Statehood includes the right to choose a government

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Whether or not Palestine meets the usual requirements to recognition as a state remains in doubt, as noted last week. Israel is certainly doing its utmost to ensure that there are no enforceable boundaries nor any functioning administration with which the rest of the world could deal. That doesn’t take away the right of Palestinians to have an independent state if they so choose, even if statehood may not be exactly the thing uppermost in their minds as Gazans desperately struggle for food. And it surely can’t be right that an occupying power – wherever in the world it might be – can frustrate the right of territories it occupies to gain statehood.

Opponents of recognition claim that it would ‘reward’ terrorism and somehow legitimise the horrific attack by Hamas which sparked the latest round of fighting. It’s true if, and only if, one’s historical perspective on Gaza starts on 7 October 2023. On any longer timescale, terrorism didn’t start then and has never been restricted to one side: indeed, Israel as a state only exists as an internationally recognised state within its current recognised boundaries as a result of terrorist acts by Israeli settlers in the 1940s. And even that is choosing an artificial start date – history doesn’t start and stop neatly at any point in time that we choose. Sir Starmer and others have declared that ‘we don’t negotiate with terrorists’, one of those statements which is only true up until the point when negotiation becomes the only rational option, and there are numerous historical examples of that.

The leader of the Tories has come up with another obstacle to recognition, claiming that the UK shouldn’t recognise a state led by people we consider to be terrorists. Superficially, it sounds almost rational – after all, does anyone really think that Hamas are the best people to be governing any part of Palestine? It is, though, a deeply colonialist attitude, perhaps not entirely surprising from someone who has newly thrown off any suggestion that she might in any way be Nigerian, with its implicit assumption that the rest of the world can or should determine who the Palestinians might want to represent them. And is she seriously suggesting that, if Hamas stand aside now to gain recognition and the people of Palestine subsequently choose to elect a government led by Hamas, or a similar group under another name, that the UK should then de-recognise Palestine? It doesn’t look like a position to which she has given much thought.

Actually, although it’s surely inadvertent on her part, maybe there is a non-colonialist point to be made here after all. The world might indeed be a safer place for humanity as a whole if certain governments were removed from power by international action (even if we might disagree about which ones). But a world in which states were required to abide by certain globally adopted standards (such as a declaration of human rights, perhaps?) and where governments could be removed by collective action by other states if they did not would require a few things to be in place, not the least of which are a global set of rules and the will and organisation to enforce them. Something about Badenoch’s attitude towards international law tells me that that is most definitely not what she has in mind. Which just leaves opportunistic posturing.