There was a rare bit of good news in Gaza this week as more than 2,000 tonnes of UK food aid finally crossed the border into the strip. The shipment, the largest ever of its kind, is being distributed by the UN’s World Food Programme and will feed more than 275,000 people, No 10 said.
But amid dire warnings that mass famine is imminent in Gaza, so much more aid needs to arrive urgently to avoid further catastrophic loss of life to add to the reported 13,000 children already killed by Israeli bombardment.
And this is not a famine triggered by drought or natural disaster. It is man-made, state-made, as a result of actions (and inaction) of the Israeli government.
As Foreign Secretary David Cameron pointed out this week in a scathing letter to the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, much-needed truckloads of aid are not going into Gaza because of “arbitrary” decisions by Israel, lengthy clearance procedures, visa delays and narrow delivery times in daylight hours.
Some UK aid has been stuck at the border for three weeks. Cameron also highlighted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to allow the supply of water to the strip, declaring, bluntly, that “Israel has the ability to turn the taps back on – they should do so”.
For good measure, the Foreign Secretary rebutted false claims by an Israeli spokesman (who has since been suspended) that the UN asked to close a crossing on Saturdays, or that international donors could send as much aid as they wished and it would be facilitated.
Of course, instead of just writing to the Committee, Cameron’s words would have had more power (and more publicity) if he’d spoken them in the Commons itself. Yet again this week, it was left to his deputy Andrew Mitchell to answer an Urgent Question on Gaza.
There have been just three ministerial statements to the Commons on Israel/Gaza in the nearly six months since the horrific 7 October. Yes, there have been more than a dozen Urgent Questions, but those are MPs dragging the minister to the chamber rather than them volunteering.
Moreover, the Government is clearly dragging its feet on getting Cameron to directly appear before MPs in the main Commons chamber, despite the cross-party Procedure Committee recommending in January he should do so (albeit at the “bar” of the House, not sitting down). Surely, Rishi Sunak isn’t worried Cameron will upstage him as a better performer?
Cameron does appear before the Lords, but it is increasingly untenable that MPs whose constituents feel so strongly about the Middle East cannot hold him directly accountable in person in the form of Urgent Questions or statements.
Yet the most important issue is exactly how the UK Government now deals with Israel. Mitchell admitted for the first time this week that “people are starving in Gaza, everyone agrees”. But they are not just starving, they are being starved. That is a clear breach of international law.
And although Mitchell agreed with Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) had issued a “binding” ruling that Israel had to ensure the provision of aid, there’s a startling lack of consequences so far from the UK for Netanyahu’s non-compliance.
The strongest signal would be to suspend arms exports to Israel. Perhaps the most telling aspect of both Cameron and Mitchell’s comments so far has been their obvious nervousness in spelling out publicly whether that might now happen.
In January, when asked if he had seen legal advice suggesting Israel had breached international law, the Foreign Secretary replied: “I don’t want to answer that question.”
He added he was “worried” that Israel may have breached international law with its bombardments of Gaza. When Tory MP Bob Seely asked if he had seen legal advice suggesting Israel was vulnerable to a challenge from the Hague court in terms of its disproportionate military action, Cameron replied: “It’s close to that.”
There are reports that Cameron has privately been pretty bullish, telling Israeli officials that arms sales could soon end if Palestinian prisoners continued to be denied visits by the Red Cross or diplomats. There would be precedent for this in that Cameron as PM in 2014 suspended export licences to force Israel to avoid civilian casualties in Gaza.
Tony Blair, normally a staunch ally of Israel, also imposed a de facto arms embargo in 2002 in protest at military action in the Palestinian territories. And even Margaret Thatcher in 1982 reacted to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon (where appalling massacres of civilians took place) by halting arms licences.
The decision by some in Labour to hail Thatcher as a “visionary” on UK domestic policy over the past week felt pretty misguided, given many Labour voters will rightly remember her tenure with disgust. But if Labour is to praise Thatcher on anything, it could echo her tough stance on Israel.
As early as 1981, Thatcher warned Israel against bombing other countries without any legal justification. “If we are not going to live by a system of international law, we are going to live by international anarchy. Then no people anywhere in the world are safe,” she told the Jewish Chronicle.
On the issue of Palestinian statehood, Thatcher was also unafraid to ruffle feathers in Tel Aviv. In 1988 she urged Israel to “live in peace within secure borders, giving the Palestinian people their legitimate aspirations, because you cannot demand for yourself what you deny to other people.”
Cameron too has been bolder on this than Labour, declaring in January that the UK could officially recognise a Palestinian state without waiting for any peace talks on a two-state solution to bear fruit.
Labour now has a coherent plan to call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, as part of a truce under which Hamas returns the hostages it has held since October 7. If speculation is true that even the US will back an “immediate ceasefire” at the UN soon, many voters in the UK will be encouraged at politicians finally catching up with the public mood.
The most pressing test is an end to the suffering of the Palestinian people. That’s not just a matter of legality and diplomacy, it’s a matter of morality and basic decency.
Paul Waugh resigned as i’s chief political commentator in January to stand as the Labour candidate for Rochdale, a contest won by Azhar Ali
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