\n<\/p>\n
The former British prime minister Harold Macmillan once said that there was no problem in the Middle East because a problem has a solution. Keir Starmer is the latest incumbent in No 10 to try to prove Macmillan wrong through a plan that has been described by Downing Street as \u201cpathway to peace\u201d for Gaza and the wider region. The record of Britain\u2019s previous interventions do not augur well.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Arthur James Balfour in Rishon LeZion in 1925.<\/span> Photograph: Bettmann Archive<\/p>\n The famous commitment drafted by the then British foreign secretary Sir Arthur James Balfour, to \u201cview with favour the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people\u201d, was integrated into Britain\u2019s UN mandate over Palestine between 1923 and 1948 and paved the way for the birth of Israel.<\/p>\n But the declaration contained a key qualification: nothing should be done to prejudice the \u201ccivil and religious rights\u201d of Palestine\u2019s \u201cexisting non-Jewish communities\u201d. Britain afforded Israel de facto recognition on 30 January 1949, in the last stages of the first Arab-Israeli war, and de jure recognition on 27 April 1950. For many Palestinians, the second part of the Balfour promise is yet to be made good.<\/p>\n In the Arab nationalism of the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, Britain saw a destabilising force that might subvert pro-western states such as Jordan. For Israel, Nasser was a threat for allowing Palestinian militants permission to launch attacks against it from the Gaza Strip, then controlled by Egypt.<\/p>\n Matters were brought to a head when Egypt nationalised the Suez Canal Company on 26 July 1956. Under a secret agreement, Israel agreed to attack Sinai, the Egyptian peninsula between its western border and the canal. British and French forces would then intervene to \u201cseparate the combatants\u201d, seizing control of the canal zone.<\/p>\n The Anglo-French element was a debacle. The Israeli part of the plan went well. Israeli forces captured Sinai in its entirety, destroying three Egyptian divisions. From then on Israel was considered to be a major fighting force by the west. Britain exported arms to it from the 1960s in the belief that a strong Israel would reduce the chance of further war in the region.<\/p>\n In the aftermath of the six-day war in 1967 between Israel and a coalition of Arab states, primarily Egypt, Syria and Jordan, Britain played a key role in drafting United Nations security council resolution 242.<\/p>\n It embodies the principle that has guided most of the peace plans that have followed \u2013 the exchange of land for peace.<\/p>\n The resolution called for the \u201cwithdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict\u201d, such as Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as \u201crespect for and acknowldgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every state in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognised boundaries free from threats or acts of force\u201d.<\/p>\n It would come to be criticised for being vague and for its depiction of the Palestinian people as lacking national rights, describing their cause as the \u201crefugee problem\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/span>Ehud Barak, Israel\u2019s prime minister, Bill Clinton, president of the US, and Yasser Arafat, Palestinian leader, at Camp David in 2000.<\/span> Photograph: Ron Edmonds\/AP<\/p>\n Britain\u2019s role as a key mediator was overtaken by the US when President Jimmy Carter brought the Egyptian leader, Anwar Sadat, and the Israeli prime minister, Menachem Begin, together at Camp David.<\/p>\n The plan sought to set up a \u201cself-governing authority\u201d in the West Bank and Gaza, leading to eventual \u201cfinal status\u201d talks. The European and British perspective was voiced in the Venice declaration of 1980 issued by the then European Economic Community.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Palestinian people \u2026 must be placed in a position, by an appropriate process defined within the framework of the comprehensive peace settlement, to exercise fully its right to self-determination,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n It further added that the Palestine Liberation Organisation must be involved. This was controversial as the PLO was at this stage calling for Israel\u2019s destruction. It prompted criticism from the US.<\/p>\n But even under the solidly pro-Israel leadership of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, British policy was to avoid straying too far from the European consensus. Major in 1995 became the first western leader to meet Yasser Arafat inside the Palestinian Authority area which had been created through the Oslo accords overseen by the US president, Bill Clinton.<\/p>\n <\/span>Tony Blair used his close relationship with George W Bush to try to implement a two-state solution. It failed.<\/span> Photograph: Shawn Thew\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n The second intifada, an uprising which raged from 2000 to 2004, took place after Arafat did not agree to the terms of the two-state proposals tabled by the-then Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, and Clinton.<\/p>\n The intifada overlapped with the \u201cwar on terror\u201d that followed the 9\/11 attacks. Tony Blair used his close relationship with the US president George W Bush to issue the 2003 roadmap peace plan that would resolve all issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by 2005 through implementation of a two-state solution. It failed.<\/p>\n After leaving Downing Street, Blair was appointed as the envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East. The quartet consisted of the UN, the EU, the US and Russia. Blair sought to develop the Palestinian economy and improve governance but struggled to make headway. He resigned after nearly eight years in the role, with Palestinians criticising what they saw as his closeness to Israel.<\/p>\n Britain\u2019s policy under the succeeding prime ministers \u2013 Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak \u2013 has been criticised for reciting the mantra that a two-state solution is the only way forward without expending energy or political capital on the goal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The former British prime minister Harold Macmillan once said that there was no problem in the Middle East because a problem has a solution. Keir Starmer is the latest incumbent in No 10 to try to prove Macmillan wrong through a plan that has been described by Downing Street as \u201cpathway to peace\u201d for Gaza<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13037,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[1233,145,459,6733,2523,1347,6734,3415,261],"class_list":{"0":"post-13036","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-gaza","9":"tag-history","10":"tag-hopes","11":"tag-pathway","12":"tag-peace","13":"tag-starmer","14":"tag-struggle","15":"tag-suggests","16":"tag-war"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Suez crisis of 1956 and its aftermath<\/h2>\n
UN security council resolution 242<\/h2>\n
Venice declaration of 1980<\/h2>\n
\u2018War on terror\u2019<\/h2>\n