Questions after Corbyn visits Jordan camps
JEREMY CORBYN has been criticised after he travelled to the Middle East to meet Palestinian refugees after repeatedly declining to visit Israel.
The Labour Party leader used his short trip to Jordan last weekend to reiterate his party’s support for recognising a Palestinian state. Mr Corbyn made the comments while touring camps housing Syrian and Palestinian refugees.
But his visit sparked fresh questions about his failure to travel to Israel.
Jennifer Gerber, Labour Friends of Israel director, told the JC: “It is now two years since Jeremy Corbyn was invited to Yad Vashem by the Israeli Labour party.
“It is disappointing that, having travelled to the region — and given the legitimate concerns repeatedly raised by our sister party — Mr Corbyn once again could not find the time to travel to Israel and show his support for the Jewish state.”
Asked by Sky News while in Jordan whether he would go to Israel, Mr Corbyn said: “I’m more than happy to meet anybody and visit anywhere, and that will happen.
“Listen, I’m going to visit every place... Visit everywhere, including Israel.”
A Labour spokesman told the Times of Israel there were existing “diary commitments” preventing Mr Corbyn from making the trip and that he had visited Israel “on more than a dozen occasions”.
During a visit to the Zaatari camp for Syrian refugees in Jordan last Friday, Mr Corbyn told reporters: “I think there has to be a recognition of the rights of the Palestinian people to their own state, which we as a Labour Party said we would recognise in govern- ment as a full state as part of the United Nations.”
Parliament voted to recognise the state of Palestine following a symbolic and unprecedented debate in the House of Commons in October 2014.
The motion was backed by the then Labour leader Ed Miliband and was heavily supported by Labour MPs. It urged the government to acknowledge statehood immediately.
Mr Corbyn said Labour would recognise Palestine “very early on” in its next government.