LONDON — Jubilant Palestinians held a flag-raising ceremony on Monday outside what is now their country’s embassy to the United Kingdom, a day after Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced his long-awaited recognition of a Palestinian state.
Attended by hundreds of officials, including Foreign Office minister Hamish Falconer, Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney, and several Labour and independent MPs, the presumptive Palestinian ambassador to the UK, Husam Zomlot, said the UK’s recognition was about “righting historic wrongs”.
“In the same capital of the Balfour Declaration, after more than a century of ongoing denial, dispossession and erasure, the UK government has finally taken the long overdue step of recognising the state of Palestine,” Zomlot said.
Holding up a plaque, to cheers from the crowd, he said: “Very soon, pending some legal work, some bureaucratic work… this plaque, which reads ‘The Embassy of the State of Palestine’… will be placed right behind me on this building.”
He said the moment was “not only about Palestine, it is also about Britain and the British government’s solemn responsibility.
“It is about ending the denial of the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to freedom and self-determination and it is an acknowledgement of a historic injustice.”
The ceremony came a day after Starmer announced the UK’s decision to formally recognise a Palestinian state, more than 100 years after the Balfour Declaration backed “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”.
Canada, Australia, and Portugal also officially recognised Palestinian statehood on Sunday, two days before the start of the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).
France, Belgium, Luxembourg, San Marino and Malta are expected to recognise a Palestinian state later on Monday, in an attempt to pile pressure on Israel as it presses on with its ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza despite international outrage.
Israel launched its long-threatened ground offensive on Gaza City last week, on the same day a UN inquiry declared that it was committing genocide in the Palestinian territory.
Zomlot reminded the international community “that this recognition comes at a time of unimaginable pain and suffering as a genocide is being waged against us – a genocide that is still being denied and allowed to continue with impunity.”
He continued: “It comes as our people in Gaza are being starved, bombed, and buried under the rubble of their homes; as our people in the West Bank are being ethnically cleansed, brutalised by daily state-sponsored terrorism, land theft and suffocating oppression.”
Zomlot said the recognition was occurring “as the humanity of Palestinian people is still questioned, our lives still treated as disposable and our basic freedoms still denied.”
More than 238,000 Palestinians have either been killed, wounded or are missing since Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023.
Last week a UN commission of inquiry found that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza since October 2023.
Recent reports, based on Israeli military intelligence data, indicate that more than 80 percent of those killed in the enclave until May of this year were civilians.
Since US President Donald Trump entered office, Israel has repeatedly rejected ceasefire agreements that would see the release of all captives held in Gaza in exchange for ending the war. It has instead vowed to continue the war until Hamas is defeated. — (Middle East Eye)