Is the UK’s support for Israel’s atrocities in Gaza finally wavering?

But as the loss of life in Gaza increasingly causes concern among Labour supporters and the wider British public, it seems that Keir Starmer’s government may finally be becoming critical of Israeli actions.

 

Foreign secretary David Lammy this week said Israel’s ongoing blockade of goods and supplies to the Gaza Strip is a “breach of international law” – the first time that a member of the government has said as much.

 

Lammy was referring to the fact that the hundreds of lorries that managed to get into the area during the ceasefire are no longer on the move, fuel and electricity are cut off and shortages of some foods are expected within a week, with supplies already starting to run short. It is all building up to be an especially violent version of Israel’s Dahiya doctrine of collective punishment.

 

All of this has left the already displaced people of Gaza with appallingly grim prospects, as they also face bombing every night and repeated enforced movement, often at very short notice.

 

Still, though, Lammy’s comments amount to quite a change of direction for the government; with the UK armed forces, defence industries and senior politicians having repeatedly helped Israel to carry out its war over the past 18 months.

 

As Declassified UK has long charted, this help has included the UK providing military training for the IDF, spy flights, arms exports and holding private meetings between senior Israeli military and their political and military counterparts in the UK.

 

Most recently, Home Office officials met staff from Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms company; senior journalists from the BBC, the Guardian and the Financial Times held private meetings with an Israeli general, and a British general made a secret visit to Israel.

 

Among the many other examples identified by Declassified UK, the Israeli Air Force was allowed to use the Royal Air Force Brize Norton air transport hub in Oxfordshire on at least three occasions in October and November last year; an Israeli general and his delegation were given “special diplomatic immunity” to spend time at the UK’s ministry of defence; and the British military base in Cyprus has been widely used by US planes travelling to Israel.

 

Numerous other examples of the UK’s support for Israel, both under the previous Conservative government and the current Labour one, stretch back to the start of the war. But it is what is happening now, with the huge suffering and further loss of life that may turn it into a major political issue for Starmer.

 

An unfolding tragedy in all of this is that the UK is one of the very few countries in the world that may have the power to convince the Israeli government that it cannot win this war and that its actions are actually more likely to make Israel less secure.

 

The pain, suffering and trauma in Gaza are extreme, and the anger at what is being inflicted on them is enough to incite very many thousands of young people to join Hamas’s cause. They will have seen their children, parents, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, grandparents and friends killed and maimed in a seemingly never-ending cycle of violence.

 

Even Joe Biden’s former US secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, a strident supporter of Israel, used his farewell speech in January to admit that Hamas is readily replacing its losses with plenty of new recruits – calling into question Israel’s stated aim of completely eradicating the group.

 

Hamas and other movements will survive. Whatever happens in the short term and even if the IDF seems to suppress dissent for now, that impact will be generational, as Israel eventually realises that it cannot be impregnable yet insecure at the same time.