Why some Palestinians are not convinced by the promise of Starmer

One of the main reasons why the British Prime Minister Sir Keir Keir Starmer – according to France, then in turn, followed by Canada – has a plan to recognize a Palestinian state in the United Nations General Assembly in September is to transform the two -state solution into a real diplomatic plan, instead of the empty slogan that it has become since the Oslo peace process has collapsed into bloods ago 25 years ago.

A day by leading to the West Bank is a salutary reminder of the way in which the facts created by Israel to arrest this occur have been materialized in the rocky hills and the valleys that the Palestinians want for a state.

The success of the huge national project that Israel began a few days after capturing the territory in the war of the Middle East of 1967 can be seen in the Jewish colonies which now house more than 700,000 Israelis.

There is a project that has taken almost 60 years, billions of dollars and drawn the conviction of friends as well as enemies. It is a violation of international law for an occupant to settle his citizens on the ground he has taken.

Last year, the International Court of Justice published an opinion indicating that the whole occupation was illegal.

But the government of Benjamin Netanyahu is hungry for more colonies.

At the end of May, the Minister of Defense Israel Katz and the Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich announced that 22 new colonies would be built in the West Bank.

Katz said that massive expansion, the greatest for decades, made a “strategic decision that prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state which would endanger Israel and serve as a buffer against our enemies”.

“This is a Zionist, security and national response-and a clear decision on the future of the country,” he added.

Next to Katz was the ultra-nationalist leader Bezalel Smotrich, who lives in a colony in the West Bank and believes that the earth was given to the Jews by God. He is Minister of Finance, but is also the governor of the West Bank with radical powers on planning.

Smotrich described the expansion of the “single decision” regulation and said: “Support for the following sovereignty!”

Everyone in Israel and the Palestinians in the territories know that when Smotrich and his allies say “sovereignty”, they mean annexation.

Smotrich wants the whole earth for the Jews and has openly discussed the search for means of elimination of the Palestinians.

At the top of a hill after Hilltop in the West Bank, colonies at different stages of their development, from small well-established cities with gardens and mature schools, to the outposts with a handful of caravans and a militant population of young settlers who often mix religion with extreme Jewish nationalism, firearms and sometimes a deadly assault towards their neighbors of Palestinians.

The statistics collected by the UN and peace activists show that violent settlers have increased attacks on their Palestinian neighbors since the October 7 attacks.

I went to see how it affected Taybeh, a completely Christian village of around 1,500 people.

It is a quiet place that seems to have many more houses than residents. After nearly six decades of Israeli occupation, more people were forced to emigrate than to live in the village now.

Two nights before the visit, the settlers entered the village when most people were in bed. They burned Kamal Tayea’s car and tried without success to enter her new house, part of a pleasant development overlooking olive acres. They inaugurated the walls with Hebrew graffiti sprayed with red paint.

Kamal, a re -evaluating man of average age if his decision to move his family by the village was wise, set up a network of security cameras.

“We were very, very frightened,” said Kamal. “I have children and an old mother. Our lives were threatened, and it was terrifying.”

I asked him if the plan of Great Britain to recognize Palestine would facilitate his life.

“I don’t think. It is a big step to have a superpower like Great Britain supports us, but in the field, it does not change much. Israel does not comply with international resolutions or laws.

“He does not listen to any other country worldwide.”

During the following night, the Jewish settlers made a descent into the neighboring Palestinian communities, burning cars and spraying graffiti. It’s more than just vandalism.

The colonists want the Palestinians to go out and, in certain places occupied territories, have succeeded, forcing the Palestinians in villages far from their farms and flying their cattle.

The Greek Orthodox priest, David Khoury, 74, was born in Taybeh. In his church, he told me that the settlers who threatened him and the other residents are often armed.

“Yes, they have rifles … They will use them if we chat with them. They want us to go out, they want us to leave.”

The old priest was provocative.

“We are here, since Jesus Christ, 2000 years. Our roots are there. We cannot move. We will not move, even if we die here, we will not move from here … Palestine is inside our blood, how we can live without our blood?”

It was not many kilometers in Ramallah, the de facto Palestinian capital of the West Bank, but I could not get there in person. Israel’s control points can return to Jerusalem slow and difficult, so I reached Husam Zomlot via Zoom. He is the head of the Palestinian delegation to the United Kingdom, indeed their ambassador to London. He is back home for the summer and was delighted by the British plan to recognize Palestine.

“It is a sign that the United Kingdom and with it, the rest of the international community is really serious about the two-state solution. We are no longer in the lip service sector that has lost three decades. In fact, if you really look for two states, recognize the two states.”

“We consider recognition as the starting weapon of a sprint towards the implementation and the state of the state of Palestine and the realization of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.”

Zomlot was jubilant. It was, he said, a first step, and the decision of Great Britain would make a real difference.

History is one of the powerful engines of this conflict. Great Britain, he added, finally expired the wrongs he had made of the Palestinians when it was the imperial power here between 1917 and 1948.

He referred to the promises made in a short typed letter, dated November 2, 1917, signed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs Arthur Balfour and addressed to Lord Rothschild, a head of the British Jewish community. It was, said the letter, “a declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations”.

Great Britain “would see with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”.

It was followed by another promise: “Nothing will be done that could prejudice civil and religious rights of existing non -Jewish communities in Palestine.”

He meant the majority, the Palestinian Arabs, although he does not name them, a point that, 108 years later, still puts Zomlot

At the UN in New York this week, British Foreign Minister David Lammy said that the United Kingdom could be proud to have helped to lay the foundations of Israel after 1917. But to break the promise to the Palestinians in the Balfur Declaration, he said, provoked an “historical injustice that continues to take place”.

At the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, Simcha Rothman, an ultra-nationalist deputy for the national religious party also had the British imperial past in the Middle East in his mind. The British and the French had already tried to repair the borders, he said, when they took the Middle East of the Ottoman Empire dying during the First World War. Great Britain could no longer play imperial power.

Just like Benjamin Netanyahu and Bezalel Smotrich, his party leader, Rothman, said that the Hamas terrorism recognition plan has rewarded Palestine. He rejected Starmer’s offer to postpone recognition if Israel, among other conditions, accepted a complete ceasefire in Gaza and a revival of the two-state solution.

“He threatens the state of Israel of punishment and thinks that it is the way of bringing peace to the Middle East. He is unable to punish us, and that will certainly not bring peace.”

“And it is against justice, history, religion, culture … He gives a huge reward for Yahya Sinwar (the head of Hamas who led the attacks of October 7 and was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza last year).

“Wherever he is in hell today, he sees what Keir Starmer says – and says:” Good partner “.”

Back in Taybeh, I had asked a group of main local citizens who drank coffee with the mayor of his office what they thought of the UK recognition plan.

One of them, a local businessman, said: “Thank you in Great Britain. But it’s too late.”

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