THE British ruling class has played a special role as far as Palestine in concerned.
In the Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917, the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, wrote to Baron Rothschild a communication for the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland pledging to hand over Palestine, somebody else’s country, then still a part of the Turkish empire, to the world Zionist movement.
The infamous words were, ‘His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.’
In fact, the ending of the British mandate over Palestine in 1948 led directly to the ‘Catastrophe’, the murder of thousands of Palestinian men, women and children by armed gangs of Zionists, and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into the refugee camps of Lebanon and Jordan.
In the 1967 Six Day war, with the support of the UK, Israel seized Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and sent many more thousands of Palestinians into exile.
Since then the UK, under both Labour and Tory administrations, has been one of the leading supporters of the Zionist state, supplying it with arms and an army of settlers, right up to the just-concluded 51-day war against the people of Gaza.
This onslaught infuriated millions of people in the UK, and even sections of the Tory Party, witness the resignation of Baroness Warsi, and the vote by large numbers of Tory MPs for October’s successful House of Commons motion, passed by 274-12, urging the British government to support and to recognise the Palestinian state.
On Tuesday night at the UN Security Council, the Tory-led government slapped down the people of Britain and the majority of the House of Commons when it abstained on the resolution before the UN Security Council recognising the Palestinian state and setting a two-year deadline for the ending of the occupation and the siege of the Gaza Strip.
The British government carried on the tradition of Balfour in being a party to the continuation of the 48-year-long occupation of the West Bank and the siege of Gaza, and also rescuing the USA from the ignominy of using its veto to halt the recognition of the Palestinian state and naming the date for the ending of the occupation.
The Palestinian leadership has applauded France for breaking ranks with the other imperialist powers and supporting the resolution, but has condemned the ‘shameless abstainers’ whose leader was the UK.
The Palestinian masses are very angry at the blocking of their ‘legal route’ to recognition and ending the occupation.
The workers of the world and the British workers will also be very angry at the way the Tory-led regime knifed Palestine in the back, and also showed its contempt for the successful House of Commons motion that urged the British government to recognise Palestine.
With the ‘legal road’ to their state blocked, the Palestinian masses will, after taking stock of the situation, launch mass actions that will put the First and Second Intifadas into the shade. They are absolutely determined that the occupation will be brought to an end and that their state, with east Jerusalem as its capital, will be established in the period directly ahead.
The British trade unions must be in the vanguard of the world struggle to establish the Palestinian state and must establish a worldwide boycott of Israel to help achieve it.
The unions must use their power in the Labour Party to make it put down a motion in the House of Commons condemning the Tory abstention on Palestine, and they should call a massive national demonstration on the day that such a debate takes place.
They must demand that Labour put the recognition of the Palestinian state into its election manifesto alongside a pledge that Labour will not arm Israel ever again. It must also pledge to bring back the resolution to the Security Council and vote for it. These are the next steps that must be taken.
