Lib Dem peer leads push in Lords for immediate recognition of Palestinian state
Despite receiving cross party support Baroness Northover's Bill faces a battle to make progress due to a lack of parliamentary time
Lee Harpin is the Jewish News's political editor
Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Northover has attracted significant cross-party support for a Bill calling for immediate recognition of a Palestinian state – but opponents sounded warnings it would act as a “licence for further terrorism”.
The former minister tabled the Palestine Statehood (Recognition) Bill in the hope of pushing the UK Government to act on its ambition for a two-state solution by recognising Palestine as a sovereign and independent state on pre-1967 lines.
Introducing last Friday’s Private Members Bill, Northover said:”Some say that recognition is merely symbolic, not changing anything on the ground, but recognition has importance—that Palestinians have the right to self-determination, national rights and the legal benefits of that, just like Israelis.
“Some say that it is too late: the Swiss cheese effect of Israeli settlements, roads, walls and checkpoints in the Occupied Palestinian Territories means that a contiguous Palestinian state is no longer viable.
“The actions and words of the current Israeli Government seem intent on making it even less likely. Several Israeli Ministers have been clear that they will never accept such an outcome.”
The Bill was also backed by several Labour and Conservative peers, although it also faced strong opposition in the House.
Conservative former minister Baroness Altmann warned Hamas wants to “wipe Israel off the map” and said they spent years preparing the surprise cross-border attack on October 7 2023.
Lady Altmann said if one side does not seek peace then there would be a repeat of “past failures”, adding: “This Bill, if passed, would be a licence for further terrorism I’m afraid.
“A signal that deliberately killing, torturing and murdering Jews and promising to do it again and again and hiding safely in tunnels, under or behind your own civilians, knowingly, cynically inviting retaliation from those you’ve attacked will bring rewards from civilised countries whose emotions you have deliberately manipulated.”
Labour’s Lord Katz described himself as a “proud, progressive Zionist” who believes both the Jewish people and Palestinians have the same rights to national self-determination.
Katz said the UK needs to be a “strong advocate” for a two-state solution, before adding: “I’m afraid given the facts on the ground, and the legacy of Hamas’s terrorist pogrom on October 7, together with everything that followed, I fear it is simply wishful thinking to say that immediate recognition of a Palestinian state – which this Bill advances – would actually advance the peace process.”
Katz revealed he had discussed moves for recognition of a Palestinian state with a senior member of Israel’s Democrats political grouping. They had a “strong desire” for peace, said Katz, but viewed recognition at this stage as a move that would make UK foreign policy for the region “irrelevant.”
The Jewish Labour Movement chair added:”Recognition is a card that you can play only once. Timing is everything. As the Oslo accords state, any dispute must be resolved through direct negotiations. Only through such engagement and mutual agreement, which Britain can and must support, will we deliver lasting peace.
Labour’s Lord Dubs, who fled the Nazis on the Kindertransport in 1939, was among those saying he now backed the bill and said the UK must work for an “immediate” two-state solution.
Lord Dubs added: “A two-state solution has long been Labour Party policy. It was in our manifesto, it was supported by the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary David Lammy said ‘We’re committed to Palestinian recognition, we hope to work with partners to achieve that when the circumstances are right’.
“It’s that phrase ‘when the circumstances are right’ which has delayed progress up to now and I’d suggest to the Foreign Secretary that the circumstances are right at the present time.”
Conservative former Foreign Office minister Baroness Warsi said: “Tragically as we have failed to recognise Palestine, methodically – and I’d argue deliberately – the probability of Palestine existing as a state has been diminished.”
On the opposing side of the argument, Conservative former minister Lord Frost said there is “nothing approximating to a state” for Palestine.
He said: “In these circumstances, what is the point of recognition of Palestine? At best it’s an acknowledgement of the concept of a state for a state that doesn’t exist, at worst it’s just a form of international virtue signalling or even a statement to Israel that we will be rewarding in some way the Palestinians for the chaos and violence of October 7.”
Legal opinion differed on the prospects of a Palestinian state, with independent crossbencher Lord Pannick saying it was “highly doubtful” that Palestine satisfies the required criteria at the moment.
On the need for a state to have a defined territory, Lord Pannick said: “There’s plainly no existing Palestinian control within those pre-1967 borders, this is wishful thinking, it’s a fantasy, it’s not the recognition of an existing territory.”
But Labour’s Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws countered: “No court would acknowledge what Lord Pannick has said when all of those criteria have been prevented by Israel.”
President Donald Trump was also criticised for his suggestion that the US could redevelop the war-torn Gaza Strip into the “Riviera of the Middle East”.
Lady Kennedy, addressing the suggestion of a “holiday resort”, said: “What? On the bones of the many who lie still dead under that rubble? To lie your towel out on the sands which still remain soaked in the blood of women and children?”
The Conservative peer Lord Leigh was outpoken in his opposition to the Bill.
He said:”Frankly, it is hugely insensitive and somewhat naive to bring this Bill to our Parliament at this time, when Israel has only recently received back some of those innocent hostages, who were tortured mentally and physically.
“They were hung upside-down, put in cages, starved, told lies about their families and ignored by the utterly useless Red Cross. In effect, this Bill wants to reward the perpetrators. Every poll shows that Hamas would be in power if there were elections.
“Indeed, there were people who rejoiced with glee as they heard of babies being decapitated and killed in front of their parents. Others were burned alive and innocents were raped.”
The Bill received an unopposed second reading, as is convention for private members’ bills in the upper house, and will undergo further scrutiny at a later stage.
It faces a battle to make progress due to a lack of parliamentary time to consider backbench proposals.
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