“For as long as Palestinians, living from the river to the sea, remain unfree, then the movement must continue to march onwards.”
By Conor Bollins
Last Saturday, 250,000 people marched through the streets of London in solidarity with Palestine. This was the 37th national demonstration organised by the Palestine Coalition since the start of the genocide in Gaza. It was coordinated with similar protests that took place in major cities around the world. The scale of this successful mobilisation shows that the Palestine movement in the UK remains strong. This is particularly encouraging in light of recent political developments.
Breaking with decades of silence, the UK government has finally acknowledged that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is unlawful and that there are strong grounds to assume that war crimes have been committed in Gaza. This represents a highly significant victory for the movement, but it is essential that those opposed to the genocide continue to build mass pressure and call for the government to go even further.
In a parliamentary statement delivered last month, Ed Miliband, the new Foreign Secretary, announced a series of measures intended to finally hold Israel accountable for its breaches of international law. Chief amongst these is an import ban on goods from illegal settlements in the West Bank. Alongside this, the government has committed to sanction specific individuals or companies who abet further settlement expansion. According to Miliband, it may take up to nine months for the government to be able to fully implement this.
Whilst this is an important step forward, these measures do not go nearly far enough. This was a point raised by Omar Barghouti, one of the co-founders of the Palestinian BDS movement, in the week before the government’s announcements. At a public meeting organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), Barghouti explained how deeply integrated the illegal settlements are into Israel’s wider economy and occupation. Therefore, for sanctions to be effective, there needs to be a total ban on all Israeli goods.
Nevertheless, the government’s change of stance provides a welcome opportunity for campaigners to push for further action. Many political commentators have flocked to praise Miliband for ushering in this reversal of government policy. Touted as a possible Chancellor of the Exchequer, before Andy Burnham ended up giving the job to John Healey, Miliband has served as Foreign Secretary since July. Peter Oborne, writing in the Middle East Eye, effusively described Miliband as shaping up to be the “most formidable foreign secretary in decades.” For Oborne, Miliband has demonstrated that he is not prepared to kowtow to Israeli or US pressure. Elsewhere, the Middle East Eye has reported on how Miliband played the decisive role in getting the recent measures agreed behind-the-scenes.
It is important to contextualise the Labour government’s new position in relation to its recent history. Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, accused Keir Starmer of helping to “manufacture consensus” for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. As Leader of the Opposition, Starmer defended Israel’s war crimes. Infamously, in response to a query during an LBC interview, Starmer publicly stated that Israel had the right to withhold water and electricity from Gaza. This amounted to an endorsement of collective punishment, which was made illegal by the Geneva Conventions shortly after the Second World War. Then, as Prime Minister, Starmer enabled Israel to commit further atrocities by allowing arms exports to continue flowing into Israel. On these grounds alone, Starmer was complicit in genocide.
David Lammy, Starmer’s longest-serving Foreign Secretary, did everything he could to normalise diplomacy with Israel and to minimise the idea that a genocide has taken place. Lammy went so far as to pose for photos with Benjamin Netanyahu. Starmer similarly invited Isaac Herzog, Israel’s President, to Number 10. Both Netanyahu and Herzog are war criminals, who are responsible for ordering and then attempting to justify the mass slaughter of Palestinian women, men, and children. In contrast to Lammy, Miliband has struck a very different tone in relation to what has unfolded in Gaza. During his address to Parliament, Miliband spoke of the “most unimaginable trauma and suffering” that Palestinians have experienced over the last three years. This included, he said, “death, destruction and dehumanisation on an appalling scale.”
To try and make sense of the government’s shift in policy and rhetoric, some analysts have referred to Miliband’s record on foreign policy during his own tenure as Leader of the Labour Party between 2010 and 2015. After defeating his Blairite brother to become Labour Leader, Miliband almost immediately made a public apology for his party’s role in the illegal bombing and invasion of Iraq. Then, in 2013, he whipped Labour MPs against the Conservative government’s plans to support US-led military strikes in Syria. That said, Miliband would have needed the support of the Prime Minister in order to enact a major policy shift in relation to Palestine. In the days leading up to his arrival at Number 10, Burnham signalled his willingness to support such a change by conceding that Labour “didn’t get it right” on Gaza. However, there are deeper, more structural factors that explain how this new direction for the government came about.
Above all, it is the strength of the mass movement, which has arisen in opposition to the genocide, that has forced the government to change its position. Hundreds of thousands of people, horrified by what they have seen unfold in Gaza, have taken to the streets to express their disgust at Westminster’s complicity in Israel’s war crimes and ethnic cleansing. More broadly, the desire to express solidarity with Palestine has mobilised grassroots activists in droves across the country. Campaigning has taken a variety of different forms, from student encampments and local divestment petitions to street stalls and cultural activities. Combined, this has created an exceptionally high level of public understanding about the genocide and the history that led to it. In turn, this has enabled the movement to exert mass pressure on the government.
Aimee Shalan, PSC’s incoming director, has correctly asserted that it is the strength of the movement that has turned Palestine into a “domestic political issue” in the UK. In particular, despite having received vociferous state hostility, the consistently huge national marches have ensured that Gaza has been kept at the top of the political agenda. This was demonstrated by the way in which solidarity with Palestine became an issue at the ballot box during this year’s local elections.
Polling research, commissioned by PSC and Friends of the Earth, has shown that 82% of ex-Labour voters who intended to vote for other progressive parties during those elections also supported stronger government action against Israel. As a consequence, the Labour vote haemorrhaged in favour of independent candidates and the Greens. The resultant loss of Labour Councils, and large numbers of councillors, across vast swathes of the country made Starmer’s continued leadership untenable. Indeed, the Palestine movement could be said to have brought down his government.
Burnham’s rapid progression from Mayor of Manchester to MP and then Prime Minister, within only a few short months, needs to be understood as Labour’s response to these catastrophic electoral losses. A savvier politician than Starmer, if nothing else, Burnham clearly recognised that the party’s position on Palestine needed to change if Labour was to have any chance of courting the progressive voters that it has lost from its electoral coalition. Hence why Miliband’s promotion to Foreign Secretary was even possible. Miliband has himself agreed that campaigners and public outrage at Israel’s actions have brought about the new status quo. On several occasions, including at an event organised by Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East, during the party’s annual conference in Liverpool, Miliband has gone so far as to thank people for keeping alive the campaign for justice in Gaza and the West Bank.
The lesson the movement should draw from this experience is that building mass pressure works. As tired as activists may feel after three years of solid campaigning, it is essential for the movement to now press its advantage. Our demands need to focus on the next steps we want the government to take. This should include: a total arms embargo on Israel, including components for F-35 fighter jets; wide-ranging sanctions that target the whole of Israel and not just the illegal settlements; an end to the RAF surveillance flights that have facilitated IDF activities; and an official government acknowledgement that a genocide has taken place. We must continue to remind the government that this is not only the best way for them to act morally and responsibly on the world stage, but also the only path in keeping with the UK’s obligations under international law.
Since the so-called ceasefire was brokered in Gaza a year ago, at least 1,400 Palestinian civilians have been killed at the hands of IDF soldiers. Gaza now contains the largest number of child amputees in the world, and an untold number of people remain trapped under the rubble of their former homes. Israeli soldiers continue to shoot at medics, aid workers, and journalists. Settler violence in the West Bank is escalating, and the occupation has only intensified. For as long as Palestinians, living from the river to the sea, remain unfree, then the movement must continue to march onwards.
- Conor Bollins is a Lecturer with the School of History at UEA and the Anti-Casualisation Officer for UEA UCU. You can follow Conor on Bluesky and Twitter/X.
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