Emily Thornberry: Starmer has 'a golden opportunity' to sway Trump on Gaza
Keir Starmer should encourage Donald Trump to “quietly walk away” from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) during their meeting next week, Foreign Affairs Committee chair Emily Thornberry told Middle East Eye.
“We can’t have any more children starving to death, anybody else shot to death simply queuing up for aid. It’s just completely and totally unacceptable,” Thornberry said on Thursday.
“Donald Trump has shown in the past - when he appreciates the human cost of what’s going on - he can turn on a penny and go: ‘This won’t do. It must stop.’”
Thornberry’s comments come with the release of the Foreign Affairs Committee’s report on its inquiry into the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The 72-page report calls, among other recommendations, for the urgent dismantling of GHF - the controversial US and Israeli-backed organisation - as over 100 aid organisations warned this week of the spread of mass starvation in Gaza under its tenure.
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“We have a golden opportunity to say to Donald Trump: ‘Look, whatever kind of goodwill there was behind doing this, it’s not working. And actually, it’s not working because you can’t have four aid points instead of 400.’
“‘We have to have something which is under the auspices of the United Nations, and actually, there was a lot more skill in handing out aid than people really thought... frankly, the other system just doesn’t work. Let’s quietly walk away from it.’”
The report also recommends that the UK government take immediate steps to "prepare a comprehensive ban" on goods imported from Israeli settlements and recognise the state of Palestine, "while there is still a state to recognise".
Starmer and Trump’s scheduled talks fall on the same day as the start of a UN conference, during which France had earlier suggested it might recognise the state of Palestine.
But late on Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that his country would recognise a Palestinian state in September at the UN General Assembly.
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy has repeatedly said that the UK wants to recognise Palestine as part of a pathway towards a two-state solution, but at a time when recognition would be most conducive to securing a peace process.
Thornberry said that whether it is next week or in September, she would like to see the UK recognise Palestine alongside France.
Even if the move may be “only symbolic” in some ways, it is an important first step to getting the UK “back into the ring and saying: ‘Right, let’s play our part.’”
'To be honest, nobody else is going to stop Netanyahu apart from President Trump'
- Emily Thornberry, Foreign Affairs Committee chair
“It has a power because they were the countries behind Sykes-Picot, the secret agreement that carved up the Middle East in the first place."
Palestinian recognition would underline to the Israeli people “just how isolated Netanyahu has made Israel” and would align the UK with Arab countries in a powerful way, she said.
“I think working together, there being a united, international voice that says: ‘This is the only alternative that we know about.’”
Thornberry said she does not think Trump and his advisers have thoroughly considered what recognising Palestine could accomplish and again urged the UK to use diplomacy to encourage a shift she believes could restore the hope necessary to rebuild Gaza.
“We can do that heavy lifting and then give to Donald Trump a peace, wrapped up in a pink bow, and say to him: ‘We now need you because we can’t do it by ourselves. We need the man who has more strength than 10 presidents.’
“To be honest, nobody else is going to stop Netanyahu apart from President Trump.”
'We really need to be much stronger'
The committee's report noted that the UK has halted trade talks with Israel, which it expects to continue until an internationally recognised peace agreement is reached.
However, it said there should be "a different approach" towards Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and that the government should prepare and apply a comprehensive ban on the import of goods from the settlements.
"We should not be trading with the settlements, and we should be sanctioning companies that are involved in building settlements and facilitating the settlements," Thornberry told MEE.
"The settlements are built on the land that we expect to be able to be used by a Palestinian state, so it's not only illegal. It's undermining peace, and we really need to be much stronger than we have been before now."
The committee also urged the government to support a medical evacuation of critically injured children to the UK, including "the provision of safe transport and the efficient handling of travel permits and entry visas".
Until now, the UK has taken in only two Palestinian children for medical treatment. The two girls, who arrived in April, had already been evacuated from Gaza to Egypt before coming to the UK for care that is fully funded by charitable donations.
Unlike EU countries and the US, the UK requires potential medical evacuees from Gaza to obtain visas with biometrics, with the closest visa processing centres located in Egypt and Jordan.
Doctors and aid workers say this process has complicated attempts to bring wounded and suffering children directly from Gaza to the UK. A request was recently made for the government to help evacuate a group of 20 to 40 children.
Thornberry said her first trip of many to Israel and Palestine was in the late 1970s, when she recalled her half-sisters receiving presents on the beach in Gaza from a Father Christmas who arrived on the back of a camel.
"Every time I've gone, it's gotten worse, and it breaks my heart. And, of course, when it comes to this current conflict, it's really frustrating and distressing to see what's happening and to see just long periods where nothing seems to happen apart from more and more people dying," she said.
"The temptation to just look away and go, 'This is just too hard, let's do something else', is a real one... But now, in all the distress and destruction and the death, maybe this is the time when people will finally take this seriously and do something about it."
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