Starmer’s moral cowardice on Gaza

You could be forgiven for forgetting that Keir Starmer used to be a human rights lawyer, after all, Keir Starmer seems to have forgotten too. The world was in shock on Wednesday morning after Donald Trump announced that he had unilaterally torn up the two state solution to the Israel-Palestine problem and intended to remove almost 2 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip permanently to new settlements in neighbouring Arab countries and would redevelop the territory into a luxury resort area which he describes as the future Riviera of the Middle Wast. Trump said the territory would be owned and controlled by the United States, and from which Donald Trump and his family would seek to reap a huge profit, Mar-a-LaGaza. It would be a profit built on the back of crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and genocide. Not that the orange skinned sociopath cares.

Trump’s plan boils down to: From the river to the sea, Palestinians will serve the rich Chablis, or at least those Palestinians who are not ethnically cleansed.

Trump’s sole contribution while Joe Biden facilitated Israel’s deadly destruction of Gaza and the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians was to complain that Biden wasn’t allowing Israel to destroy more and kill more, now having egged on the American backed razing of Gaza to rubble, Trump seeks to turn it into a money making opportunity for himself and his cronies. It is no coincidence that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner met with Netanyahu a few months ago and waxed lyrical about the real estate opportunities of Gaza.

This smells very like the grubbiest of deals between two vile and deeply corrupt autocrats, Netanyahu gets the expulsion of 1.8 million Palestinians, the neutralisation of Gaza and the potential incorporation of the West Bank into the Greater Israel of the Israeli far right’s wet dreams and Trump gets an opportunity to enrich himself and his family to the tune of billions of dollars. The only losers are the Palestinians whom the Western media has been training the public not to care about, and international law, both of which are outcomes which suit Trump and Netanyahu perfectly.

Trump has not ruled out deploying the US military to clear the territory of its inhabitants, occupy it and bring it under American control. That’s a war crime all by itself. This plan is obscene on so many levels, from its callous disregard for the suffering of 1.8 million Palestinians who have already been traumatised by 15 months of Israeli devastation, to the blatant manner in which Trump seeks to monetise this atrocity for his own personal gain. Together with his selection of cabinet picks based upon their absolute loyalty to him personally, not their competence or experience. This is the mafia as government.

Trump made the announcement during a press conference following his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who accompanied Trump at the press conference, looking extremely smug as he smirked his way through Trump’s pre-prepared remarks. Netanyahu was the first foreign leader to meet with Trump following his inauguration, a fact which is highly significant in its own right.

Overlooked by the magnitude of Trump’s destruction of international law in his shocking plan for Gaza was the announcement that within the next four weeks Trump would decide on the potential annexation of the West Bank by Israel, something long sought by the Israeli far right just as it has sought the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. With his announcement that he seeks to clear the Palestinians out of Gaza, the two state solution is no more, do not be at all surprised when in a few weeks time he tells the world that he has given Israel the go-ahead to annexe the West Bank.

If Trump attempts to implement this plan, the most radical intervention in the Middle East since the invasion of Iraq, it would certainly drag the American military into a bloody and destructive ground war. Untold thousands would die and the fragile Middle East would most likely explode into a much wider conflagration which would drag in other regional powers and Western nations, all in the name of Trump’s greed.

And while all this was transpiring, where was Keir Starmer? Scottish First Minister John Swinney has not exactly covered himself with glory when it comes to standing up to the Mango Mussolini, but first thing on Wednesday morning he rounded on Trump’s plan, condemning it as ethnic cleansing in no uncertain terms and insisting that neither he nor the Scottish Government would ever support it.

Meanwhile for the British Government, Steve Reed, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – no, I’d never heard of him either – was dispatched to do the rounds on the morning media stressing that the “UK government’s position is that Palestinian civilians must be able to return to their homes and rebuild their lives.” Notably missing was any condemnation of Trump’s lawless land-grab or any mention of what it really amounts to, ethnic cleansing and the destruction of Palestinians as a nation – genocide.

By 11.10 am, the Foreign Secretary David Lammy had crept out of hiding to say it should be ensured that Palestinians have a future in their homeland. From the British Government there was still no direct condemnation of a plan that is clearly against international law and constitutes a crime against humanity.

Starmer eventually addressed the issue during PMQs in response to a question from Lib Dem Leader Ed Davey, who asked him whether Trump appreciated how dangerous his comments were to the fragile ceasefire in Gaza. Starmer reiterated his government’s support for the two state solution but declined to criticise Trump or to acknowledge that Trump’s plan constituted a crime against humanity on a massive scale, a remarkable omission for a human rights lawyer. You could not ask for a more abject illustration of Starmer’s moral cowardice and his unwillingness to stand up and condemn outright fascism.

Yet again it was up to Scotland to take the moral lead that the British Government had abnegated. As long as Scotland remains a part of this morally bankrupt union it’s our reputation which gets dragged into the mud too.

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