Torah Jews standing with Hezbollah and the Lebanese people against Zionism [photo credit: @TorahJudaism]
In order to further inform the debate, Arab Digest is publishing
comments made by Andreas Krieg assistant professor at the Defence
Studies Department of King's College London in this week’s podcast. The podcast was recorded before the Iranian attack.
The UK, it can be argued, has an historic responsibility for this
conflict. Here in the UK what are we doing? What is Keir Starmer's
government doing?
The biggest problem that the UK has, both previous government and the
new Labour government, is that we're catering too much to a weak United
States government. We're trying to copy and paste what Washington is
doing. Washington is always directly interfering as well whenever the UK
does think about a recognition of Palestine or it does think about
potentially supporting the ICC or ICJ. The UK has immense soft power.
It's a rallying point. If the UK takes a decision, even the one on not
renewing some arms export licences to Israel, that sends a signal that
other European (countries) might rally around. And the UK underestimates
its soft power in the region (the Middle East) and its responsibility
to the region, as well as the way that if the UK does something it has a
particular bearing on people in the Arab world, in the wider Middle
East. And if the UK doesn't lead, and I think it should, and just
follows on from the lack of leadership from the US or trying to copy and
paste what the US is doing or not doing, it misses an opportunity. The
Labour government has an opportunity to fill a vacuum left by the Biden
administration to at least lead on the basis of international law and
norms and conventions. Nobody's saying you need to take a side. It's not
about being pro-Israel, being pro-Palestine, or pro-Hamas or whatever.
This is about taking a stand on the basis of international law. And this
is what the UK is known for. Now obviously France is trying to take a
leadership role in Lebanon so I think there is a lot of engagement
trying to get a ceasefire proposal onto the table. But I don't think the
Israelis would take it. We're in a very similar situation that we've
been in for 12 months in Gaza where the Israelis are trying to at every
corner whenever there is a concession made by Hamas Netanyahu ignores
that. We'll be in a similar situation in Lebanon; we've seen it last
week, the Americans saying we've got a deal, we're very confident it can
be done and then Netanyahu says, no, we're not going to do it. What can
the UK do in this situation? Not much. But it can lead based on
principle and it can be a rallying point for other leaders and other
actors in the region to come up with a joint position. And I think one
thing the UK should do is recognise Palestine as a state. That sends a
very strong message to the international community that we do believe in
the principle of self-determination for Palestinians.
How about sanctioning the far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir?
I think we're not far away from that. I think that could be done
without any necessary harm to UK-Israeli relations. I don't think it
would receive too much opposition from the Jewish community here or from
other pro-Israel circles in the UK. I think it could be done, and the
US has already taken some steps. The problem here again the UK would
never do something that the US hasn't done already. What I'm saying is
leadership means you set the new boundaries of discourse. As the UK you
set the boundaries of what's acceptable and what is not acceptable and
then hope others will fall in line. I think that's something that needs
to happen. These people Smotrich and Ben-Gvir support Jewish terrorism
in the West Bank. It is as simple as that and they should be dealt with
in the same way that we're dealing with Hamas and Hezbollah. If you
commit terrorism, based on principle you're a terrorist and you'll be
outlawed and sanctioned.
We're in this situation now a little more than a month away from
the presidential election. It's a time of opportunity for Netanyahu
which he will exploit because of the weakness of the Biden
administration. But the UK - and you make a very good point - could take
a leadership role, could stand up and make a statement. I'm not very
optimistic we will do that Andreas but we have to hope something will
break that stops this slide towards all out war.
I think we're in a situation where things are breaking already in the
UK. When it comes to Israel, on both sides of the political divide,
across the civil service and even across the military, people I speak to
are increasingly critical in a way that they weren't 12 months ago.
They're saying things that I didn't think would have been possible to
say a year ago. So the longer the war goes on, the more strategically
damaged the relationship between Israel institutions and UK institutions
will be.
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