UK recognition of Palestine: a first step to right a historic wrong
Quakers in Britain welcomes the announcement by our government today to formally recognise the State of Palestine.
This is a long overdue first step and especially necessary given Britain's past actions, in the Balfour Declaration and as colonial ruler in Palestine from 1920 to 1948, which continue to have profound consequences for Palestinians to this day.
Recognition brings our country into agreement with over 150 others that have already recognised the Palestinian people's inalienable right to live on their own land and be governed by their own people. It sends a message to the current Israeli government that their efforts to ethnically cleanse the land of Palestinians and annex it for a Greater Israel are not accepted.
While messages such as this are important, they do nothing to absolve the UK of its legal and moral obligations to end its decades-long complicity in the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Our current government has continued this complicity, allowing £6 billion a year in trade to flow between the UK and Israel at preferential rates. This trade includes goods, services, and financial investments with companies that profit from the occupation and those based in Israeli settlements built illegally in Palestine.
Our government continues to permit the sale of arms used to kill men, women, and children in Gaza. And it continues with business-as-usual relations with Israeli leaders as they order the mass starvation, killing, and ethnic cleansing of a people.
International legal authorities are clear: Israel's occupation of the State of Palestine is illegal and Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
International law is also clear: our government has an obligation to end its complicity in both.