Unusually for someone at the top of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer doesn’t have a history of insulting Donald Trump. He has never – leastways, never in public – called the 45th and 47th president a racist, nor a KKK man, nor a danger to the world. In recent times he’s also carefully avoided any criticism of the president’s policies, no matter how weird they might be.
This seems to have earned some credit with Donald Trump. However, at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday Sir Keir couldn’t quite bring himself to endorse the president’s proposal to deport 1.8 million Palestinians and turn Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East”. Instead, the prime minister stuck to his policy line about a two-state solution. Some wonder if that’s nowadays no more than a useful cliche.
What did Starmer say?
Without naming Trump, his meaning was clear. Referring to the traumatised people of Gaza he declared: “They must be allowed home. They must be allowed to rebuild, and we should be with them in that rebuild on the way to a two-state solution.”
But what is meant by a “two-state solution”?
There are many versions – and they’ve been adjusted over time, usually at the expense of the territory nominally controlled by what is presently the Palestinian Authority, a weak entity.
Right now, a Palestinian state would realistically comprise the Gaza Strip and the West Bank (at least, those parts of it still in Palestinian rather than Israeli settler hands). They were once part of Egypt and Jordan. It isn’t clear what might happen to the wider Palestinian diaspora, for example in southern Lebanon, nor the extent to which Israeli settlements in the West Bank – “legal” or “illegal” – would be evacuated.
The Palestinian state would not be contiguous, which complicates matters. The 1993 Oslo Accords, for example, foresaw a Palestinian entity split into three parts, each with varying degrees of Israeli and Palestinian control. Various options for division have been proposed since Britain ruled Palestine under mandates from the League of Nations, then the United Nations, until 1948.
Starmer and Labour do not have a detailed view of what a “two-state solution” would look like. Then again, it’s not really going to be up to the British government, influential in the region though it is.
Is the two-state solution still relevant?
If he ever believed in it, Benjamin Netanyahu gave up on the two-state idea some time ago. There are plenty of people across the region who don’t believe in the right of Israel to exist or to defend itself. But as was witnessed after the 7 October atrocities, Starmer stoutly defended both of those concepts.
Does Labour still defend Israel?
Yes, but not necessarily the actions of the Netanyahu government, which is not synonymous with Israel. During the rows about antisemitism under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership – which Starmer later called a “stain” on his party – Labour adopted in full the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism. It matters in this context because it states by way of example that antisemitism includes: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, eg, by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour.”
What has been the impact on Labour politics?
Plainly, Labour lost support at the last general election in constituencies with large Muslim communities, students or more left-wing voters who were angered by the suffering of the Palestinian people and Israel’s conduct of the war. It lost seats to independents who capitalised on dissatisfaction about the then Labour opposition’s policy. (Joe Biden and Kamala Harris suffered similar dissent among Democrats in the US).
Yet Starmer has also been criticised by Conservatives and Reform for permitting pro-Palestine demonstrations to take place, dubbed “hate marches” by the former home secretary Suella Braverman. Now that the war in Gaza may be over, if the ceasefire holds and evolves into a peace process, then Labour’s divisions may heal and its vote may recover. In any case, the two-state solution remains the best worst option available.