PRESSURE continues to mount on the government over its backing for Israel and its failure to take any serious measures to impede its genocide of the Palestinian people.
MPs from all parts of the Commons united at the first opportunity in the new year to demand that ministers act.
Even many Tory backbenchers — although not Kemi Badenoch’s front bench — seem disgusted at Britain’s continuing complicity with Israeli war crimes.
Vocal support for Israel seems to be draining away on the Labour back benches, while Liberal Democrat, SNP, Green and independent MPs are more-or-less united in urging a change of course.
There are several concrete actions they are demanding that the government should take.
First is an end to all arms sales to the Israeli regime. So far the government has only suspended a minority of the licences which permit the export of British military equipment to Israel.
Yet there is now little room for doubt that the Israeli military is engaging in war crimes daily and is in continual breach of international law.
Continuing to supply the Israeli war machine with equipment makes ministers themselves culpable for the consequences.
The second demand is for the immediate recognition of a Palestinian state. Keir Starmer once upon a time indicated that a Labour government might act swiftly on this but since the election of Donald Trump as US President-elect, he has gone very quiet.
Support for the idea of a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine is declining in the face of Israeli violence and an increasingly aggressive settlement policy in the West Bank.
If it is to be revived bold action is needed, and British recognition of Palestine within its 1967 borders would help to that end.
It would send a clear message to Benjamin Netanyahu and his cronies that they are not going to get away with erasing Palestinian identity and their pursuit of a Greater Israel across historic Palestine and, indeed, beyond.
A third demand that ministers should move on is serious sanctions on those in Israel responsible for the crisis.
That should start with the neofascist ministers in Netanyahu’s cabinet, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who former foreign secretary David Cameron was considering sanctioning eight months ago.
They should be extended to all those responsible for Israeli war crimes in Gaza and its breaches of international law in the West Bank.
And why is there not a blanket ban on trading with the illegal West Bank settlements, the very symbols of Israeli denial of Palestinian rights and scorn for global justice?
Yet instead of all this the Starmer government appears passive and hand-wringing. That appearance is, however, misleading.
In reality, Britain continues to facilitate Israeli aggression, including by the use of British military resources at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus. It continues, in all essentials, to support Israel’s genocide.
It was a Tory MP who put his finger on a key part of the problem when he demanded an assurance that British policy towards Palestine was being made in “Whitehall, not Washington.”
There is little doubt that Starmer is making policy on this and other issues with more than one eye on the incoming Trump, whose all-out support for Israel has long been plain.
There is however a pressure greater than Trump that can be brought to bear on the floundering Prime Minister. It is mobilised public opinion.
That is the force which has made the weather on this issue for 14 months now and is driving MPs mounting anger over the government’s failure.
It must be strengthened still further, until politicians realise that their own futures depend on a change of policy.
