U.K. diplomat says Britain could recognize a Palestinian state before a peace deal with Israel
Israeli soldiers in southern Israel return from the Gaza Strip on Thursday.
RIYAK, LEBANON
Britain’s top diplomat said Thursday that his country could officially recognize a Palestinian state after a cease-fire in Gaza without waiting for the outcome of what could be years-long talks between Israel and the Palestinians on a two-state solution.
Foreign Secretary David Cameron, speaking to The Associated Press during a visit Thursday to Lebanon intended to tamp down regional tensions, said no recognition could come while Hamas remained in Gaza, but that it could take place while Israeli negotiations with Palestinian leaders were continuing.
U.K. recognition of an independent state of Palestine, including in the United Nations, “can’t come at the start of the process, but it doesn’t have to be the very end of the process,” said Cameron, a former prime minister.
“It could be something that we consider as this process, as this advance to a solution, becomes more real,” Cameron said. “What we need to do is give the Palestinian people a horizon towards a better future, the future of having a state of their own.”
That prospect is “absolutely vital for the longterm peace and security of the region,” he said.
Britain, the U.S. and other Western countries have supported the idea of an independent Palestine existing alongside Israel as a solution to the region’s most intractable conflict, but have said Palestinian independence should come as part of a negotiated settlement. There have been no substantive negotiations since 2009.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for his part, has publicly rejected the creation of an independent Palestinian state after the war, and has even boasted in recent weeks that he was instrumental in preventing Palestinian statehood.
A move by some of Israel’s key allies to recognize a Palestinian state without Israel’s buy-in could isolate Israel and put pressure on it to come to the table.
Cameron said the first step must be a “pause in the fighting” in Gaza that would eventually turn into “a permanent, sustainable cease-fire.”
He added that in order for his country to recognize a Palestinian state, the leaders of the Hamas militant group would need to leave Gaza “because you can’t have a two state solution with Gaza still controlled by the people responsible for Oct. 7,” referring to the deadly Hamas attack on Israel that triggered the war in
Gaza.
Hamas has so far taken the position that its leaders would not leave the enclave as part of a ceasefire deal.
Cameron said his country is also proposing a plan to deescalate tensions on the Lebanon-Israel border, where the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Israeli forces have been trading fire near-daily for the past four months, sparking fears of a wider war.
The plan would include Britain training Lebanese army forces to carry out more security work in the border region, he said.
More than 27,000 people have been killed and 66,000 wounded by Israel’s offensive against Hamas in Gaza, the territory’s Health Ministry said Thursday. The Health Ministry does not distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths, but says most of those killed were women and children.
U.N. officials say a quarter of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is starving.
Israel’s offensive was prompted by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel. The group killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 people hostage, according to Israeli authorities.
ANALYSIS SHOWS DESTRUCTION
Satellite photos showed new demolition along a 1-kilometer-deep path on the Gaza Strip’s border with Israel.
The destruction comes as Israel has said it wants to establish a buffer zone there, further tearing away at land that the Palestinians want for a state.
The demolition along the path represents only a sliver of the wider damage from the war seen in the Gaza Strip, which one assessment suggests has damaged or destroyed half of all the buildings within the coastal enclave.
But independent analysts and the AP assessment of the damage along the path suggests Israel might be setting the stage to move forward with the possible buffer zone despite U.S. warnings not to occupy land in Gaza Strip.
An Israeli government official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing internal deliberations, said a “temporary security buffer zone” is under construction.
The scope of the demolitions, however, calls into question how temporary the possible buffer zone will be.
Israel’s military declined to answer whether it is carving out a buffer zone when asked by the AP, only saying it “takes various imperative actions that are needed in order to implement a defense plan that will provide improved security in southern Israel.”