Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, arrived in London on Sunday night for an official three-day state visit at the invitation of Keir Starmer.
According to reports, Abbas is scheduled to meet with Starmer to discuss efforts to achieve an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and an ending of the genocide and starvation being inflicted on Palestinians by a Zionist regime totally committed to ethnically cleansing the Gaza Strip, enforced by a permanent military occupation.
According to a report by the Palestinian News Agency, WAFA, the talks will also address enabling the State of Palestine to ‘assume full responsibility, the implementation of a recovery and reconstruction plan, and halting all unilateral actions, including colonial settlement expansion, colonists’ terrorism, and annexation.’
Additionally, WAFA reported that Abbas and Starmer ‘will discuss coordinating efforts for the upcoming international conference on the two-state solution, scheduled for later this month, as well as the anticipated British recognition of the State of Palestine.’
In addition to meeting with Starmer, Abbas is expected to meet with Labour’s new Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper and other senior UK officials.
The fact that this official visit by the President of the Palestinian Authority has received no publicity in the British press or media indicates that they have little interest or expectation, and that these three days of talks have been designed by Starmer just as a convenient cover for the Labour government’s ongoing support and complicity in Zionist genocide.
While attempting to divert the massive opposition to Zionist genocide and demands for action to end the Israeli occupation Starmer’s government continues to supply UK parts for F-35 fighter jets used to bomb Gaza. Surveillance flights from the RAF base in Cyprus fly over Gaza from which the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) continues to supply intelligence to Israel.
The MoD claims the intelligence is to help identify where Israeli captives are held, but the refusal of the military to release any details has led to speculation that the data provided has been used in Israeli airstrikes that have killed thousands of Palestinians.
Abbas’s official state-visit has been overshadowed by Israeli president Isaac Herzog due to arrive in London on Thursday just days before Britain is expected to recognise the State of Palestine at the UN general assembly later this month.
Last Thursday, the Guardian paper revealed that Herzog is expected to meet ministers and senior Labour politicians in this latest unannounced visit by a senior figure in the Israeli government.
The Guardian noted that there had been another ‘unannounced visit’ by a leading member of the Israeli government when the then UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, hosted a meeting with his Israeli counterpart Gideon Sa’ar earlier this year.
Starmer’s officials denied that any meeting with Herzog had been scheduled but pointedly did not deny the possibility of more clandestine talks with the Israeli president who stated in 2023: ‘The entire (Palestinian) nation out there … is responsible’, a statement quoted by the International Court of Justice in 2024 which found an ‘imminent risk’ of genocide in Gaza.
In 2025 this is no imminent risk but a brutal reality as over 64,000 Palestinians have been killed and countless thousands more buried under rubble in Gaza.
A state visit by Abbas cannot cover up the complete complicity of a Labour government that continues to arm and support Zionist genocide while promising to recognise the State of Palestine.
The working class has the power to end this complicity by demanding that the trade union leaders stop just passing motions of support for Palestine but take action against a Labour government whose priority is to arrest peaceful demonstrators calling for an end to genocide while continuing to arm the Zionist state murder regime.
The TUC conference this week must take a stand by calling a general strike to bring down the Starmer government and bring in a workers government that will immediately not just recognise the State of Palestine but provide it with all the material support required to defeat Zionist occupation and ensure the victory of the Palestinian revolution.
This is the only way forward.
