“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
recognize in government as a full state as part of the United
Nations.” – Jeremy Corbyn
by
Whitney Webb
The
leader of the U.K. Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, officially announced
on Friday that the U.K. would recognize Palestine as a state under a
future Labour government. Corbyn, speaking in Jordan during his first
trip to the region since becoming party leader in 2015, stated that
the recognition of a Palestinian state would be aimed at achieving “a
genuine two-state solution” that he would seek to tackle “very
early on” were Labour to emerge victorious in the U.K.’s next
general election in 2022.
“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
recognize in government as a full state as part of the United
Nations,” Corbyn stated.
A day
later, on Saturday, Corbyn visited Jordan’s Al-Baqa’a refugee
camp, which has long hosted Palestinians who fled the West Bank and
Gaza Strip during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.
After
visiting the camp, Corbyn asserted the need to consider the rights of
Palestinians in any future peace process, stating that “there
has to be a right of the Palestinian people to live in peace, as well
as the right of Israel.”
Corbyn
has long been an advocate for Palestine, having been a long-time
patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and having endorsed key
elements of the boycott, divest and sanctions (BDS) movement.
More
recently, Corbyn has condemned Donald Trump’s decision to recognize
Jerusalem as the capital of Israel – calling the move a
“catastrophic mistake” — while also calling out Western
silence over Israel’s killing of unarmed Palestinian protesters in
Gaza during the Great Return March earlier this year. Corbyn’s
criticism of recent Israeli violence targeting Palestinians has
included calls for the U.K. to halt arms sales to Israel if those
arms “could be used in violation of international law.”
As a
result of his continued advocacy for Palestinians, Corbyn has
consistently been attacked by the U.K.’s Israel lobby as an
“anti-Semite.” Such concerns over “anti-Semitism” have grown
into a frenzy in the U.K. media in recent years, particularly after
Labour’s surprise performance in U.K. elections last year that led
them to pick up several seats in Parliament. The “witch hunt” to
smear Corbyn as an “anti-Semite” has led several Jewish groups to
call out “the weaponization of anti-Semitism for political
ends.”
Given
his statements over the weekend on recognizing Palestine as a state,
accusations of Corbyn’s “anti-Semitism” are unlikely to die out
anytime soon.
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