LONDON(RAHNUMA): The UK government has let down the Palestinian people by failing to stand up to Israel or follow through with support for a two-state solution, a prominent MP with the ruling Labour Party has said.
Emily Thornberry, the former shadow attorney general, said the government lacked ambition when it came to Gaza and had allowed Israel to act with “impunity” there and in the West Bank, The Guardian reported on Tuesday.
“Anyone who believes that what Gazans have right now is a genuine ceasefire has to look at what the truth is. They need to look at the pictures of the children who’ve been bitten by rats as they sleep in displacement camps in mountains of rubble,” said Thornberry, who chairs the Foreign Affairs Select Committee.
“More than 72,000 Palestinians have been killed, but we also know that the death toll continues to rise during this so-called ceasefire.”
Speaking at an event in London hosted by Medical Aid for Palestinians and the Council for Arab-British Understanding, she said though recognizing a Palestinian state was the correct first step to take, more needs to be done to bring about a two-state solution.
“We knew, and we have to remember, that recognition was only the first step,” she added. “Where’s the second step, where’s the 10th step, what are we doing?”
Thornberry condemned the government’s slow reaction to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement last week that he plans for Israel to control as much as 70 percent of Gaza.
“I’ve always been so proud that Britain has always realized the importance of international law. It’s something we’re strong on, probably for good reason since much of international law was written by British lawyers.
“But when it comes to our record on Palestine, I’m afraid we’ve fallen well short, and in doing so we’ve failed the Palestinian people.”
Thornberry noted that it had been 682 days since the International Court of Justice issued an advisory position on the legality of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land, yet the UK had yet to respond to it.
“If you accept the ICJ advisory opinion that settlements are illegal and states should do everything they can not to facilitate them, then there are certain actions that should follow logically,” she said.
“We should be banning the import of goods produced in illegal settlements. We should be going further. We should be placing sanctions on those involved in the settlements. We should be making sure we’re stopping the involvement of any British companies. We should be coming down hard on insurance networks. We should be making it clear that it’s not possible to construct settlements on the West Bank, and we’re going to do everything to stop it.”
Thornberry urged the UK to reconvene the group of countries that backed Palestinian statehood in 2025.
“Let’s act together so we make sure it’s so economically painful for Israel that settlement expansion becomes untenable, because what’s happening in the West Bank is untenable — families driven from their homes, communities under constant threat, Palestinians being lynched in the streets,” she said.
“That is what we should be confronting. Words of condemnation are just not going to cut it. The tragedy of Gaza is a lesson of what happens when you do too little too late. We failed to intervene early enough. We failed to apply enough pressure when pressure might’ve made a difference, and we can’t let the West Bank suffer the same fate.”
