When the British foreign secretary Arthur Balfour issued his eponymous “Declaration” in November 1917, it was hailed as a monumental and historic diplomatic achievement by the Zionist movement. When Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced earlier this week that, barring a ceasefire, Britain will recognise a Palestinian state, it was met with angry tantrums and livid rhetorical spasms by Israeli ministers.
The context and circumstances are obviously very different – but the Britain of 1917 that issued the declaration, the Britain of 1947 that relinquished its mandate over Palestine and supported the UN plan for partition, and the Britain of 2025 that is considering recognition of a Palestinian state are all telling the same story: that there is a question that needs to – and can be – resolved.
Benjamin Netanyahu should not have been surprised by Starmer’s announcement. It has been gradually in the making, with Britain over the last year imploring Israel to end the war in Gaza and prevent further humanitarian catastrophe and starvation.
Starmer’s bona fides on Israel are unassailable; it is Netanyahu who has chosen to ignore, deride and refuse to entertain any political plans for post-war Gaza. It was Netanyahu who waged a war without clear political objectives, and who was warned by Britain, among several other allies, that this would produce calamity.
But it is Netanyahu who has cast himself in the Churchillian mould, that of the wartime prime minister who alone can remodel the Middle East’s geopolitical landscape through military force – and all the while assuming the Palestinian issue will magically disappear.
Yet after a few weeks of futile quasi-negotiations over a partial deal, Israel is now again exuding pessimism, threatening to widen the military operation in Gaza as if, short of full military occupation, it can be further widened.
It’s not just the United Kingdom that has, latterly, taken a stand: the Israeli military is also warning Netanyahu that this is going nowhere.
As Donald Trump’s patience with Netanyahu frays, he sent US envoy Steve Witkoff to Israel, which was a de facto threat to Israel not to expand the war, and to significantly increase humanitarian aid getting into Gaza, an endeavour that, to date, has been a colossal failure.
The Israeli media is melodramatically calling, first, the French decision to “recognise Palestine”, followed by the British, then Canada and possibly Portugal, too, as a “tsunami”. This is both misleading and in poor taste. A tsunami is a force of nature, a displacement of the ocean resulting from an earthquake. The diplomatic debacle that Israel is undergoing is man-made – by one man, to be precise, Mr Netanyahu. It is the result of nothing but hubris and a reckless lack of policy.
Some 147 countries – out of the 193 UN member states – have already announced their recognition of a future Palestine. This wide-scale recognition is largely symbolic, declarative and more a statement of frustration with the lack of a resolution than having any practical meaning.
But the symbolic nature of such declarations becomes substantive since they create an organising policy principle around which many countries coalesce. When four of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council announce their intention, it leaves Israel dependent more than ever not on the US, but on the whims of an increasingly frustrated and erratic Donald Trump. This is not where Israel should be.
Starmer, Carney and Macron will not establish a Palestinian state by virtue of declarations. They know that. Nor is it feasible for such a state to be formed in the immediate future. But they have put a mirror in front of Netanyahu. How long can he avoid looking into it?
Alon Pinkas is a former Israeli consul general to the US and was a political adviser to two former prime ministers, Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak
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