After a century of complicity in war crimes against Palestinians, will this election make any difference?

Last week, Israeli bombing of Gaza killed 34 Palestinians. Eight Palestinians in a single household – five under 13 – died.

When we see photos of newly orphaned 35-day-old baby Farah, found in her dead brother’s arms after the attack, or newlywed couple Mohammed and Marwa returning home from their honeymoon to find their house reduced to rubble, we should make no mistake about it: the UK is complicit in this violence and these deaths.

The UK’s history of complicity spans a century in fact, from Lord Balfour to Boris Johnson.

November marks the anniversary of the signing of the Balfour Declaration in 1917, a document pledging British support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. A day often quoted as one where Britain gave land it didn’t own, to people it didn’t belong to.

To the current Conservative government, the Balfour Declaration is a moment of national pride. In 2017, then-foreign secretary Boris Johnson showed off the desk at which Arthur Balfour signed this document to Benjamin Netanyahu. Johnson then treated the visiting Israeli prime minister to a celebratory dinner marking the declaration’s centenary.

Neither politician made the acknowledgement that historian and Israeli expatriate Ilan Pappé has done: that Lord Balfour was in fact one of the most antisemitic British politicians of the 20th century, persecuting eastern European Jewish people arriving in the UK through the Aliens Act 1905. Zionism became a convenient tool for British politicians to remove Jewish people from the UK. In Pappé’s words, “you can be an antisemite and a great supporter of Israel”.

The tools which Britain imposed on Palestinians to suppress revolt in the 1930s have been “inherited” by Israel and are widely implemented today, as Palestinian barrister Salma Karmi-Ayyoub recently outlined. These tools include house demolitions imposed as collective punishment to curfews and administrative detention (imprisonment without trial).

And in 2019, Britain supplies more arms to Israel than ever before. Campaign Against Arms Trade figures expose that the UK issued £364m worth of licences for military equipment and technology to export to Israel between 2014 and 2018.

When human rights activist and lecturer Adie Mormech took direct action in the UK, occupying the roof of Elbit Systems, a company which produces 85 per cent of all drones used by the Israeli army, he wondered if he was standing on the very building which made the weapons which killed his friends in Gaza.

And where are UK sanctions? We remain a proud defender, trade partner and weapon supplier of a state which has been found by the UN to violate human rights and humanitarian law.

It doesn’t take a human rights lawyer to understand the human cost of dropping bombs onto a sieged strip of land, home to one million children.

Would a Labour win in the UK general election make any difference to whether a bomb falls on a child in Gaza?

The Labour manifesto has just been released and promises an immediate suspension of the sale of arms to Israel “for arms used in violation of the human rights of Palestinian civilians”. This has been welcomed by Palestinian activists in the UK.

However, other pledges passed at the Labour conference this year did not specifically appear in the manifesto. Namely, that Labour will oppose any peace deal not in line with UN resolutions, which includes the “right to return” for refugee populations.

The conference also provided scope for a boycott policy of goods produced in illegal settlements in the West Bank, as Ireland passed in the Dail this year. This is a tactic of peaceful protest that Boris Johnson has pledged to come down hard against, as he intends to prevent local councils and public bodies from being allowed to boycott settlement goods.

Meanwhile, home secretary Priti Patel was caught having secret discussions with Israel about diverting British foreign aid to the Israeli military to provide medical support for Syrian refugees. (No 10 said that there is no UK financial support for the Israeli army.)

We don’t know how far Jeremy Corbyn could go in implementing policy to help bring an end to Palestinian oppression. A promise to recognise the state of Palestine should he become prime minister is merely a symbolic gesture. What’s more, his manifesto still adheres to a two-state solution widely seen as dead to Palestinian people.

But Jeremy Corbyn in Westminster could only be better for Palestinians than the current status quo.

What’s in no doubt is that actions in the UK still hold a ripple effect for Palestinians. And in this election, the stakes for them are high.

Natasha Self is head of media and communications at the Palestine Community Foundation