Deir el-Balah, Gaza and London, United Kingdom – Israa Saleh, a petite, soft-spoken Palestinian doctor who wears a colorful hijab, has been in mourning for months.
His colleague Maisara al-Rayyes was killed in November when an Israeli airstrike destroyed her family’s home in Gaza City. Her remains are still under the rubble.
Saleh described al-Rayyes, who like her received a prestigious Chevening scholarship from the British government, as a “brother.”
“I still mourn the loss,” she told Al Jazeera in Deir el-Balah, the central Gaza city where she fled, having been displaced 10 times in the past nine months. “This war has stolen everything from us.”
He returned to Gaza in 2022, having completed a master’s degree in Liverpool, a city that reminded him of the Strip with its “coastal nature” and “incredible” people.
Rishi Sunak was then the new Conservative Prime Minister. Back home, Saleh worked with Medecins du Monde, the international humanitarian organization, and planned to get married.
But a year later, Israel’s latest and deadliest attack on Gaza shattered her wedding dreams, as spending time with her fiancé became impossible and venues were bombed.
Having lived in northwest England for more than a year, Saleh, 30, has closely followed the recent UK election that ushered in the first Labor government in 14 years. Now she cautiously hopes that Britain will change its stance on the war.
“I wasn’t really surprised when [Labour leader] Keir Starmer won,” she said. “But nothing really gives me as much hope as the protests breaking out across the country. This could actually put pressure on the Labor Party to act.”
She believes that the United Kingdom is “politically complicit in genocide”, on the one hand, given its support for the Israeli army, while “helping the population”, on the other, having provided some humanitarian assistance to the Strip.
“Your position must be clear. They must take a firm stand and listen to their people to end this war. This is how the Labor Party should work.”
Asaad al-Kurd, a 51-year-old English teacher and father of six in Deir el-Balah, is less hopeful.
He usually follows global headlines. But having lost his sister and her children in the war, as well as many other family members, his life seems too “hellish” to be involved in the news.
“I felt disconnected from this year’s election,” he said. “Both Labor and the Conservatives are complicit in genocide. Keir [Starmer] and Rishi [Sunak] They promised unparalleled military support to Israel and justified Israel’s monstrous war crimes… Whatever they say doesn’t give me any sense of hope. Nothing is going to change.”
He compared the UK to Washington’s “tail”, as its foreign policy is closely aligned.
“[But] we need to remember that the UK is behind our catastrophe,” he said. “The Conservative Prime Minister Arthur Balfour gave Israel land in Palestine.”
War in Gaza is the priority in terms of foreign policy
Al-Kurd is a professor at UNRWA, the agency that several countries, including the United Kingdom, stopped funding after Israel alleged that 12 of its 30,000 employees took part in the October 7 Hamas-led incursion into southern Israel. during which 1,139 people were killed. Israel has not provided evidence to support these claims.
As the death toll in Gaza approaches 40,000 people, Olivia O’Sullivan, director of the UK in the World program at think tank Chatham House, said the war is “a foreign policy priority” for the new Labor government.
She told Al Jazeera that changes to the “big policy issues”, as opposed to differences in rhetoric, would signal a move away from the previous Conservative administration.
The resumption of UNRWA funding, a shift in arms exports to Israel or explicit support for the jurisdiction of international courts would indicate that the Labor Party was on a different path, she said.
In opposition, Starmer regularly expressed solidarity with Israel and upset many when he said he had the right to cut water and power supplies to Gaza. He quickly retracted that statement, but his global stance cost Labor four seats for pro-Palestinian independent candidates and widened the gap with British Muslims who traditionally support the party.
Starmer voted against a parliamentary motion calling for an immediate ceasefire in November. Before the elections, during a radio interview, he said he would not “declare that something is genocide or not,” while reaffirming Israel’s “right to self-defense.”
But he also said that all countries, including Israel, “must be properly held accountable to the court of international law” and promised to review legal advice on arms sales to Israel while prime minister.
David Lammy, the new Foreign Secretary who is expected to visit Israel soon, broke with the official UK line in late May when he supported the independence of the International Criminal Court after it sought arrest warrants for Israeli officials and leaders of Hamas for alleged war crimes.
Conservatives said the ICC had no jurisdiction in the case, while US President Joe Biden said it was “outrageous” to suggest any equivalence between Israel and Hamas.
Richard Hermer, appointed attorney-general by Starmer, is also “one of the interesting appointments” in the new government, O’Sullivan said.
Hermer, who has criticized Israel, specializes in human rights law. He condemned the former government’s push to criminalize boycott campaigns and was part of a small group of Jewish lawyers who wrote an open letter reminding Israel of its “international obligations” at the start of the war.
“On some of these issues of international law, we may see some changes,” said O’Sullivan, who described Hermer as a “deep well of knowledge.”
According to Kamal Hawwash, a British-Palestinian academic who ran as an independent candidate in the election on a pro-Palestinian ticket, if Starmer’s government did not challenge the Conservatives’ position on the ICC, it would mean it would be against “the application of legal international humanitarian aid equally to all States”. The Labor Party ended up taking the seat contested by Hawwash.
Joseph Willits, head of parliamentary affairs at the Council for British-Arab Understanding (CAABU), said the new government needs to “fully support” the ICC “unequivocally”, adding that there is “rightfully some optimism” surrounding the appointment of Hermer.
Palestinian state and internal divisions
The Labor manifesto committed to ultimately recognizing the creation of a Palestinian state as part of a “renewed peace process” towards a two-state solution.
But since the Conservatives suggested in January that the UK could recognize a Palestinian state before the end of the peace process, the Labor Party’s pledge is not interpreted by analysts as revolutionary.
Spain, Norway and Ireland recognized the State of Palestine this year, angering Israel.
“The new Labor government is very unlikely to do this,” said Glen Rangwala, associate professor in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge. “Their manifest commitment… conditions recognition to the resumption of a negotiation process… in fact, this allows the issue of recognition of the Palestinian State to be postponed.”
Rangwala expects the Labor Party to treat the handful of pro-Palestinian independents in parliament as “fringe figures”.
The party likely assumes that after the “current phase” of the Gaza war ends, the public profiles of independents will “decrease further” and pro-Palestinian voters will return to the Labor group, he said.
But Willits said Starmer risks his reputation if he fails to resolve the growing divide.
“Some may think it is easy, with a huge Labor majority in parliament, to now dismiss Palestine as an irrelevant, marginal, fifth-column issue,” he said. “If Keir Starmer doesn’t just want to be haunted and remembered as the one who said Israel had the right to cut off electricity and water in Gaza, then he needs to manage this political reset in Palestine. This will be a big test for this government.”
Preparing for a potential political earthquake
Looking ahead, Starmer’s approach could be affected by the outcome of the US elections in November.
But even if former President Donald Trump returns to the White House, analysts say the UK will likely try to influence the US position rather than take the lead.
“If Trump wins the election, then US actions on this issue will be much more unpredictable,” O’Sullivan said. “They will still be important and influential, so I think a Starmer government would look to manage the consequences of that.”
Cambridge University’s Rangwala said that while the change of government in the UK is “unlikely to bring about a significant change in British policy towards Palestine and Israel”, the US election is a “key complicating factor”.
“If a new Trump administration endorses expanding Israel’s war aims, many within the Labor Party would seek to distance themselves from Washington,” he said.
“But even so, it is more likely that government policy will change more to encourage the US to soften its position, rather than to take an overtly different position – a difference in tone toward the US, rather than a difference of substance.”
As the war reaches its tenth month, CAABU’s Willits said: “The number one priority must be to end this genocide, and that includes ending dependence on where Washington leads – or doesn’t.”
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
