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UK Prime Minister's Palestine Doesn't Exist

(Spectator-UK) Stephen Daisley - In recognizing a state of Palestine, Prime Minister Keir Starmer is attempting to summon a tide which flows counter to history and human nature. Men like Starmer flatter themselves that they can, with the flick of a remote pen, will a nation-state into being like modern heirs to Arthur Balfour. This reflects the common misconception that the Balfour Declaration created the State of Israel, when that communique merely expressed British favor for the Zionist project in Palestine/Eretz Yisrael. Israel was (re)founded by the efforts of Jews, not the sympathies of the British Foreign Office. Neither Starmer nor any other Western leader can recognize a Palestinian state because no such entity exists and there is no prospect of one in the near future. Across Palestinian politics, in culture, among intellectuals and activists, on the streets and in the mosques, the dominant cause is anti-Zionism. Palestinian liberationism is a misnomer because, except for a narrow segment of liberal opinion, Palestinian society does not wish to be free from Israel, it wishes to be free of Israel. Theirs is a counter-nationalism, a common identity forged in reaction to and rejection of another people's identity. Starmer doesn't want a Palestinian state, he wants his notion of a Palestinian state, a liberal market economy with free elections and the rule of law, living in peace with its neighbors. But you can't press release Western liberal democracy into the Middle East. The lessons the Palestinians and others will take are that the West is so weak and decadent that it will reward mass murder with diplomatic prizes. That provoking Israel into war will quickly turn the West's stomachs and thereafter their policies. That governments in Europe and the Anglosphere are compelled by mass immigration to treat foreign policy as a domestic issue.
2025-09-28 00:00:00
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