Priti Patel's meetings and the fuss over the Balfour declaration show that we must reorientate our foreign policy away from Israel

What both episodes illustrate is the delicate path that the UK – not the EU, not the 'international community' – must tread when it deals with the Middle East in general, and with Israel in particular

Mary Dejevsky
Thursday 09 November 2017 19:07 GMT
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Patel was an inexperienced and ambitious minister who foolishly decided to indulge in a spot of diplomatic freelancing in a particularly volatile part of the world
Patel was an inexperienced and ambitious minister who foolishly decided to indulge in a spot of diplomatic freelancing in a particularly volatile part of the world

Among the diplomatic minefields facing the UK as it leaves the European Union, relations with Israel might not seem anywhere near the top of the list. If ever this was true, however, it changed over the past week. The coincidence, no more, of the centenary of the Balfour Declaration and revelations about the very busy summer holiday enjoyed by the – now former – International Development Secretary forced the exposure of some very uncomfortable truths.

Let’s start with the short-term politics. We are invited to believe that Priti Patel, an independent-minded Brexiteer promoted to head DfID when Theresa May first became Prime Minister, took a private holiday in Israel during which she had at least 12 meetings that might, under other circumstances, have been considered official.

She also visited a charitable hospital in the Golan Heights, where Israeli doctors have treated injured Syrian resistance fighters. She returned with a proposal that some of her departmental budget be channelled towards the Israeli military to help fund this work.

How many times can one cabinet minister breach protocol in a single trip? We are told that she set off without the knowledge of either the Foreign Office or No 10, and had no diplomatic “minders” for any of her meetings. If she was escorted by anyone, it was by Lord Polak, honorary president of the Conservative Friends of Israel, who is thought to have fixed up many of the meetings.

Priti Patel out: Theresa May forces International Development Secretary to quit

Protocol is there for a purpose and the risks here are obvious, from creating the impression of an alternative UK foreign policy to the opportunity for gaffes. Setting foot in the Golan, which is occupied territory, was a further no-no for any UK official. Then even to float the idea of aid money going to the Israeli military, even if earmarked for a laudable purpose, would have provoked a public outcry, had the proposal gone any further than it did.

Now it may be that this version is correct, and Patel was an inexperienced and ambitious minister who foolishly decided to indulge in a spot of diplomatic freelancing in a particularly volatile part of the world. Even before the first small cracks started to appear in the official omerta about who knew what when, however, the totality of this seemed improbable – even if it has been validated by her resignation and will now be hard to dislodge.

What the Priti Patel episode does illustrate, though, is the delicate path that the UK – not the EU, not the “international community”, but specifically the UK – must tread when it deals with the Middle East in general, and with Israel in particular. And a lot of that has to do with the continuing legacy of the note that Lord Balfour wrote to Lord Rothschild 100 years ago this month.

In recent weeks, I have heard many explanations about why Balfour penned his note as and when he did, as historians and politicians revisit his declaration. The reasons given range from Britain’s strategic calculations in what would turn out to be the penultimate year of the First World War, trying to curry favour with the Zionist movement to bring the US into the war, to a desire to minimise French influence in the Middle East, or even the ambition to control the whole of Palestine when the war was over.

But the contemporary official UK gloss has two strands. The first is pride that Britain was effectively the midwife of a Jewish homeland, a pride enhanced and further justified by the undoubted success of the state that was eventually created in 1948. The second is an equal stress on Balfour’s insistence that creating a Jewish homeland should not be at the expense of the rights of the indigenous population. This aspect is regarded as unfinished business. Both strands featured in Theresa May’s carefully judged speech at a formal dinner to mark the anniversary.

The immediate difficulty for the UK through the centenary was that the guest of honour at the dinner was the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu – which inevitably placed the “pride” element a long way ahead of any recognition of Palestinian claims. The more enduring difficulty was, and is, that the Palestinians, the Arab countries and very many Muslims in the UK regard the Balfour Declaration as the beginning of very many of their woes and an act, quite simply, of British betrayal.

Every expression of “pride” in the part played by Britain in assisting the state of Israel to its birth, every British celebration of the Balfour Declaration, serves only to confirm them in that view. As does the presence across the Middle East of more than 5 million Palestinian refugees, and the non-existence, as yet, of a Palestinian state.

Given the extent to which the Balfour Declaration has become a liability to UK diplomatic influence – as it has, leaving a trail of distrust across the Middle East long before the Iraq war – it is worth asking why successive Governments, and the Foreign Office in particular, have persisted in claiming credit for the existence of the state of Israel. There was no reason for this.

One of the most interesting contributions I heard in all the current discussions about Balfour came from an Israeli politician and self-described Zionist and atheist, Einat Wilf. At a conference in London, organised by the UK pro-Israel think tank Bicom and Jewish News, she argued that it was neither Balfour nor Britain that brought the state of Israel into existence, still less that made it a success. It was Jews themselves, who accepted the territory when it was offered to them, fought for it, and made it flourish.

Why has the UK not adopted something closer to this version of events? Why does it still claim credit for the creation of the state of Israel and insist on the “pride” element, even 100 years on? Why have our Governments over the years not given the bulk of the credit to those who created the state of Israel – those who essentially took the opportunity, and ran with it? Or to the League of Nations, or the UN, which gave the Balfour Declaration international force?

This would have given more credence to UK statements of support for the Palestinians, attempts at evenhandedness, even expressions of regret for the Palestinians’ plight. Even if it did not enhance UK influence in the region, it might have drawn some of the sting of the treachery charge.

Alas, it is hard not to divine in the UK’s continuing need to claim credit, its continuing “pride” in the Balfour Declaration, a nostalgia for the days of Britain’s great power status – and now, even, a desire to resurrect it as we set out alone from the moorings of the EU. Maybe there are other, more benign, explanations. But it is regrettable that the centenary was celebrated in London as it was. It will take more than the scalp of an ill-advised International Development Secretary to enhance the UK’s image and influence in a region where, all those years ago, we held sway.

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