Britain finally recognises its historic responsibility
September 2025
Last week, Sir Keir Starmer finally agreed to the UK recognising the state of Palestine a decision which has angered Israel itself and the USA or at least President Trump. In all the debates, panel discussions, broadcast interviews and statements by politicians, the historic role played by Britain, when it was a world power, has barely been mentioned. It is almost a though there is a blanket of embarrassment which is placed over the events in the region similar in many ways to the silence around the atrocities of slavery and the acquisition, and subsequent attempts to retain, our Empire. All sides refer to the events of October 7th, which, terrible though they were, were just one act in a drama that goes back to the Great War.
In an article in the New Statesman: Britain has a historic responsibility to aid the establishment of a Palestinian state by William Dalrymple in the ‘Another Voice’ column (19 – 25 September) he discusses our grim historic role which has had direct and lasting effects today. Most are familiar with the Balfour Declaration of 1917 which supported the national home for Jewish people in Palestine. How the existing population was to be treated was left vague. The British then disarmed the indigenous people and arrested their leaders and sent them to prison camps in the Seychelles and Cyprus. He recounts how the infamous black and tans were brought into quell the local population.
Considerable violence was inflicted on the Palestinian people with thousands of houses destroyed and thousands interned in concentration camps enduring violent interrogation and torture. Those between the ages of seven and 16 were flogged he says. Over 30 Arabs were executed. Such was the damage done to the Palestinian leadership that when the British pulled out in 1948, they were in no position to cope with the next phase of their misery when the Jews arrived who unleashed further violence in the Nakba.
The British have a special responsibility he argues to see the establishment of a Palestinian state who have suffered as a direct result of our actions over a century ago. Yet this violent history and mistreatment, murder and displacement of hundreds of thousands seem to be of no consequence in the reporting and interviews in our media. Instead, there is a relentless focus on the massacre on October 7th almost as though it came out of the blue.
Today (25 September) the American Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee was interviewed on Channel 4 news. It was not made clear to viewers that Huckabee is a Christian Zionist and says that on religious principle that the land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people and frequently guiding Christian pilgrimages to Israel since the 1980s. Neither was it explained that he has denied the existence of a Palestinian people and supports settlement activity on the West Bank and Gaza strip. On his organised trips he avoided Bethlehem as it was mostly occupied by Palestinians. He focused all his comments on the violence committed by Hamas. He had no answer to Matt Frei’s options for the Palestinians of either displacement, genocide or apartheid living as second class citizens in Israel. He repeated the canard that bombing was targeted on terrorists and that Hamas were using human shields.
Dalrymple ends his piece: ‘We must continue to believe in freedom and justice and dignity and decency and human rights. To dream of a world where Palestinians are not burned alive in their tents or herded like cattle from refugee camp to refugee camp to their final slaughter. We must dream of a Palestinian state alongside Israel where Palestinians can live in safety and without fear. And we must work to make sure that our dreams of an actual Palestine will one day soon become a reality’.
Over 65,400 have died in Gaza since hostilities started.
Amnesty in Salisbury & South Wiltshire 