Last weekend I attended Eid weekend in Ilford, east London, and the festivities were festooned with Palestine insignia. Some children had Palestine heart-shaped flags pinned to their finest Eid threads. The adults wore the Palestinian keffiyeh scarf. At one Eid festival at Goodmayes Park there was Palestine flag bunting everywhere, and a Palestine stall. There I met Najwa, a beaming Palestinian woman from Fairlop wearing a map of her homeland on a necklace. We started the conversation in English but quickly switched to Arabic, in which she is more voluble. She arrived six months ago and still marvels at the local support and solidarity that met her. “People in the west have stood with us more than the Arabs have,” she said.
Ilford North is the scene of one of the sharpest confrontations over Palestine during this election. The sitting MP, Labour’s Wes Streeting, is being challenged by Leanne Mohamad, a 23-year-old Palestinian British woman who left the Labour party and is now standing as an independent. Her top priorities are to bring about a ceasefire in Gaza and implement an arms embargo against Israel. She has a record of local activism that is striking for one so young, and a warmth and ease that many politicians decades her senior in age and experience can only dream of.
She looks like a real contender not just because of these attributes, but because Streeting, the MP since 2015, has a majority of just over 5,000, down from just under 10,000 in 2017. The Muslim Vote, a national campaign that aims to mobilise Muslims to vote around their group interests, is backing Mohamad. It estimates there are about 25,000 Muslim votes, making up........