 48 hours or so, which takes the total number of countries of the world which recognise Palestine north of 150. Yeah. In other words, it's about 75 percent of the countries recognised by the UN. And this is all happening in concert with the UN General Assembly in New York. Keir Starmer isn't there, but Emmanuel Macron is there. and at the moment they are going through what they want to call a sort of peace initiation process along with Saudi Arabia and other countries.

2:06And as you say, this is a tightly choreographed move which puts the UK in the same space as Canada, France, Belgium, Australia, I think Portugal and many, many other countries have already been there. And the reason that so much of the ire is directed specifically at us, specifically at the UK government, is because of the role Britain played historically. After World War I, Britain basically took control of Palestine. This was under a League of Nations mandate. The League of Nations was the sort of precursor body of the UN. And the Balfour Declaration in 1917 promised support of a national home for Jewish people in Palestine.

2:47and then this kind of led to tensions rising between Jewish immigrants, many fleeing and Semitism in Europe before the Second World War and the Arab population who felt this was their homeland and who were sort of receiving large-scale immigration and land transfers. And in 1947, the UN then proposed partitioning Palestine into two states, one Jewish, one Arab, with Jerusalem under international administration and there was some ill feeling about the way that that division came about relating to the size of the actual populations. Jewish leaders accepted it, Arab leaders rejected it and then everything in the Second World War, in the Holocaust, made hundreds more, thousands more flee from persecution to Israel and the recognition of the State of Israel then kind of happened in 1948.

3:40and when you have members of the Netanyahu government saying you do not control us anymore, that's what they're referring to. Obviously that is a very potted history and you will find fault in that from both sides but this is just me trying to give you a very quick sense of why we are so ingrained historically in what has happened in that part of the world. It is quite astonishing how angry the response has been from Israel. Netanyahu insisted just after that announcement that there would be, his words, no Palestinian state. And as you say, Lewis, he accused those of recognising, all those recognising it, of rewarding Hamas for the October the 7th attacks two years ago.

4:24The ones that triggered the current war that involved the massacre of more than 1500 Israelis and people living in Israel. And I think that this is the point that really requires us to open up that question of what the recognition means, what it actually tells us and whether it does reward terrorism. because it's something that I've spent quite a lot of time thinking about this over the weekend. How do you circle what has happened, that recognition of a Palestinian state with the events, the massacre of October the 7th, two years ago? And I think the point we're missing is everything that has happened or the point the Israeli government's missing is everything that's happened in the last two years.

5:13If you'd asked Britain in the weeks or even months after October the 7th whether there would be any recognition of a state of Palestine, it would have been a categoric no. I don't think there could have been anything further from the truth. Two years on, this is not a response to the actions of Hamas. It is, unfortunately, a response to the actions of Israel. And you cannot get away from that, that the UK has said enough. And this is the only way they have, they believe, of bringing Israel to heel. I think that's entirely right. and I think that's exactly the component which has been missing from so much of the commentary of this over the last 24 hours.

5:51I think this is a move of desperation from the British government and from the French government and the Australian government, the Canadian government. And this is the thing, one of the critiques of this on Starmer has been to say this is about internal Labour Party management, about trying to please the left. There's two things to say about that. I don't know if anybody's noticed, but Keir Starmer has not been especially well known during his period of leadership for trying to please the left of the Labour Party. That's not something that's been at the top of his priorities. Moreover, if that even were the case, and it were about...

6:19It's nice of Macron to help a long time. Yes, indeed. It's weird how Emmanuel Macron or Mark Carney or Anthony Albanese or all of the other different European leaders who have made this move, it's odd why they would be so concerned with internal Labour Party management. As you say, Emily, this would have been unthinkable in the weeks, the months, I would say probably even well into 18 months plus post-October 7th period. If you remember, Keir Starmer went into an LBC studio in the days after October 7th, very controversial. And to be fair to him, in the end, number 10 kind of had to row it back.

6:51But such was the fever in the air at the time that Starmer basically said that he thought it would be legal. And indeed, it would be right on some level for Israel or it would be proper for them to use means of, you know, taking away energy or food or whatever it happened to be as part of their response to Gaza at the time. That was the feeling in the air at the time. Worth just listening back to that clip. I'm very clear. Israel must have that, does have that right to defend herself. And Hamas bears responsibility. A siege is appropriate. Cutting off power, cutting off water. I think that Israel does have that right.

7:30It is an ongoing situation. obviously everything should be done within international law but i don't want to step away from the sort of core principles that israel has a right to defend herself and hamas bears responsibility for these terrorist and i would call on all responsible states particularly middle east responsible states to call this out for what it is and to stand with the world in condemning utterly condemning these actions by Hamas. Obviously what we've seen since then, and that was the feeling in British politics at the time, that Israel almost had carte blanche to respond how it must in those immediate weeks.

8:11Obviously what we have seen since then is the enormous number of Palestinian civilian deaths. We've seen the UN talks talking quite openly about the prospects of Israel allowing a genocide. We've seen the destruction of Palestinian cities, including Rafa. We've seen the idea posited of a kind of famine, indeed, a famine, a camp that half of the Palestinian population would be forced to live in and wouldn't be allowed to leave. We've seen the more and more extremist elements of Netanyahu's government, not just Netanyahu himself, but the far right elements of his government, posit more and more extreme policies to deal with the problem that they're facing in Gaza and indifference, profound indifference to Palestinian life in Gaza.

8:58and indeed what have we seen as part of the response to this which kind of vindicates and proves starmer's point and macron's point and the rest of them which is the response to this hasn't been well let's talk about this more sorrow than in anger with we can't understand why you've done this basically what the israeli government have said is that they're going to press ahead or posit the idea they may try and annex the west bank or large parts of the west bank something that Israeli governments in the past would not have done. So, you know, in a way... Just before we came on air, I was like, what is this word annex?

9:30What does it really mean? I mean, annex, just to kind of cut through, it means to seize it, essentially, to take over a part that is considered the de facto sort of home of the Palestinian people east of Jerusalem. Which they're already basically doing in Gaza. Right. We've got to a point, I think, where Western governments feel, with the exception of the United States, the very important exception of the United States, feel that the Israeli government is such not only an unreliable partner, not only that they cannot be trusted, but they have been seized by such extremist instincts and are conducting such extremist policies in Gaza and increasingly the West Bank, that they feel that there is no alternative but to press this political equivalent of the nuclear button, which is to recognise a Palestinian state with all of the political difficulties therein.

10:20It is an act, I think, of desperation and deep frustration with an Israeli government that seems no longer willing to work with the West. Yeah, and self-harm. I mean, this idea of annexing, seizing the West Bank, Israel's basically subjected that part of the land to military occupation since 1967. We've talked about the sort of enlargement of the settler areas. In other words, the placing of particular Israeli or Jewish communities within Arab land to essentially sort of keep watch over slash intimidate those who naturally live there. And one of the people who is in the Netanyahu government, who is himself a settler, is the finance minister Belezel Smotrich.

11:03He is, you know, the ultra-nationalist alongside Itamar Ben-Gavir. And those two are both basically saying we need to completely dismantle the Palestinian authority, that there is this complicated kind of leadership structure whereby Gaza was controlled by Hamas under original democratic elections many years ago, and the West Bank was controlled by the Palestinian authority by Fatah. And what you've got now is the ultra-nationalists inside Netanyahu's government saying we need to basically take over the West Bank as well as what's going on in Gaza. And to your point, if you wanted any indication that the people that you were talking to, the people you were kind of trying to get around the table to discuss, you know, starvation, famine in Gaza and all the rest of it, were behaving like unhinged extremists, this is it.

12:01This is it. This doubling down, I think, would make Keir Starmer think, well, actually, why did we wait so long? Because what he has dragged out of them is this idea now that there was never going to be a Palestinian state and that the West Bank was never really going to have its independence or its kind of legitimacy. And so the fact that Starmer and others have brought the conversation to this place, I think is a sign that I don't know if things will move in terms of whatever happens to a Palestinian state now. I mean, you know, the question's been raised a zillion times. How can you have a Palestinian state with rubble, no borders, no leadership, no people?

12:45You know, the state of Gaza is different to a Palestinian state. I mean, it is the ultimate kind of sort of clash of ideas with reality. But I think what you're looking at now is the almost like the pulling out of what was really in the Netanyahu government's mind. And I don't think this is representative of all Israeli people. And I don't think it's representative of, you know, all hostage families, many of whom have actually said that the actions of Netanyahu and his government have made things much, much harder for the hostages over the last two years, that he could have he could have put them at the centre of everything he did.

13:27When you heard Keir Starmer, you know, talking about what would have to happen next, he was talking about retrieving hostages, retrieving hundreds of people who had been taken forcibly against their will into Gaza after the horrendous massacre of October the 7th. He was talking about those those attempts to retrieve them and get them back. And I think now it is not enough for the Israeli government to say you're putting hostages at risk. It just rings hollow.

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14:33The News Agents. We should say, I mean, Benjamin Netanyahu has responded extremely explicitly about these things. I mean, he said, because there's this weird paradox at the moment where the British government and other European governments and other governments around the world are saying, well, we're recognising the Palestinian state because we still believe in a two-state solution. and in order to have a two-state solution, you have to have two states. It's sort of just logically inherent. And Netanyahu responding to this by saying, there will be no Palestinian state. The response to the latest attempt to force upon us a terror state in the heart of our land will be given after my return to the United States.

15:10I have a clear message to those leaders who are recognising a Palestinian state. You are rewarding terror with an enormous prize. And I have another message for you. It's not going to happen. So Netanyahu, to his credit, I suppose, is being completely straightforward and clear under his government. This is never going to happen. And so there's this weird juxtaposition where Starmer and others are going around the world still talking about it when the Israeli government with Trump's backing is saying no way over our dead bodies. I mean, to put it in context, the position of the Israeli government has been that if Hamas is allowed to continue in any shape or form, and I think Hamas actually to them equals the Palestinian people, in their mind, they have aligned Hamas with, you know, the vast majority of Palestinians, which most people don't do, then they believe that that is an existential threat to Israel.

15:55In other words, they're saying as soon as you recognise a Palestinian state, you're basically calling for the end of Israel. That's how they will see it in those stark terms. There can only be one survivor from this. So, yes, of course, there's never going to be a two state solution. But if you're talking about one state and the recognition of Palestine, then Israel will cease to exist. I don't think outside Israel we believe that. I don't think most countries, most of the UN believe that. But I think this goes to the heart of the profound worry that some Israelis have about whether they can carry on existing whilst they have, you know, Hamas or any form of Hamas on their doorstep.

16:34And I completely understand that. And we should let me look. Hamas, as recognised by the British government, is a terrorist organisation. It's conducted atrocities in its bones. It's deeply anti-Semitic. They want to kill Israel. I completely understand that. That has been a given from the start. What I sort of find frustrating, not only in terms of the Israeli government's response, but also we see from quite a bit of the kind of commentary here and in the United States, the kind of Israel right or wrong brigade, is zero reflection, as we've been saying, as to how we've got to this point. How it is that, do you think the British government wants to be in a position, or the French government or whoever, want to be in a position where on any level they could be accused of wanting to reward Hamas?

17:17Of course they don't. Or isolating Trump or isolating Israel. Or isolating ourselves from Trump. No, of course they don't. What's happened is they've been backed into a corner. What's happened is, is that the Israeli government under Netanyahu has completely exhausted all of the massive goodwill that it was, nearly exhausted, much of the goodwill that existed around the world, including in this country, after the horrific attacks of October the 7th. And what Netanyahu and his supporters in this country and elsewhere, Their basic position is, to the British government, the French government, whoever it is, their basic position is, we should be allowed to do whatever we like under our own terms and our own rules in Gaza and elsewhere.

17:59We decide that because of the security threat. We decide that because of what happened on October the 7th. And if you don't support us in that endeavour, however extreme it is, and whatever policies we enact, then you're supporting Hamas. That is nonsense. And it is a ridiculous and actually, in many ways, outrageous position. But it is nonetheless the position that we're hearing, not just from the Israeli government, but I mean, if we talk about some of the international reaction as well. And we had the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, writing on X. My POTUS, President of the United States, is a Churchill.

18:32The UK is led by an appeasing and naive Chamberlain. Donald Trump knows the UK PM Starmer is giving Hamas a victory, endangering hostages even more and prolonging a war. Thank you, President Trump. it's quite an extraordinary this is not just some maga kind of influencer or or writer or whatever it is a u.s government appointee the u.s ambassador israel basically calling our prime minister the uk prime minister a coward and appeaser of hamas this is crazy i think the complication for our government right now will not actually be the voices saying oh you've sold out you're just doing it to, you know, appease your backbenchers.

19:13I don't think the Kemi-Badenot critique of this will be particularly harshly felt for Keir Starmer right now. I think what will be more complicated longer term is what happens next. Because I think, you know, Keir Starmer and others have clearly come to this, not from a position of thinking, we're going to solve, you know, the Arab-Israeli crisis. We're going to solve the conflict that, you know, decades of sort of presidential goodwill has failed to do, but that we do not want to be leaders in power at a time when an entire population is being starved to death and we have not made a stance, right?

19:54I think if you step back from it, that is really what's going on here. They are acting because they do not want to be the people who turned a blind eye to what is going on. And so in a way, it's a cry for help. It's a shout of desperation. and everything that the Israeli government has done so far, I think has been very helpful to them because it has made their point better than they could ever make it themselves. I guess the question is, what happens now, right? Once you have recognised the state of Palestine, if there is no better access for Gazans to humanitarian aid, to food, to water, to energy, to all the stuff that we are watching those dreadful scenes daily, if that doesn't come, If Israel doesn't do anything to make that situation better, then what?

20:37What do they do next? Because, yeah, you've got the recognition of something that is basically a pile of rubble now. You know, thousands and thousands of dead children and dead people, dead civilians in Gaza. What does the government do then? What do any of them do then? Well, I suppose there will be people who start to talk about even more extreme policy actions. So you could start talking about, you know, sanctions or trade embargoes. We've done that. I mean, we've done that. You know, the only thing we haven't done is stop. But sanctions on the country itself, I mean, rather than particular individuals.

21:08I mean, I don't really see us getting that way, withdrawing any limited military assistance we still offer. I mean, I think what is certainly true to say is that I don't think there has been a time when relations between the UK and Israeli governments have been lower. And that hostility is now just in the most open arena. Not only what Netanyahu has said, the Israeli defence minister, Yav Ghilant, tweeting, last night that there never will be a Palestinian state. Starmer, he says, not, you know, not adding Keir Starmer on X, not calling him Keir Starmer or the British Prime Minister, he just says, Starmer, the British mandate ended 77 years ago.

21:43You should focus on the Islamist surge in the UK, not on Israel. And that last bit is not only obviously pretty disrespectful to a leader of an allied government, but also that last bit is very revealing as well because it shows the extent to which Israel does occupy, and Israeli politicians and Netanyahu in particular, They do occupy not just a kind of place in our politics, which is unusual, but so many of these figures are, how can I put it? They're quite central in the kind of MAGA online right universe as well. Netanyahu very much is. You know, the fact he's talking about Islamist surge there, that's a kind of hard right online.

22:16It could come straight out of your last week's rally. Totally. It's an online hard right talking point about the UK, all of that sort of stuff. And that is why Israel partly attracts such devotion from so many figures on the kind of online right as well, because it is sort of at the heart of that political world. And Netanyahu is as well because he's always hanging out with sort of MAGA and Fox and all this sort of stuff. To take that a step further, Gideon Saar, who's Israel's foreign minister, has revealed that he actually held conversations with both Kemi Badenok and Nigel Farage. Nigel Farage, who currently has four or five MPs in the House of Parliament.

22:51Foreign minister? It's crazy. I mean, what are you doing as a foreign minister? You're basically deciding that the prime minister of the UK is now irrelevant because he's crossed you. He's on the other side. He's on the kind of leftist side. You're on the wrong side. And you're leapfrogging to talk to a leader of the opposition and a man who you kind of are hoping. You know, you're watching the polls and you're thinking he'll become the next prime minister. I mean, he said of his phone call with the Tory leader, with Kermit Baden-Württembert, he emphasised the moral severity and diplomatic error in the British government's decision to recognise a Palestinian state.

23:26We know we have more friends in the UK. We now have to distinguish between the English people and the English government. I don't know why we've suddenly gone down to English and England. But there you go. This idea that, I mean, I'll tell you what it reminds me of a tiny bit. Do you remember when Netanyahu went on the airwaves to talk to the people of Iran? Do you remember he said, we're going to bomb your government, Not you, but we're going to bomb your government. And sorry about any of the collateral to Tehran and the buildings and the deaths. But this is, you know, this is a message to your government, not to you.

23:58I mean, there is something so extraordinary about saying we're now talking over the heads of like, Keir Starmer is not the Shah. You know, Keir Starmer is not the Ayatollah. Keir Starmer is a democratically elected prime minister. But he now is considered unrepresentative of anyone. And so we're going to talk to Nigel Farage instead. It's sort of geopolitics as part of the culture war. And that is why they're talking to Farage, because they see him as on their side. I mean, the truth, of course, is, as you say, Emily, is that with all this, is that, I mean, Yvette Cooper is now, this is obviously going to be a big theme of UNGA, the UN General Assembly.

24:33And Yvette Cooper is now basically having to urge the Israeli government not to use this as a pretext to, as we say, annex either parts of the West Bank. But of course, the truth is, is that this was always going to be an important and historic, given you already outlined the history, an historic act of symbolism for the British government, which has been so... I mean, Palestine has kind of been and the recognition of Palestine has been a kind of ghost of British foreign policy for kind of a century. And so it is big and is symbolic. And that's why it's stinging in Israel so much. That's why they're talking about Britain much more than they're talking about all of these other countries.

25:11The irony, sorry to come in, but the irony is, I guess the chance for peace between Israel and Palestine was never closer than under the Clinton, you know, during the Clinton years, the sort of the Oslo Accords. And well, actually, what happened was it was the killing of Yitzhak Rabin by somebody on the far right. I mean, you know, this kind of goes back to the Smotrich Ben-Gavirlo again. It was somebody on the far right nationalist side of the party that killed Yitzhak Rabin at a point where they actually thought peace might be made. And so that was basically the end of what would have been, I think, the most fruitful time for relations between Arabs and Israelis almost ever.

25:50And it has taken us to get to this the opposite of a rapprochement. It is literally rock bottom that has brought out the recognition of Palestine. Yeah, and it will be symbolic. It will mean a lot to many people and it will horrify many others. The truth, of course, is in practical terms, not least because there isn't much of a state of Palestine to recognise now, not least because we are so far away from a two-state solution that having a state to recognise as part of that process is almost immaterial. And most of all because, despite the fact that this is a trend which has been growing across the West and the wider world, the place where it is apparently completely immovable is the United States.