Is Labour support for a twostate solution just a cliche?

Unusually for someone at the top of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer doesn’t have a history of insulting Donald Trump.

- SEAN O'GRADY

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 yesterday 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.