Peers push for Palestinian state recognition Bill amid opposition in Lords
The Palestine Statehood (Recognition) Bill was brought forward by Liberal Democrat former minister Baroness Northover.
A proposed law requiring the UK to recognise a Palestinian state has attracted support in Parliament, amid warnings it would act as a “licence for further terrorism”.
Former minister Baroness Northover has tabled the Palestine Statehood (Recognition) Bill in the hope of pushing the UK Government to act on its ambition for a two-state solution.
The Bill was backed by several peers, including some on the Government backbenches, who pressed for swift action, although it also faced strong opposition in the House.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 48,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which does not say how many of the dead were combatants.
Lady Altmann said if one side does not seek peace then there would be a repeat of “past failures”, adding: “This Bill, if passed, would be a licence for further terrorism I’m afraid.
“A signal that deliberately killing, torturing and murdering Jews and promising to do it again and again and hiding safely in tunnels, under or behind your own civilians, knowingly, cynically inviting retaliation from those you’ve attacked will bring rewards from civilised countries whose emotions you have deliberately manipulated.”
Opening the second reading debate, Liberal Democrat peer Lady Northover told the Lords: “My Bill would require the Government to recognise Palestine as a sovereign and independent state on pre-1967 lines, just as almost 150 of the 193 UN countries have done.
“Some say that recognition is merely symbolic, not changing anything on the ground. But recognition has importance – that Palestinians do have the right to self-determination, national rights and the legal benefits of that, just like Israelis.”
Labour’s Lord Dubs, who fled the Nazis on the Kindertransport in 1939, said the UK must work for an “immediate” two-state solution.
Lord Dubs said: “A two-state solution has long been Labour Party policy. It was in our manifesto, it was supported by the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary David Lammy said ‘We’re committed to Palestinian recognition, we hope to work with partners to achieve that when the circumstances are right’.
“It’s that phrase ‘when the circumstances are right’ which has delayed progress up to now and I’d suggest to the Foreign Secretary that the circumstances are right at the present time.”
Labour’s Baroness Elliott of Whitburn Bay said: “The Government needs to move beyond the slogan of a two-state solution, which I know they wholeheartedly believe in, to a situation of actively bringing this about, otherwise they risk not being seen as credible on this issue.”
Conservative former Foreign Office minister Baroness Warsi said: “Tragically as we have failed to recognise Palestine, methodically – and I’d argue deliberately – the probability of Palestine existing as a state has been diminished.”
He said: “In these circumstances, what is the point of recognition of Palestine? At best it’s an acknowledgement of the concept of a state for a state that doesn’t exist, at worst it’s just a form of international virtue signalling or even a statement to Israel that we will be rewarding in some way the Palestinians for the chaos and violence of October 7.”
Labour’s Lord Katz described himself as a “proud, progressive Zionist” who believes both the Jewish people and Palestinians have the same rights to national self-determination.
Lord Katz said the UK needs to be a “strong advocate” for a two-state solution, before adding: “I’m afraid given the facts on the ground, and the legacy of Hamas’s terrorist pogrom on October 7, together with everything that followed, I fear it is simply wishful thinking to say that immediate recognition of a Palestinian state – which this Bill advances – would actually advance the peace process.”
Legal opinion differed on the prospects of a Palestinian state, with independent crossbencher Lord Pannick saying it was “highly doubtful” that Palestine satisfies the required criteria at the moment.
But Labour’s Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws countered: “No court would acknowledge what Lord Pannick has said when all of those criteria have been prevented by Israel.”
President Donald Trump was also criticised for his suggestion that the US could redevelop the war-torn Gaza Strip into the “Riviera of the Middle East”.
Lady Kennedy, addressing the suggestion of a “holiday resort”, said: “What? On the bones of the many who lie still dead under that rubble? To lie your towel out on the sands which still remain soaked in the blood of women and children?”
The Bill received an unopposed second reading, as is convention for private members’ bills in the upper house, and will undergo further scrutiny at a later stage.
It faces a battle to make progress due to a lack of parliamentary time to consider backbench proposals.
