Sir Keir Starmer has announced the UK’s recognition of a Palestinian state. Several other countries have done likewise.
I think the consequences of this will be very bad.
There will be even more Muslim terrorism worldwide. It evidently works.
There will be more use of tactics like taking hostages and livestreaming murders and torture for political effect by non-Muslim groups and states, too. These tactics evidently work.
Those people who think that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians still won’t get to see what actual genocide looks like, but Israel will be more willing than before to kill Palestinian civilians in order to destroy Hamas. Israel has lost a major motive for restraint.
The less likely it is that Israel will defeat Hamas, the more it is in its interests to use other, cruder methods to deter and/or physically prevent future attacks from Gaza. These methods could include annexing some or all of the territory and expelling the inhabitants, or finally flooding the entire network of tunnels with seawater, only this time with no concern for ecological damage. The ecological damage would be the point. It is hard to secretly build military infrastructure in a barren desert, or to hide among civilians in a depopulated land.
Contrary to Sir Keir’s main motive for doing it, his government’s recognition of Palestine will cause even more British Muslims to change their vote away from Labour in favour of Muslim identity parties. As Osama bin Laden said, “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.”
This in turn will cause even more non-Muslim British people to move from opposing further Muslim immigration to Britain (that sentiment is already practically universal) to wanting to get rid of the Muslims already here.
I do not wish for any of this. I just think it is what is likely to happen.
He has, essentially, placed his country on the opposite side from the USA in a bitter shooting war.
This wasn’t just “opening diplomacy.” This was the choosing of sides. This was a hostile act.
I think he choose poorly. Most of my country agrees with this.
But that’s just the Ameri-centric view.
TBH I’m not sure what material difference it will make. What exactly changes when Britain does something politically or the UN makes some proclamation condemning Israel for something once more? Realistically, who cares?
The protests against the Netanyahu in Israel itself certainly matter, but Keir Starmer? Does anyone in Israel or Palestine even know who that is?
As to concerns for ecological damage from flooding the tunnels: I mean what exactly is the concern? That they will turn a bucolic paradise into a toxic environment? The place is already a place Mad Max would fear to tread, how much worse could it actually get? It seems to me that if you have any concern at all for the people of Palestine, especially the long suffering children, then the best thing you can do is get it over with as quickly as possible, destroy Hamas totally, and try to create some sort of administrative structure that allows people some semblance of of civilized life.
I feel horrified for the hostages, what few of them that are still alive, but are we to sacrifice hundreds of lives to save their one life, or should Israel just need to accept that that are, to all intents and purposes, dead already, and then fix the problem? I don’t really know, but that does seem to be a reasonable point of view to consider.
In re: choosing sides against the US.
It seems that Western Europe and the Commonwealth are eager to become part of the Ummah. And that there is nothing that the US can do to slow or stop them. It will be what it will be. But unlike in WW-I, WW-II, and the Cold War; we may be less in the mood to try to save and protect the new Ummah members from their fates and more concerned with destroying all threats and enemies of the US.
Subotai Bahadur
It will be worse than that. Civil War is now certain in Western Europe.
bobby b:
He has, essentially, placed his country on the opposite side from half the USA in a bitter shooting war.
The USA is in a state of Cold Civil War, and as a result has two “special relationships” with the UK. One is the relationship between MAGA America and its English-flag UK counterparts, and the other is between the Deep State of America and its UK equivalent.
The Deep State side here applauds Starmer’s recognition of the Palestinian state, and wishes that they could do the same here in the USA.