The UK shifted on Israel, but where is Palestinian leadership?

When Britain’s foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, announced a first-time ban on all trade with Israeli settlements, his decision drew mixed reactions. It was applauded by some for its courageous attempt to enforce international law on a lawless Israeli state, but criticised by others for being too weak and likely to be ineffective.

Some critics have gone further and called Milliband’s announcement ‘fake support’ for the Palestinians and, noting the foreign secretary’s fawning remarks about Israel, an attempt to protect it as a racist Jewish state.

Legal experts wrote to the prime minister in September asserting that the settlement ban fell short of Britain’s legal obligations. They asked for sanctions to be extended to more sectors of Israel’s economy, citing the UK’s harsh sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. They called for a full arms embargo against Israel.

There is no doubt that the foreign secretary’s settlement ban has many shortcomings. It will make no material difference to Britain’s relations with Israel – British officials are reported to have assured Washington ahead of the announcement that the trade ban was ‘largely symbolic’. It will not put an end to Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and signals no real change of heart towards Israel.

Had that been so, Britain could have imposed a total arms embargo, suspended the UK-Israel trade agreement, ended its security cooperation, put sanctions on the Israeli government for its illegal occupation, or at the very least have named Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide.

A landmark event

Without doubt, the British decision was forced on the government by the mounting pressure from a mass Palestine solidarity movement that has swept the country since October 2023 without abating. It was the decent, principled men and women who marched regularly in British cities for the cause of Palestine to this very day who did it.

With them were the civil society institutions, university students, academics, intellectuals, artists, trade unions, teachers’ groups, and churchgoers who all voiced their support for Palestine.

And yet, despite these caveats, Britain’s decision should not be dismissed out of hand. For the first time, it calls Israel’s assaults on the occupied West Bank ethnic cleansing by name, and accepts without prevarication the International Court of Justice’s ruling that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories is illegal.

Unlike past rhetorical statements, these assertions are backed by action.

No matter how ineffective against Israel’s illegal settlements the UK decision turns out to be, it cannot detract from its significance. That the very state which created Israel has now started on the road to its repudiation is a landmark event. It sets a precedent for others to follow, augments the tidal wave of worldwide Palestinian support, and contributes to a unique historical moment of global recognition and acknowledgement.

That being so, the urgent question for Palestinians now is how to harness all that popular support towards ending their ordeal. What Palestinian representative individual or body will exploit this golden opportunity?

Leadership

To meet the challenge Palestinians need good leaders and a defined aim. As things stand, they have neither. They are not sufficiently organised or united around a common national goal and an agreed leadership. Slogans about liberation, statehood, and the right of return are no substitute for an agreed objective and a strategy of how to get there.

Long-term disunity amongst Palestinians and a DIY approach to solving the Palestine problem, where each individual or group comes up with their own solutions, have led to a vacuum of ideas about the future.

The best-known solutions put forward so far have no majority support amongst Palestinians, neither the two-state proposal of Israel and Palestine ‘living side by side’, nor the one-state solution, whether secular democratic or binational. As a result, most Palestinians are left hoping that some unforeseen event or outside agency can solve the problem.

This is no way to take advantage of a unique moment in world history that could benefit the Palestinian cause as never before. But it is the inevitable and pernicious consequence of Zionist colonisation.

The Zionist takeover of Palestine in 1948 caused a refugee exodus of a majority of Palestine’s population. It ended in Palestinian fragmentation and social disruption for what had been a historically settled, homogeneous population living in its homeland.

Palestinians today have become separate communities living in different places, which have inevitably transformed their character. Camp-dwelling refugees are different to settled Palestinians, who are different to each other according to the country where they reside. Inside Palestine, Israeli Arab citizens are different to West Bank dwellers, who are different again to people living in Gaza.

How can these fragmented groups unite meaningfully to carry out a national programme? Who can lead such diverse communities and be accepted by all?

Without a unity of purpose, a national plan, and a leadership able to carry it out, there can be no possibility of progress, however appropriate the timing. This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity created by global popular support could be irretrievably lost.

What a terrible irony, that a Zionist movement which strove to create a synthetic new nation out of a fragmented collection of disparate individuals and groups scattered in various countries, could only do so by un-creating and shattering an authentic, homogeneous society into fragments. What enormous suffering was entailed in that criminal enterprise, which will prove to be futile in the end.

For, after all that effort, Israel’s regional survival is not assured, and the Palestinians, disunited, weak, and shattered, still dream of Palestine and sing its songs.

Ghada Karmi is a former research fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter. She was born in Jerusalem and was forced to leave her home with her family as a result of Israel’s creation in 1948. The family moved to England, where she grew up and was educated. Karmi practised as a doctor for many years, working as a specialist in the health of migrants and refugees. From 1999 to 2001, Karmi was an associate fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, where she led a major project on Israel-Palestinian reconciliation.

Follow Ghada on X: @ghadakarmi

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.