Fakhri Abu Diab and his family are among hundreds of people being pushed out of al-Bustan, as Israel takes over residential areas of occupied East Jerusalem

‘We have the right to live peacefully and securely,’ says Fakhri Abu Diab, who is being pushed out of his home in the al-Bustan area of occupied East Jerusalem (Supplied photo)

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Down a track and past a pile of debris, 20 or so well-dressed people are waiting, all diplomats. I am joining them on a trip around al-Bustan, a Palestinian neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem that has been scheduled for demolition.

Many homes have been destroyed already. Bustan (“the Orchard”) is to be turned into a car park and recreation ground for settlers - but not for Palestinian residents, who will by then be absent.

We stumble past the ruins of what used to be a house. In the garden is a caravan, where we are met by the owner, Fakhri Abu Diab. His wife Ameena, mother of their five children, stands nearby.

“They arrived at three in the morning, armed soldiers with black masks putting a gun to my head,” Fakhri recalls of a recent visit. “They took me to interrogation.”

On another occasion, they broke Ameena’s glasses. Terrified, she “clenched her jaw so hard that she broke her teeth”.

The diplomats shuffle their feet. Fakhri and Ameena, now in their sixties, have lived in Bustan all their lives. Fakhri is chairman of the local residents’ committee, but he won’t be a resident much longer. 

Their temporary home is scheduled for demolition within 21 days of 4 October, when a new demolition order was pasted on his gate. They don’t know where to go next.

“Whenever I hear bulldozers or any machinery, my automatic reaction is that they are coming for us,” Fakhri tells Middle East Eye. 

Reshaping demography

Suitcases stand packed just outside the door. Fakhri explains that bulldozers sometimes arrive without notice, and often leave no time to gather belongings. 

The Jerusalem municipality gives Palestinians the opportunity to “self-demolish”. Fakhri warns that “if you don’t do that, the municipality does it for you and sends you the bill”.

Fakhri says he paid 43,000 shekels ($13,800) when they destroyed his home.

A couple of the diplomats examine their mobile phones. 

'We are not allowed to have an identity or a state. We wish for action, not just words'

- Fakhri Abu Diab

Some 1,500 Palestinians lived in Bustan, located at the bottom of a valley half a mile southwest of Al-Aqsa Mosque. It is being destroyed as part of a massive project to reshape the demography of occupied East Jerusalem. 

According to a statement from the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, these demolitions are “a clear manifestation of an Israeli policy aimed at engineering the demographic balance and ‘Judaizing’ the neighborhood by exploiting discriminatory laws”. 

The group adds: “These measures are designed to expand Israeli presence and control over one of the most politically and religiously sensitive areas in the region, serving as a crucial component of the broader ethnic cleansing currently unfolding across the West Bank.”

Fakhri, meanwhile, makes a despairing plea to the diplomats: “We ask the world to pressure Israel not to demolish our remaining homes. We have the right to live peacefully and securely in our homes. The international community is allowing Israel to be above international law. Why are you afraid of Israel even when it’s acting against international law?”

He says his house was demolished on Valentine’s Day 2024, one month after Andrew Miller, then the US deputy assistant secretary of state for Israeli-Palestinian affairs, had made an official visit to his home in Bustan.

“Why meet diplomats when our homes get demolished afterwards?” Fakhri asks.

Sleeping in cars

Fakhri says he has also been visited by three delegates from countries that manufacture the bulldozers used to destroy Palestinian houses. “These tools were made to advance civilisation, not to demolish civilisation,” he says. 

Not many diplomats are taking notes. Most are from Europe; some appear bored, but a Swiss delegate seems genuinely interested. 

“What can you do to help?” pleads Fakhri. “We have lost hope. We would like to see help from the international community. We are not allowed to have an identity or a state. We wish for action, not just words.”

He adds a note of warning: “We do not know how the young men will react.”

There are no British diplomats present, Israel having evicted most of them from the British consulate the previous week in reprisal for Britain decision to sanction West Bank settlements.

This change of policy has come too late to rescue Al-Bustan and does not apply here in any case.

It’s the Jerusalem municipality and Israeli government, not Israeli settler terrorism, which is ethnically cleansing Palestinians from East Jerusalem neighbourhoods.

Palestinians are still totally abandoned even after the euphoria of a British shift in policy

The Israeli non-profit organisation Ir Amim shows in a devastating report published yesterday, "Expulsion: The State Architecture of Dispossession", that virtually all Israeli governmental bodies are involved in forcibly displacing East Jerusalemites.

In other words, Palestinians are still totally abandoned even after the euphoria of a British shift in policy.

Fakhri leads us out and past the wreckage of what used to be his home. On our right is a playground, also marked for destruction. On the left is a football pitch. Ditto. 

Everything will be destroyed: property, public amenities, communities, families, lives, hope. 

I ask Fakhri where people will go. “We don’t know. Some are now sleeping in cars.”

We climb some steps into the living room of another house. It belongs to Imad Badran, a 56-year-old blind man, who is challenging his demolition order in court.

“I am disabled,” he says. “I live with my wife who is also disabled, and our son whose house has already been demolished. In my situation, as a blind man, how do I look for a home? Even if there was a place to go, how could I afford the 6-7,000 shekels a month?

“There is no need for these demolitions,” he adds. “If they are carried out, I will be left on the street.” 

Pleas ignored

Badran says he explained all this to a worker from the Jerusalem municipality, who replied: “That’s not my problem.”

One of the diplomats spoke: “It’s important to hear your voice and your words.” 

Our next stop was to visit an elderly lady whose house had been demolished last month - but when we arrived, she wasn’t there. It was explained that she’d been waiting for us outside. 

It was the first time she’d been back to her former home, and her son texted Fakhri to say she found it too upsetting, couldn’t bear to speak, and had already left. 

The world’s attention is focused on the wave of settler pogroms across the occupied West Bank. A few days after our visit, a convoy carrying European diplomats was surrounded and pelted with stones by settlers.

These dispossessions are happening all over occupied East Jerusalem, and are part of the same programme of ethnic cleansing.

Fakhri later told MEE that many famous names have come to Bustan to hear his story: former US President Jimmy Carter, former Irish President Mary Robinson, former US special representative for Palestinian affairs Hady Amr, and the UN undersecretary for humanitarian affairs, Tom Fletcher. Navi Pillay, the South African jurist who was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, has also visited.

All listened and witnessed, to no effect. If the Jerusalem municipality has its way, Bustan - until recently a flourishing Palestinian community - will soon become a car park.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Israel announced the closure of the diplomatic mission as part of retaliatory measures following British foreign secretary Ed Miliband’s decision to ban trade with Israeli settlements

A man stands outside the British consulate in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem on 8 September (AFP)

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A faded union jack was still fluttering defiantly over the British Consulate in the troubled Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in East Jerusalem this morning. 

The door of the consulate was open for business as usual. But there is uncertainty over how much longer that will be the case.

No more than ten days are left before it closes, if Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar has his way. 

Three weeks ago Saar announced the closure of the consulate as part of a package of retaliatory measures following UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband’s decision to ban trade with Israeli settlements. He gave a deadline of 8 October.

It has been widely assumed that Britain would comply with this Israeli order, but Middle East Eye can reveal this is not certain.

Today, this reporter received an evasive response when we approached the Foreign Office asking for confirmation that Britain would close the consulate. 

We understand that, although a final decision has not yet been made, Britain may be pondering whether to defy the Israeli ultimatum.

Sir Vincent Fean, trustee of the British Palestine Project and himself a former consul-general in East Jerusalem, on Monday told MEE that “Israel’s threat to close the British Consulate-General is not just wrong - it is illegal”. 

'Unlawful assertion of sovereignty'

The British Palestine Project has commissioned a legal opinion from Dominic Grieve KC, who served as attorney-general under the last Conservative government.

In his opinion, seen by Middle East Eye, Grieve says that Israel has made “an unlawful assertion of sovereignty over occupied Palestinian territory. Successive British governments have affirmed that Israel’s rights in East Jerusalem are limited to those of an occupying power.”  

'Israel is asserting a right it does not possess as an occupying power to impose sovereign control over East Jerusalem'

- Dominic Grieve KC

Grieve additionally opines that “Israel is asserting a right it does not possess as an occupying power to impose sovereign control over East Jerusalem.”

He notes that the British Mission in East Jerusalem “conducts locally the British Government’s relations with the Palestinians. Retaining a Consulate-General in East Jerusalem after recognition of the State of Palestine preserves the UK's position that Jerusalem's final status remains to be determined. It does not concede Israeli sovereignty.”

Grieve further notes that British consul generals do not present commissions to Israel, meaning “There is no accreditation to Israel for Israel to withdraw." 

He also warns: “The closure falls on Palestinians, not on Britain alone. Closure threatens consular services, including for British pilgrims, other visitors and residents of Palestine. It hampers aid oversight and reporting from the West Bank and Gaza.”

Meanwhile Chris Doyle, director of the Council for British Arab Understanding, told MEE that Britain should defy the Israeli government, saying: “The British government should do all in its power to keep the consulate open. It is a vital link to Palestinians in the city. Israel must adhere scrupulously to its legal obligations, and end the violations of international law which triggered this spat.”

There’s little question that an act of defiance would deepen the already raw diplomatic tensions between Britain and Israel triggered by the ban on trade with the settlements.

While it is unlikely that Israeli security would physically remove staff from the premises, it can easily block entry to Israel, meaning that British diplomats would be banned from returning to Jerusalem after going on leave.

With Israeli settlers already active in the area around the embassy, there are fears that British diplomats would face harassment, with local staff especially vulnerable.

Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Arieh King has already called on the Israeli government to cut electricity and water to the consulate. 

Leading a small demonstration outside the consulate two weeks ago, King explained: “If you are looking at Jerusalem as the occupied territory, and if you are not considering us, the municipality of Jerusalem and the government of Israel, as the sovereign of this place, why are you getting all of these services from us?” 

If such threats were carried out, British diplomats would find themselves operating under siege conditions, as was the case in 1990 after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait when embassy staff found themselves stranded and drinking water out of the embassy swimming pool.

The British Consulate in East Jerusalem has plenty of first-hand knowledge of settler pressure and house evictions in the turbulent Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood. 

Now the embassy staff face the prospect of being evicted themselves.  

Occupied East Jerusalem, Palestine

While more action is still needed, these sanctions go a long way towards bringing Britain in line with ICJ ruling on Israeli occupation

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham speaks in the House of Commons on 9 September 2026 (House of Commons/AFP)

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Less than two months have passed since Andy Burnham was installed as British prime minister. He has taken a more relaxed tone than his lacklustre predecessor, Keir Starmer.

But there have been growing murmurs of discontent about his failure to deliver substantial changes.

On Tuesday, those murmurs were silenced. By imposing a ban on trade with Israeli settlements, Burnham has presided over the most significant change in British foreign policy since Brexit.

Tuesday was therefore a day of abject humiliation for Starmer, who was granted two years to call out settler terrorism and ethnic cleansing. Yet rather than taking robust action, he sat on his hands, making Britain complicit. 

It’s taken Burnham seven weeks to put matters right.

For two years, the wretched Starmer failed even to respond to the historic 2024 International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling, which found that Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territories was illegal. 

In sharp contrast, the Burnham government’s decision to sanction the settlements goes a long way towards bringing Britain into line with that momentous ICJ judgment.  

Historic error

This principled action has opened a major dividing line between the ruling Labour Party and the Tory opposition.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has been praised, and fairly so, for the vigour and confidence she’s displayed at the despatch box, building a reputation as a confident parliamentary performer, and often outshining the wooden Starmer. 

With Burnham, she is encountering a far more formidable opponent. On Tuesday, the new Labour prime minister enticed Badenoch into a historic error that could define - and potentially wreck - her leadership.

It is beginning to feel like Burnham and Miliband have pulled off Britain's first major diplomatic triumph since Brexit

When a British government finds itself in dispute with a foreign country, a wise opposition sides with Britain. Not Badenoch’s Tories.

Tuesday’s Commons statement from Foreign Minister Ed Miliband immediately drew a battery of abuse, counter-measures and threats from Israel.

Badenoch allowed her inexperienced foreign affairs spokesperson, Tom Tugendhat, to echo Israeli talking points, endorsing threats that British national security could be threatened by the move.

This is perilous. Badenoch and Tugendhat are siding with a country that has been condemned by every major human rights organisation, including Israel’s own B’Tselem, for committing the crime of apartheid. 

Their party is supporting Israel while it is in flagrant breach of international law and under investigation at the ICJ for committing the ultimate crime of genocide. 

Badenoch backs a country that even appears to be threatening to support Argentina’s claim to the Falkland Islands.

International alliance 

There is one further point of burning relevance to British domestic politics.

The Burnham government’s decision to ban settlement trade has not been tested yet in an opinion poll. But the majority of the British public, past polling strongly suggests, is likely to support the ban.

On Tuesday, Badenoch repeated the Israeli attack line that Miliband has caved to pressure from Britain’s Muslim voters. This assertion makes little sense, and Badenoch’s Tories have produced no evidence to substantiate it.

It is certainly true that many British Muslims are appalled by the ongoing settler barbarism in the occupied West Bank, as well as the slaughter in Gaza. But opinion polls show that the British public as a whole - not just Muslims - are appalled by Israeli violence.

In my view, Badenoch’s hasty decision on the settlement ban will soon leave her domestically forlorn. 

And not just domestically. Since his Commons speech on Tuesday, it has become apparent that Burnham has skilfully marshalled an international alliance in favour of the settlement ban.

This coalition includes Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. There are even provisional indications that President Donald Trump’s United States is relaxed about Britain’s new position.

It is beginning to feel like Burnham and Miliband have pulled off Britain’s first major diplomatic triumph since Brexit.

It is also important to note that while Miliband’s statement has indeed been greeted with hostility and dismay from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s extreme-right coalition government, serious and well-informed Israeli opinion has welcomed it. 

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert noted: “The British government decision became unavoidable as a result of a continuous effort of ethnic cleansing perpetrated by a large group of Jewish terrorists in the West Bank … Sanctions are directed against the terrorists, not against Israel, and as such they are unavoidable.” 

Beginning to listen

Meanwhile, the respected and well-connected lawyer Daniel Seidemann, a careful student of settlement expansion, rejected the accusation that the UK was “abandoning Israel” or “joining forces with our enemies”, posting on X (formerly Twitter): “Occupation will end, or occupation will be the end of us.”

He continued: “There is no greater threat to the viability and the legitimacy of Israel, and nothing [perpetuates] occupation more than the settlements. So I hope that my friends in the UK, in and out of government, will constantly bear in mind that the UK has today done a great service to Israel and the people of Israel.”

There are plenty of Israeli voices who agree with Olmert and Seidemann, and like them, fear that Netanyahu is leading Israel to destruction.

So do many British Jews. In a supportive statement, Yachad UK noted: “These new policies target the occupation. They draw a clear distinction between the legitimacy of the State of Israel and the settlement enterprise.”

Until now, such voices have been ignored by British leaders like Badenoch, Starmer and former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

Miliband and Burnham have begun to listen. 

There have been powerful criticisms from the left that Miliband’s package comes far too late. That’s entirely true, but Burnham has only been in office seven weeks, and can’t be blamed for that.

It’s also true that this package does not go far enough - though future measures are promised. As a matter of urgency, the Burnham government needs to remove the foolish and arbitrary terrorist designation on Palestine Action. 

These are early days. But it can already be stated that Miliband on Tuesday delivered the most meaningful speech by any British foreign secretary this century.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Despite ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people, the UK Conservative Party remains staunchly allied with the Netanyahu regime

UK Tory leader Kemi Badenoch speaks in London earlier this month (Justin Tallis/AFP)

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UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s change of stance on Israel is popular in Britain, though many consider that it comes much too late and does not go far enough.

It has naturally been condemned by Israel, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denouncing the “Islamic Republic of Britain” and Foreign Minister Gideon Saar slapping down his counterpart, Ed Miliband, for his “patronising tone”.

Israel can, however, continue to rely on one significant supporter: Kemi Badenoch’s Conservative Party.

According to the latest polling, 62 percent of British voters oppose Israel’s ongoing military actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, with a mere 13 percent in support. 

More than half want to end all arms sales to Israel, with only 22 percent in opposition. These figures are not surprising, since half of British voters have come to believe that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

When voter sentiment is as strong as this, it is most unusual for political parties to ignore it. Yet Badenoch offers near-blind support for Netanyahu. 

We can find no example of the Tory leader ever seriously criticising Israel over the annihilation of Gaza, the settler pogroms in the occupied West Bank, or the bloody incursions into Lebanon. 

When the United States and Israel launched their catastrophic assault on Iran, Badenoch flung her weight behind the fiasco. Indeed, her admiration for Israel is so strong that she has condemned Reform UK leader Nigel Farage for being insufficiently supportive of Israel.

Sharp departure

Again and again, Badenoch echoes Netanyahu’s central claim that Israel is fighting a battle for western civilisation in Gaza. “Supporting Israel is not just right - it is necessary for our own national security,” the Tory leader wrote in the Sunday Times last year. “Israelis are at the front line in the fight for the West and for our shared values.”

This level of support marks a sharp departure from traditional Tory policy. Badenoch’s predecessor (and personal political heroine) Margaret Thatcher certainly stood up for Israel, but her backing was never unconditional. 

For example, Thatcher denounced the 1982 massacres in Lebanon committed by Christian Phalangists, with the Israeli army’s complicity, as “pure barbarism”. It is extremely difficult to imagine Badenoch using this kind of language to condemn contemporary Israeli atrocities.

Badenoch's adamant support for Israel does not just differentiate her from Thatcher and other Tory leaders. It also makes her Conservatives an outlier among European centre-right parties

In 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon, Thatcher told Ronald Reagan, then the US president, that a “balanced policy” was best, and that “unlimited support for Israel can only lead to growing polarisation and despair in the Arab world”. Such measured statecraft appears beyond the capacity of Badenoch.

Thatcher, moreover, stood up for international law, while Badenoch mocks it. When the incoming Starmer government called time on former prime minister Rishi Sunak’s policy of undermining the International Criminal Court’s attempts to investigate Israeli (and Hamas) war crimes, Badenoch announced that Labour had “cowed to the mob”. 

On Israel and Palestine, Badenoch regularly twists the truth and ignores basic facts. She has accused Iran of orchestrating the 7 October 2023 attack, despite the assessment of the US director of national intelligence, published in February 2024, that “Iranian leaders did not orchestrate nor had foreknowledge of the Hamas attack against Israel”. 

Last year, she called Israel “a vibrant democracy that protects women and minorities and encourages them to vote, speak and dissent”.

These comments were made years after a consensus emerged among human rights groups - including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Israel’s B’Tselem - that Israel practises apartheid.

An apartheid state cannot be democratic. Badenoch ignored the opinion of international authorities to say that Israel was a democracy, when in fact it rules over millions of Palestinians with no rights.

Vested interest 

Badenoch’s position on Israel was arguably constrained by her role as business and trade secretary in Sunak’s government. This meant it fell to her to approve arms sales to Israel, which she continued to do during a period when Israel was accused of genocide.

If the International Court of Justice (ICJ) determines that Israel has indeed committed genocide, the judgment will open Badenoch herself up to charges that she was an accomplice, alongside senior Tory colleagues. She thus cannot accuse Israel of criminality (at least in the period until July 2024) without risking incriminating herself.

In common with all senior Tories from the last government, Badenoch therefore has a vested interest in denying Israeli atrocities.

Badenoch’s adamant support for Israel does not just differentiate her from Thatcher and other Tory leaders. It also makes her Conservatives an outlier among European centre-right parties. 

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suspended defence cooperation with Israel earlier this year. In Germany, the strongly pro-Israel Merz government in August 2025 announced a halt to exports of arms to Israel that could be used in Gaza. 

Although Germany lifted this partial suspension of arms exports after the “ceasefire” was called, it is striking that Badenoch has never supported such a suspension.

In May 2025, France and Canada joined Britain in condemning Israel’s “egregious actions” in Gaza, in response to renewed military operations, obstruction of aid, and threats to permanently displace the Palestinian population. 

Shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel attacked this statement by saying that Hamas had supported the French, Canadian and British position.        

The Tories’ position seems closest to that of France’s extreme-right National Rally, whose president, Jordan Bardella, said during a recent visit to Israel that its “war in the face of barbarism … is also our fight”. 

Questions unanswered

This week, Middle East Eye wrote to the Conservative Party with a series of questions. We asked for evidence that Iran orchestrated the 7 October attacks.

We asked whether Badenoch’s approval of arms sales to Israel during her time as business and trade secretary had compromised her ability to impartially judge whether Israel’s actions are criminal.  

We asked whether Badenoch accepted the July 2024 opinion of the ICJ - and human rights organisations including B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International - that Israel has breached the legal prohibition of apartheid. 

We asked whether any member of the leadership of the Conservative Party has criticised the large-scale torture of Palestinian detainees by Israel (our own searches have not revealed any such criticism).

We asked whether Badenoch believes that Israel has committed any war crimes in Gaza since October 2023.

We pointed out that Badenoch’s foreign affairs spokesperson, Patel, resigned from her office as international development secretary after holding unauthorised meetings with Israeli officials in 2017, and we asked: “In view of Patel’s failure to uphold transparency and openness in dealing with foreign officials, why did Kemi Badenoch appoint Priti Patel shadow foreign secretary?”

We sent these questions several times to the Conservative Party, giving ample time to reply, but received no answer.

These questions matter very much. Miliband is expected to soon announce a series of punitive measures against Israel in response to settler violence and settlement expansion - a programme that, in the light of the E1 development, threatens to destroy any possibility of an independent Palestinian state.

So we wrote: “Kemi Badenoch has strongly opposed Labour’s recognition of a Palestinian State. The Conservative Party, however, claims to support a two-state solution. How can the Conservative Party support a two-state solution while granting recognition to Israel, and refusing to recognise Palestine?”

We sent this question more than once to the Conservative Party. We received no answer.

The views expressed in this article belong to the authors and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Amid chilling revelations of an Emirati surveillance operation targeting the London-based analyst, it's past time for the UK to reassess bilateral relations

Anas Altikriti said London police warned him a decade ago that his life was in danger (Screengrab)

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In the long-lost days when I was chief political commentator for the Daily Telegraph, I used to engage with Anas Altikriti, chief executive of the Cordoba Foundation, on Muslim issues.

Cordoba disputes the proposition, much favoured by other American and British think tanks, of an inevitable clash of civilisations between Islam and the West.

Altikriti himself came into the spotlight after revealing that he had suddenly - and without warning - been stripped of his bank account by HSBC in 2014. He told me: “Having a bank account in the modern world is like having electricity or running water. You can’t live life without one.” 

Altikriti had banked with HSBC for around 30 years. HSBC simply told him that his bank account fell “outside our risk appetite”. Under British law, they had no obligation to say more.

HSBC had also written to his wife, Malath Shakir, and two sons (aged 16 and 12), cancelling their accounts.

I investigated and soon discovered that other politically active Muslim and Islamic institutions, including the Finsbury Park Mosque in north London, had suffered the same fate.

When I wrote about this for the Daily Telegraph, they would not publish my story. (When far-right politician Nigel Farage was later stripped of his bank account with NatWest in similar circumstances, the Telegraph turned the outrage into a front-page story for days on end.)

So instead I teamed up with Anna Meisel, a brilliant BBC journalist, to discover the truth. At first we ran up against a wall of silence, as HSBC refused to discuss the bank account closures.

Then we learned about World-Check, a confidential database used by the world’s biggest banks and owned by the financial information giant Thomson Reuters. 

Terrorism designation

In the post-9/11 world, banks are required to know their customers, and they can be held responsible if their clients are involved in financing terrorism or money laundering. To avoid this, banks rely heavily on databases such as World-Check.

Journalists cannot access the database, but a client with strong reservations about the software allowed us in, and we saw the word “terrorism” printed in dark red, directly above the name of Altikriti’s Cordoba Foundation. World-Check sourced the “terrorism” claim to the United Arab Emirates, which had proscribed the group.

One of the smaller Gulf states, the UAE has itself been at the centre of money-laundering allegations. It has also been criticised for human rights abuses, including torture. 

When Altikriti asked for more details about who was behind the threat and whether he should relocate, police refused to answer

Abu Dhabi habitually brands political opponents, such as Altikriti’s Cordoba Foundation, as terrorists. More recently, the UAE has been accused of sponsoring the genocidal Rapid Support Forces militia, which has slaughtered tens of thousands of innocent Sudanese people. 

This week, we learned that the terrorism designation was not the only way the UAE targeted Altikriti. An investigation by ITV News revealed that the UAE also hired a mercenary to carry out a covert surveillance operation against him in Britain.

This is chilling. Altikriti is a British citizen. It goes without saying that any Briton who gets involved in terrorism should be arrested, and if necessary charged, by UK authorities. 

But there is no evidence at all against Altikriti, beyond the fact that he was a political opponent of the UAE and had been a strong supporter of the Arab Spring.

By the same token, UK authorities should protect British citizens who are targeted by foreign countries. And this  ITV investigation raises burning questions, which the British government needs to answer. 

Opportunity to start fresh

On Thursday, Altikriti told Middle East Eye’s Areeb Ullah that 10 years ago, police visited his house to serve him an Osman notice - only given to individuals if police have reason to believe they are in imminent danger. 

But when Altikriti asked for more details about who was behind the threat and whether he should relocate, police refused to answer. 

Altikriti told MEE that he had never been charged with a crime or questioned by authorities, and has spent his life abiding by British law. Yet faced with evidence that his life was threatened by a foreign power, Altikriti was offered no protection.

In response to these revelations, Andreas Krieg, a London-based academic and expert on the UAE, posted on X (formerly Twitter): “Our adversaries Russia and China at least keep transnational repression to their own nationals. Abu Dhabi expands transnational repression to foreign nationals and critics overseas.” 

He further noted: “As an academic who has been subjected to Emirati sponsored harassment in the UK for years, surveillance, letters from their embassies and their lawyers, it makes me think about my own and my family’s safety.”

Krieg added that “this rogue state behaviour” should disqualify the UAE “as a reliable partner for the UK”. Yet the British government regards the UAE as one of its closest allies - and it is easy to see why. 

The country is Britain’s largest trading partner in the Middle East, and a massive investor in Britain, most famously through the Manchester City football club.

In response to allegations of complicity in an ongoing genocide in Sudan, British ministers did not just refuse to condemn the UAE’s involvement in the conflict; they couldn’t even bring themselves to name the Emirates in that context.

This is morally damnable. Andy Burnham, as the nation’s new prime minister, has an opportunity to start afresh. It is past time for Britain to ask whether the UAE is the kind of ally it wants.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Tributes praised a 'great journalist', but very few touched on the fact that he was also a racist, a bigot and an Islamophobe

'Truth-teller for our times', or racist and bigot? Newspaper columnist Rod Liddle (Photo/X)

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This year, few public figures have enjoyed as resounding a send-off as the newspaper columnist Rod Liddle.

Mr Liddle, who died this week, is being hailed as a truth-teller for our times whose trenchant columns "upset all the right people".  

There’s no denying that Liddle was a sometimes dazzling writer who grabbed the reader’s attention and never let it go. 

Many tributes have emphasised this heaven-sent quality, and many have added that a kindly soul lurked behind the intimidating public personality.

But very few tributes even touched on the fact that Liddle was also a racist, a bigot and an Islamophobe. This open and undisguised bigotry was a core part of his public identity, his personality and his legacy.

"I have spent the morning trying to draw a cartoon of a black person without it being racist," Liddle opened one column for the Spectator. He went on: "It’s bloody difficult. Especially the lips."

In another Spectator article he falsely claimed that the "overwhelming majority" of violent crime in London was carried out by young African-Caribbean men.

Genocide denial

On Tuesday, this kind of writing was hailed as brilliant right across the British media and political establishment

Fraser Nelson, who as editor of the Spectator published hundreds of Liddle’s articles, said that "his jokes were built on judgment, rigour, compassion". 

But is this true?

Take, for example, Liddle’s public defence of Myanmar’s massacre of Rohingya Muslims. On the pages of the Sun in September, 2017, he asked:"Are you sure we’re being told the full story about those Muslim Rohingya refugees who are flooding into Bangladesh from Burma? "All we get is a BBC correspondent crying in front of the refugee camps every night.

"It’s probably true that the Burmese government has been a bit, um, heavy-handed. But shouldn’t we be told a little more about the causes of the problem?"

Myanmar, bear in mind, is now charged with genocide.

It is well-documented that Burmese militias, backed by the army, had gone through Myanmar’s Rakhine province on a systematic campaign of slaughter, rape and destruction. 

In the immediate aftermath of the events that Liddle dismisses so lightly, I travelled to neighbouring Bangladesh to get the stories of survivors.

One witness told me that the first action of soldiers upon arriving at his Rohingya village was to separate the local people into three groups. 

Men, young women (including girls as young as five), old women or those one eyewitness described to me as "those who are not so beautiful." 

The soldiers opened fire. "All the young men were shot at once. It took less than ten minutes," the eyewitness told me. The soldiers then walked over to the pile of dead bodies. Anyone who showed signs of life was hacked to death with a machete. The soldiers then opened fire on the older women.

Finally the younger women were then taken to the forest and gang-raped, before being burnt alive. This process was described by Liddle - long after all this was well-documented - as "a bit, um, heavy-handed".

The slaughter of the Rohingya was one of the most heinous crimes of the 21st century. Liddle used it to fill a jokey column in the Sun. 

This wasn’t a joke. It was genocide denial. 

Normalising hate

Liddle mocked, ridiculed and sneered at pretty well every minority group, but he reserved a special contempt for Muslims. 

"A quick update on what the Muslim savages are up to," began one of Liddle’s "hilarious" articles. 

Did Rod Liddle use his remarkable talents to leave the world a better and kinder place? I am not certain he did

As election fever grew in the autumn of 2019 Liddle confided to Spectator readers that, "My own choice of election date would be a day when universities are closed and Muslims are forbidden to do anything on pain of hell, or something." He explained: "That would deliver at least 40 seats to the Tories, I reckon."

Many of the tributes paid yesterday to Liddle emphasised his courage in mocking the establishment.

I’m not sure that’s right. In one Spectator article, he recalled how on a country walk he spotted a sign urging walkers to respect the Countryside Code.

The notice was illustrated by a picture of a woman wearing a burka. Liddle told his readers that the burka was "a coded message saying, essentially, this: 'You think this is your country, you sap? It is not. It is not even your country up here among the beech hangers and the silver birch and the purple ragwort and the fluttering brimstones. Even up here, it is not yours. Not any more. Get used to this new reality, quickly.'"

We shouldn’t deceive ourselves that this racist rant was a joke.

Liddle was playing the politics of hatred, using  "humour" to tell Spectator readers that women in burkas are invaders who don’t belong in our country.

Elsewhere, Liddle dismissed the London borough of Tower Hamlets, home to a substantial Bangladeshi Muslim community, as a "fly-blown satrapy" and "suburb of Sylhet".

No wonder Rupert Lowe, leader of the racist Restore party, which calls for the mass deportation of immigrants, yesterday hailed Liddle as a "towering intellect and a friend".

"Islamophobia?" Liddle once rhetorically asked. "Count me in."

More recently one of Liddle’s articles carried the sub-headline "There’s not enough Islamophobia in the Conservative Party." After an outcry the Spectator changed the headline.

One only has to imagine the career-ending consequences for Liddle had he asserted that “there’s not enough antisemitism in the Labour Party.”

Spectator editor Michael Gove responded to the news of Liddle’s death as follows:"Rod Liddle was a journalist of genius. In the tradition of Swift, Cobbett and Orwell, he was a satirist who found society’s most sensitive spots and made merciless fun of our follies."

Gove is wrong. Jonathan Swift, William Cobbett and George Orwell, to adapt a longstanding reporters’ phrase, understood that their task was to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable".

Liddle targeted the weak and vulnerable, focusing especially on immigrants. His defenders argue that he was standing up for former working-class voters who have been forgotten and ignored by our main political parties.

It is true that they were forgotten for many years, and that Liddle gave them some kind of voice. 

Legacy of racism

The criticism of Liddle concerns the way he set about it. 

He targeted the immigrants themselves rather than focusing on the deep inequalities and injustices in British society that have left traditional working-class communities without hope and a decent future.

In this context, it is telling that his work invariably appeared in the oligarch media, whether the Murdoch press or the Spectator.

On Tuesday, the Times, which is owned by Murdoch, gave two full pages of praise for Rod Liddle. None of them dealt seriously with his racism, Islamophobia and the lazy, bigoted ignorance that caused him to deny the Myanmar genocide. 

The gush from mainstream journalists and politicians like Nick Robinson, Jeremy Vine, Andrew Neil, Fraser Nelson, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, Reform leader Nigel Farage, Iain Dale, Robert Jenrick and many others makes me wonder whether something has changed fundamentally - and for the worse - about British society.

Samir Shah praised Liddle as a "warm-hearted and generous fellow", with no mention of his trademark bigotry and racism. This was a serious error of judgment from the chairman of the BBC. 

Nearly 30 years have passed since the British politician Enoch Powell died. The obituaries rightly paid tribute to his formidable intellect, his exemplary war record, his political courage and much more besides.

Mainstream writers, politicians or broadcasters have either ignored Liddle’s racism and bigotry or dismissed it as a side issue, or even as a 'joke'

But they also examined at length the repugnant racist views which caused Edward Heath to sack him from the Tory shadow cabinet.

Yet, mainstream writers, politicians or broadcasters have either ignored Liddle’s racism and bigotry or dismissed it as a side issue, or even as a "joke". 

Years ago in the Spectator magazine, I was a colleague of Rod Liddle. Sometimes he would turn out for my cricket team. He was amusing company and I think everybody liked him.

He was clever and sharp and less disorganised and shambolic than he pretended. He was a performer and he made us all laugh. And it’s true he could write hypnotically well. 

But is that enough to make a great journalist, as so many have labelled him?

Rod undeniably had significant and unusual gifts. With such gifts comes responsibility and I wonder whether he used them well.

Did Rod Liddle use his remarkable talents to leave the world a better and kinder place? I am not certain he did.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

After years of disastrous policy, both at home and abroad, it's time this country had a decent prime minister

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer makes a statement to announce his resignation outside 10 Downing Street in London on 22 June 2026 (Henry Nicholls/AFP)

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The myth-making has begun. Allies of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer are claiming that he is a decent man who has done his best for his country; a brave and principled politician whose heroic efforts rescued the Labour Party from bankruptcy and oblivion.

In the words of Labour MP Luke Akehurst, a close ally, Starmer “achieved what many said was impossible by taking Labour from a broken party, morally compromised by antisemitism and extremism, at the end of the Corbyn era, to a landslide win”.

Starmer himself boasted on the steps of Downing Street on Monday that he leaves office with Britain’s reputation restored as a country that stands for “decency, respect and the rule of law”.

If only a small part of this was true, Starmer would not have been forced out. But it’s not.

Starmer posed as a man of the left, then brought the language of Enoch Powell back to mainstream British politics by warning that the country risked turning into an “island of strangers” without stronger immigration controls.

He imported the morality of the gutter into government with the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to Washington.

When shameful details of Mandelson’s friendship with the late paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein became public, Starmer would not take responsibility for his mistake. 

Instead, he lashed out at others, in particular the permanent under-secretary at the foreign office, Olly Robbins. Starmer smeared Robbins for failing to brief him, and then he sacked him.  

Manipulation and deceit

Starmer’s claim on Monday morning that he had restored “decency, respect and the rule of law” to Britain is a cynical and straightforward lie.

As leader of the opposition, Starmer signalled his support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s collective punishment of Gaza, with water and fuel withheld from the civilian population - a war crime.  

Far from defending the rule of law, he brought a new authoritarianism to British justice

Once in Downing Street, Starmer continued to arm Israel as it carried out what the United Nations, along with a majority of scholars, now view as a genocide.

Incredibly, he leaves office without accusing Israel of ever committing war crimes.

Starmer undermined trial by jury. He attacked migrants. Far from defending the rule of law, he brought a new authoritarianism to British justice, especially when he widened the definition of terrorism to include supporters of Palestine Action. 

Rather than restoring public service, as he promised upon taking office less than two years ago, he was found to have accepted gifts including clothing, designer glasses, and even the use of a flat owned by a rich friend. 

Advised by his now-disgraced former chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, Starmer was an expert at the politics of manipulation and deceit. 

He ran for the Labour leadership six years ago posing as a “friend” of former leader Jeremy Corbyn, and the candidate of the left. To ingratiate himself with traditional party members, he made 10 pledges in his leadership manifesto - then ripped them up once he’d won.

In a gross act of betrayal, he turned brutally on Corbyn and his supporters, forcing them out of the party. In this way, Starmer split the Labour Party and created the conditions for the rise of Zack Polanski’s Greens.

Different kind of politics

Meanwhile, Starmer lurched Labour to the right as part of a strategy to win back Reform voters. Yet he is reportedly still blaming others for his downfall. 

“He gave everything to Labour, including sacrificing much of his children’s teenage years to help make the party electable. He feels deeply betrayed, especially by those he believed were loyal to him,” Politics UK quoted a Labour source as saying.

Starmer should not blame others. He needs only to look in the mirror if he wants to understand his failure as prime minister.

Andy Burnham, now nailed on as Starmer’s successor, must urgently learn the lessons from the outgoing leader’s mistakes. Starmer, deeply influenced by Mandelson, inherited the Blairite belief that a politician needs to lie to obtain power.

Starmer tried to copy former Prime Minister Tony Blair by turning on the Labour left and cultivating billionaires instead. This meant forming alliances with Britain’s far-right media, especially the Murdoch press - another mistake.

These strategies worked well for Blair. They have proved disastrous for Starmer. 

Burnham will be in Downing Street soon. He can succeed, and anyone who loves Britain will hope he does so. But he can only succeed by reverting to a different kind of politics. 

He stands a chance because, most paradoxically, unlike Starmer and Blair, he is not a natural member of the metropolitan elite. Like Harold Wilson in the 1970s, Burnham comes from the north. His father was a telephone engineer and his mother a receptionist. 

Burnham has been a great success as mayor of Manchester. So long as he remembers to govern in the interests of ordinary people and not billionaires; to keep his integrity, resist blandishments and be himself, Burnham stands a chance of succeeding when so many have failed. 

All reasonable people should be on his side. It’s time Britain had a decent prime minister - and we’ve never needed one more.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

If Labour candidate Andy Burnham is victorious, the party could begin a much-needed process of renewal

Supporters hold placards promoting Andy Burnham in the Makerfield by-election campaign in northwest England, on 22 May 2026 (Paul Ellis/AFP)

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British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will have mixed feelings as he awaits the result of today’s Makerfield by-election.

As Labour leader, he will celebrate if his party wins. As prime minister, his survival depends on Labour losing.

A victory for Andy Burnham, the Labour candidate, would be a personal catastrophe for the prime minister. A victorious Burnham would immediately travel to Westminster on a mission to destroy the Starmer premiership – meaning Starmer is all but finished. 

This would be an unimaginable humiliation for a man elected as prime minister less than two years ago with one of the largest majorities in British political history.

There is much discussion today about whether Starmer will fight to stay in office, or go quietly. It doesn’t matter. A bad tooth can be extracted using anaesthetic or, more painfully, without. The result is the same.

In Downing Street, Burnham would start with one huge advantage: he is not Starmer. 

People dislike Starmer. Burnham is friendly and warm, with a human touch that Starmer lacks.

He has been a hugely successful mayor of Manchester. We shouldn’t pay too much attention to critics who carp that much of his success is down to others. That’s always true of politicians.

A fighting chance

Starmer never had a hope of defeating the far right. Burnham, with luck and skill, stands a chance.

He comes from the north, a welcome change in a country that is governed from the south. But the main reason for supporting Burnham is that he can attract voters back to Labour by offering an alternative to the politics of bitterness and hatred that is tearing Britain apart.

His wiser colleagues understand this. Ed Miliband, the energy security secretary and former Labour leader, could have stood himself. But he has chosen to play kingmaker instead.

People will want Burnham to succeed. More than that, they will know they can’t afford for him to fail. Burnham is Labour’s last chance. The alternative is oblivion.

Anyone who wants the Labour Party to survive, Britain to flourish and the far right to be humbled will hope and pray that Burnham succeeds

Burnham also starts with one big disadvantage: Britain’s £3 trillion ($4 trillion) national debt. Burnham cannot buy popularity with spending schemes the way former Prime Minister Tony Blair could in the benign economic circumstances of the 1990s. Like it or not, the markets will not permit it.

But there are important things that Burnham can do. To start with, he can mend the Labour Party. 

It’s important to remember that Starmer was never, in truth, Labour leader. In reality, he was a useful tool for a small Labour Party faction, the ostensibly benign and well-meaning “think tank” called Labour Together.

As investigative journalist Paul Holden demonstrated in his extraordinary work The Fraud: Keir Starmer, Morgan McSweeney, and the Crisis of British Democracy, Labour Together was a secret project, backed by illegally undeclared money, to capture Labour for a right-wing clique. It can usefully be regarded as the right-wing equivalent of Militant Tendency, which sought to capture Labour in the 1980s.

McSweeney, the former Downing Street chief of staff forced out in the wake of the Peter Mandelson/Jeffrey Epstein affair, was the leader of the Labour Together faction. Mandelson was its godfather; Starmer its unwitting tool. 

Undoing years of damage

Labour Together secured the Labour leadership election with a dishonest pitch that tricked the party’s largely left-wing membership to vote for Starmer. Once leader, he reneged on the pledges that had won him the leadership – and set about turning viciously on the Labour left, driving many of them out of the party.

In the short term, this strategy – carried out with the support of the Tory media – secured Starmer his massive parliamentary majority. But it split the Labour Party, leading directly to the rise of Zack Polanski’s Green Party.

This explains today’s collapse of Labour support, and the deep personal unpopularity of Starmer. 

A central question in British politics now is whether Burnham can undo the damage inflicted by Labour Together, and reunite Labour.

The signs are mixed. There is gossip that Burnham may bring back David Miliband, the former foreign secretary, from his comfortable exile as well-paid charity boss (roughly $1.2m a year from the International Rescue Committee) in New York.

Appointing David Miliband, a Blair protege, to a key position would send the wrong message while the carnage continues in Gaza.

It is troubling that Josh Simons, the former director of Labour Together who stood down as a minister after being accused of spying on journalists, made way for Burnham in Makerfield and could ultimately form part of his team. But it is encouraging that MP Louise Haigh, reportedly one of the highest-profile victims of the Labour Together machine, is working with Burnham.

Importantly, former chief of staff Sue Gray, another victim of Labour Together when she was driven out of her Downing Street job, is advising Burnham. She is synonymous with integrity.

Burnham has been criticised for being cagey on policy. That’s understandable; he’s been fighting a by-election, not running the country. If he gets to Downing Street, he will have the opportunity to clean up British politics, promote social justice, fight the politics of hatred, and press forward with the agenda that Starmer spurned.

Anyone who wants the Labour Party to survive, Britain to flourish and the far right to be humbled will hope and pray that Burnham succeeds.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Trump's US is embroiled in war crimes on multiple fronts. It does not deserve to host football's biggest tournament

A view of Argentina's base camp at the Origin Kansas City Riverfront hotel in Kansas City, ahead of the 2026 World Cup football tournament on 10 June, 2026 (Juan Mabromata/AFP)

On

Four years ago, when Qatar hosted the World Cup, Keir Starmer had a fit of the vapours.

As leader of the opposition, he blocked Labour MPs from attending. Though personally a keen football fan (he supports Arsenal), Starmer announced that he would not attend the final even if England was in it.

The Qatar World Cup turned out to be a success, and many of the criticisms against the Gulf Arab state on human rights grounds were exaggerated or invented.

Four years later, Starmer is Britain’s prime minister. And in a characteristic display of double standards, we’ve heard not a squeak of protest from Downing Street about the US World Cup - yet the case for boycotting President Donald Trump’s United States is more powerful than the case against Qatar. Far more powerful.

Three months ago, the US and Israel launched a criminal and unprovoked attack on Iran. The assault was not authorised by the United Nations, meaning that the US and Israel were guilty under international law of an act of aggression.

The Nuremberg tribunal, set up to punish Nazi criminals after World War Two, described this type of action as the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole”.

Regardless, Starmer’s Britain was happy to allow the US to use British bases for what were euphemistically called “defensive” actions. On the first day of the war, more than 170 schoolchildren and teachers were killed in a US strike on a girls’ school in Minab. 

Sadly, that is not the worst of the atrocities committed by the US since the Qatar World Cup.

Menace to global peace

For the last two and a half years, the US has been a partner in what most scholars and experts now accept to be a genocide in Gaza. Among those slaughtered in the Palestinian territory with US help were more than 500 footballers. 

Incredibly, the US is today protecting Israelis wanted on war-crimes charges - including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - by imposing sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC). 

In another violation of international law, the US earlier this year bombed the South American state of Venezuela in order to seize its president, Nicolas Maduro.

Any other country with a remotely similar record as a rogue state and menace to global peace would face a boycott campaign

Trump has threatened to invade Greenland and appears to be planning to invade Cuba. The US has also killed more than 200 people in strikes against boats in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean - without providing a shred of evidence to justify its claims that the victims were drug traffickers. 

There is an overwhelming case that Trump, and the toxic coterie that surrounds him, should themselves face trial on war-crimes charges. Any other country with a remotely similar record as a rogue state and menace to global peace would face a boycott campaign, as Qatar did four years ago over a comparatively much smaller controversy.

And now we come to the World Cup itself, whose opening ceremony is today. It is already a shambles. 

Four years ago, in the heat of Qatar, seven out of eight stadiums were supplied with state-of-the-art solar-powered air conditioning. By contrast, only three of the 16 stadiums (across the US, Mexico and Canada) have AC. Players and fans will boil in soaring temperatures.

In Qatar, every spectator was provided with free use of public transport. Nothing similar is contemplated in the US. 

The final will be held in the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, which fans can’t reach on foot. Usually, the return fare to the stadium is $13, but the price has now surged past $100. 

In summary, spectators face being ripped off, even though the infrastructure for the US World Cup is nowhere near the quality of Qatar’s. 

Racist treatment of fans and players

Much more troubling is the racist US treatment of foreign fans and players, especially from Middle Eastern countries. Iranian fans recently learned that their ticket allocation had been cancelled just days before the tournament was set to begin.

Visa concerns meant that the Iranian team’s training camp had to be shifted from Arizona to Mexico at the last moment; some training staff had their visas rejected outright. This was blatant political interference.

The same applies to the denial of entry to Somali referee Omar Artan, who was put on a flight back to Istanbul after arriving in Miami.

Trump, it should be recalled, has called Somalis “low IQ” and “garbage”. He’s imported this open racism and bigotry into the 2026 World Cup finals. 

It’s heartbreaking. Artan, who was voted Africa's referee of the year in 2025, would have been Somalia’s first official at a World Cup.

In addition, Iraq’s Aymen Hussein - who is among the country’s top all-time goal scorers - was detained for seven hours at Chicago’s O’Hare airport last week.

Let’s try a mental experiment: imagine that any other country had launched an illegal war three months before it was due to host a World Cup. 

Let’s stretch credulity and further suppose that this same county had collaborated in what the United Nations defines as a genocide for the previous two and a half years. 

There’s no way this World Cup would be going ahead if the host was any country other than Trump’s US. 

Gross double standards

Fifa President Gianni Infantino bears comparison to his despicable British predecessor, Stanley Rous, who held the post from 1961-74. The wretched Rous kept South Africa in world sport for years, insisting there was no anti-Black discrimination in the apartheid state. 

Infantino can also be compared to the reactionary monster Avery Brundage, the sports chief who successfully resisted calls for a boycott of Hitler’s 1936 Olympics in Germany.

This year's World Cup has exposed western claims to global hegemony as corrupt, cynical and morally worthless

One huge question lurks behind the obscene footballing jamboree that lies ahead: how long can the US and its allies in Europe and Britain get away with such gross double standards?

Western global hegemony has long been based on the promise that institutions such as the UN and the ICC stand for fair dealing and the rule of law.

The US was at the heart of that system, with Infantino’s Fifa part of its wider apparatus of cultural and sporting validation.

The 2026 World Cup is, of course, a sporting event. It cannot be remotely compared in horror or moral seriousness to Israel’s annihilation of Gaza.

Like Gaza, however, this year’s World Cup has exposed western claims to global hegemony as corrupt, cynical and morally worthless.

Additional research by Haroun Lalji.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

If King Abdullah II goes to war to protect the holy site, his nation may find it has more allies than Trump and Netanyahu expect

King Abdullah II visits the army command in Amman on 8 March 2026 (Jordanian Royal Palace/AFP)

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Muslims have been praying at Al-Aqsa Mosque for around 1,400 years.

Israel has had its eyes on the holy site since the state’s creation in 1948, and its leaders have made increasingly aggressive attempts to seize control over the last quarter-century.

In September 2000, Ariel Sharon, then Israel’s opposition leader, stormed Al-Aqsa complex with more than 1,000 police officers. The move provoked the Second Intifada.

It was also the start of Israel’s creeping takeover of Al-Aqsa complex, which alongside Mecca and Medina, is among Islam’s three holiest sites. 

In theory and by law, the custodian of Al-Aqsa Mosque is King Abdullah II of Jordan. He is responsible for its maintenance, security, and - if need be - defence. But ever since the Sharon outrage, Israel has whittled away at Jordanian control.

When I visited last month, Israeli security forces were everywhere, with a police station set up at the centre of the compound. Mosque workers told me they cannot repaint their offices or mend a water pipe without Israeli permission.

The walls of the ancient prayer hall at the southern end of the site are pitted with bullet holes, where Israeli forces have opened fire on worshippers. 

According to the longstanding status-quo arrangement, which is supported by international law, this interference is not just outrageous. It is completely illegal. 

But worse is planned. Much worse. 

Dark precedent

Middle East Eye reported this week that the US and Israel are conspiring to strip the Jordanian royal family of its historic custodianship. 

A US official has denied the report, but under the plan described to MEE by American, Jordanian and Palestinian officials, Israel would gain control over the appointment of imams and senior mosque officials. 

The plan, reportedly being pushed by US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Ambassador Mike Huckabee, would also give Israel a role in approving the content of Friday sermons. 

The idea is based on a dark precedent: the division of the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron after Jewish terrorist Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 Palestinians in 1994.

That is no coincidence. Goldstein is one of Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s heroes. He hung a photograph of Goldstein on his living-room wall before he entered politics.

Today, Ben Gvir regularly violates the status quo, forcing his way into Al-Aqsa in imitation of Sharon a quarter-century ago. Last month, he declared: “I feel like the owner here.”

Successive Israeli chief rabbis have condemned Jewish activists who follow Ben Gvir’s example and pray or wave flags at the holy site. These radical groups are set on the destruction of the Dome of the Rock, the ancient Islamic shrine at the heart of Al-Aqsa complex, and its replacement by a Third Temple, which many religious Jews believe will open the way for the Messiah. 

Traditionally, the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, has viewed their provocative incursions with alarm. 

Forty-two years ago, the Shin Bet narrowly thwarted a planned Jewish terror attack at Al-Aqsa complex. Ehud Yatom, one of the Shin Bet commanders who stopped the atrocity, told Israeli media in 2004 that had it gone ahead, “it would have meant the entire Muslim world against the state of Israel and against the western world, a war of religions”. 

He added: “With all of their pain and suffering, today’s terrorist attacks would be nothing compared to what could happen - even World War Three.”

Dangerous encroachments 

But the Shin Bet’s approach towards this issue, under pressure from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s extreme-right coalition government, is changing. 

The agency’s new chief, David Zini, is aligning the Shin Bet with Israel’s religious right. Days after he took up the post, the backgrounds on all of the agency’s computers were changed to feature a photograph of the Temple Mount, the name Jews use for Al-Aqsa complex. The move reportedly generated internal pushback, and the screens were changed back, with the agency blaming it on an “accident”. 

Thus far, Jordan’s King Abdullah has swallowed his pride at the ever more dangerous Israeli encroachments at Al-Aqsa. But will he yield again if Netanyahu gives the go-ahead to the reported Kushner/Huckabee plan?

'Below the soil of Palestine and Jerusalem are the bodies of thousands of Jordanian soldiers who paid with their blood in defence of the Holy Land'

- White paper on Al-Aqsa

Some of his advisers in Amman - where the CIA is well represented - will probably advise him that he has no choice, because standing up to the Israelis will only end in defeat and obliteration.

They will remind him that Jordan depends on Israel for its security, as well as basic essentials such as water, in a country whose 12 million people live largely in a strip of land along the Israeli border. If Abdullah wants to stay on the throne, they might well add, Israel is a merciless and ruthless enemy. 

Yet, there are powerful arguments pointing Abdullah towards resistance. These are set out with great clarity in a white paper on Al-Aqsa authorised by Abdullah himself six years ago.

“From the first day of the Great Arab Revolt in 1916, the Hashemite Kings have led the Arab Army in defence of the identity of Palestine, its people, and the Holy Sites of Jerusalem,” the paper notes. “Below the soil of Palestine and Jerusalem are the bodies of thousands of Jordanian soldiers who paid with their blood in defence of the Holy Land.”

The white paper further highlights the role played by Abdullah’s ancestors in attempting to foil the 1917 Balfour Declaration and in defending al-Buraq Wall, also known as the Western Wall. The present king’s great-grandfather, Abdullah I, “was at the frontline of the 1936-1939 Arab uprising in opposition to the sale of Palestinian land to Jewish settlers of that period”. 

The white paper notes that under Hashemite custodianship, “not a single inch” of the holy complex’s 144 dunams (14 hectares) has been lost to Israel.

Sacred duty

Crucially, the white paper also contains a warning to any potential intruder into Al-Aqsa. It asserts on behalf of the Hashemites the sacred duty “to defend it and protect it if necessary”.

This is an obligation that extends far beyond Jordan itself. The white paper states that responsibility for Al-Aqsa is “fard ayn” - an individual obligation - on “every single Muslim in the world”.

Crucially, it asserts that “it is only the Custodian H.M. King Abdullah II who can call for its defence physically, and for him to determine the exact way to do that”. The white paper goes on to note that “the very permission and justification for a just war (casus belli) is given in the Holy Qur’an as the defence of religious sites (including churches and synagogues)”.

In other words, Abdullah has the right to launch a religious war in defence of Al-Aqsa in the event that it is seized by Israel. Many Muslims - including many of his own subjects - would go further. They would say he has a duty to.

Most experts with whom I have spoken say that Abdullah will probably content himself with a statement of protest if Israel comes for Al-Aqsa, while reluctantly acquiescing. But remember this: the king has stood up to Trump and Netanyahu before.

As MEE revealed in February 2025, Abdullah sent a message to Washington and Tel Aviv that Jordan was ready to declare war on Israel if Netanyahu carried out his threat to forcibly expel Palestinians into its territory.

Jordan currently secures the border, thus guaranteeing stability for Israel. That stability, it can be assumed, would vanish overnight if war broke out

Abdullah was under no illusion that Jordan could defeat Israel’s vastly superior armed forces in battle. But he calculated that Israel would face an unacceptable cost if it overthrew the Hashemites.

The Israeli border with Jordan stretches for 400km, almost the entire length of the country. Much of that border is mountainous terrain, and in parts all but impossible to police.

A senior source with close knowledge of the security situation along the border told MEE: “The fact is that we can walk to Jerusalem tonight and get there by tomorrow.”

The source added that Jordan currently secures the border, thus guaranteeing stability for Israel. That stability, it can be assumed, would vanish overnight if war broke out.

Jordan, remember, has an open frontier to Israel’s east. Israel could thus face the prospect of the kind of protracted guerilla campaign that ultimately drove the US from Iraq and Afghanistan - a campaign that would certainly draw in fighters from Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and beyond.

Religious war

Abdullah, who stands 41st in a well-documented direct line of descent from the Prophet Muhammad, will know that tensions have reached boiling point over the Israeli genocide in Gaza, alongside its atrocities in the occupied West Bank and Lebanon.

This fury is felt not just by Jordan’s 2.4 million Palestinian refugees, but by the Jordanian population as a whole. It is noteworthy that two recent attacks at the Jordan/West Bank border were carried out by East Bankers.

All Jordanians feel guilt for having sat by during the Israeli bombardment and dismantling of Gaza. This national guilt helps explain why Jordan’s border can pose such a threat to Israel.

It will also be a factor in Abdullah’s thinking: he may conclude that resistance to Israeli predation at Al-Aqsa, whatever the risks, gives the Hashemites their best chance of survival. 

The king may also reflect that the world has changed. After Trump’s humiliation by Iran, the US is no longer the force it once was.

If Abdullah goes to war for Al-Aqsa, an apparently defenceless Jordan may find it has more friends than Trump and Netanyahu expect.

As Israel and the US ponder an illegal smash-and-grab raid on the third holiest site in Islam, Abdullah thus faces an existential choice: give in to Trump and Netanyahu, or fight back and risk his life and his throne.

It is not just the future of the Hashemite dynasty that depends on his choice, nor only the future of the Middle East.

Three years ago, I interviewed Sheikh Azzam al-Khatib, the director of the Islamic Waqf, which holds the sacred site in trust, about the Israeli threat to Al-Aqsa.

He said this: “Here in Jerusalem we rely on the custodianship of King Abdullah. This place is part and parcel of Islamic theology and belief. It represents the faith of nearly two billion Muslims. King Abdullah and all Hashemites are descendants of the prophet. They will never allow Israel or anyone else to control the mosque.

“God forbid if Israel changes the status quo. That would lead to a religious war that would extend far beyond Al-Aqsa.”

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Armed, funded and openly endorsed by Israel's far-right government, settlers are terrorising Palestinians with impunity

The 50km journey from Ramallah north to Nablus in the occupied West Bank used to take an hour. Israeli checkpoints now mean it can take half a day or more.

It’s Friday morning and I’m on a bus full of students and young families going to stay with relatives for the weekend.

We swing left to join Highway 60, which runs along the ancient route from Hebron in the south to Jenin and Nazareth to the north.

In Ottoman times it was known as the “route of the thieves”, with robbers lying in wait for unwary travellers. Today the thieves are Israeli settlers.

Were Palestine to become its own state, Highway 60 would become a key piece of national infrastructure. But now every hundred metres or less is an Israeli flag.

On the bus there’s a discussion about who planted the flags. All agree they weren’t there a year ago.

Beside the flags are occasional posters depicting a rabbi in a black coat, with a protruding beard under his black homburg hat.

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson died 30 years ago, but to many settlers he is a living presence. His followers believe that all the land of historical Israel belongs to the Jews.

Settlers paste his emblem - a blue crown against a yellow background above a Hebrew word meaning messiah - in Palestinian villages and at crossroads.

The rabbi’s followers believe the arrival of the messiah is imminent. 

Groups of settlers congregate along the road. Some carry machine guns. The women wear long woven dresses.

Many settlers, especially those in remote outposts, view Palestinians with hatred and contempt. 

We pass Turmus Ayya, which is under regular attack. Rampaging settlers, many armed, destroy crops, burn cars and houses, wreck agricultural machinery.

We pass close to Shilo, a religious settlement named after the ancient biblical city of Shiloh.

A young mother sitting near me on the bus shivers: “It’s the one that’s killing everybody. The head of the snake.”

All Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law, according to a ruling by the International Court of Justice in 2024.

Many Shilo settlers are American Israelis, while many American Palestinians live in Turmus Ayya. 

Back in the United States they might be neighbours and friends. In the West Bank, the Shilo settlers are intent on driving out or killing the Palestinians and seizing their land.

We pass along the road to Beita, a village that has come under repeated murderous assault since a settlement outpost called Evyatar (translation: God is great) was launched with the support of the radical settler movement Nachala which has received funding from organisations in the US.

I have visited Beita several times. Every Friday the youth of Beita march to protect their land. They mostly throw stones and set light to tyres. But they don’t pose any realistic danger to settlers or well-armed Israeli soldiers.

Sixteen of them had been shot dead when I last visited in September 2024, with many others injured. An American-Turkish dual national, Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, was one of the martyrs, targeted by an israeli soldier with a shot to the head.

The direct route to Nablus should pass through Huwwara, the scene of a notorious settler pogrom three years ago.

Today Huwwara is cut off by one of the ubiquitous barrier gates installed across the West Bank to enable the occupying Israeli authorities to block off towns and villages.

The bus driver swings left and up the hill. We are now close to Yitzhar, an especially violent settlement known for its motto “expel or kill”, which has been graffitied on homes and walls in Palestinian villages.

A settler website includes a photograph of a flag with Rabbi Schneerson's emblem waving above a military outpost in Yitzhar.

Under the flag the text states that it is there to remind “the residents of the Arab villages of their true destiny - to be slaves to the children of Israel”.

Two white caravans

The passenger next to me points to two white caravans parked at the top of a hill.

“They weren’t there last week. Next week they will have a small house. Then another.

“They will come down the hill. They will seize livestock. They will take the land. They are armed. If we resist, they will kill us. They will invade our houses.”

The Old Testament prophet Elijah in the Book of Kings speaks of “a little cloud no bigger than a man’s hand”.

Hard to detect in the distance, those two white caravans signal the inevitable destruction of Palestinian homes and livelihoods.

These tiny unregistered outposts are appearing all over the West Bank. According to the International Crisis Group, 94 were planted last year. They start as a handful of armed fanatics in mobile homes. Over time they grow, gain formal recognition, become permanent.

Israelis build their settlements on hilltops. Deeply rooted Palestinian villages favour gently sloping terrain on the lower slopes where they are closer to agricultural land and can make the best use of springs and natural breezes.

“The settlers are in control,” remarks a bus passenger. “They rule the West Bank now. The army does what they tell them.

“It was better when the army was in charge. They were brutal. But they had rules. They were more predictable.”

Today settlers enjoy near total impunity from the law and can rely on military support if Palestinians resist. They descend from their hilltops and do what they want. Burn. Loot. Steal. Kill.

Palestinians are the object of a vicious programme of organised ethnic cleansing.

'My mother was a Holocaust survivor, and what I saw reminded me of the events that happened against Jews in the last century'

- Tamir Pardo, former Mossad director

According to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, Israel has driven out 59 Palestinian communities, home to more than 4,000 people, since 7 October 2023.

Many more live in daily fear.

In addition, B’Tselem reports, the Israeli army has driven more than 32,000 people from their homes in refugee camps, with many houses deliberately destroyed.

According to the United Nations, more than 1,000 Palestinians, including 200 children, have been killed by Israel during this period.

Tamir Pardo, a former director of Mossad, visited the West Bank last month. Afterwards he remarked: “My mother was a Holocaust survivor, and what I saw reminded me of the events that happened against Jews in the last century.”

He added: “What I saw today made me feel ashamed to be Jewish.”

While the new wave of ferocious settler attacks has been fuelled in part by a thirst for vengeance after the 7 October Hamas-led attacks of 2023, the fundamental explanation lies in the political pact struck between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and far-right religious parties in late 2022. 

After failing to secure a majority in the Knesset, Netanyahu entered into coalition with Itamar Ben Gvir’s Jewish Power and Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionist parties.

In return for their support, Netanyahu appointed Smotrich as finance minister and awarded him control of the West Bank.

This was a gross breach of international law. Israel has been the occupying power in the West Bank since it seized the territory from Jordanian control during the 1967 Arab-Israel war.

Under international law any power must manage occupied territory through a military mechanism.

There’s a logic here: any military occupation has a duty to govern in the interests of the people it occupies, and not the occupier.

In order to hand over the West Bank to Smotrich, Netanyahu created a new body, the Settlement Administration.

Though located for administrative reasons inside the Ministry of Defence, this new body is overseen and controlled by Smotrich, a civilian politician.

This created a new legal and moral framework.

As Peace Now, an Israeli NGO, points out, the Settlement Administration “is a body that is committed and by law to the interests of the state of Israel and its citizens”. 

Whereas the army had (in theory at least) an over-riding duty to act in the interests of Palestinians, the Settlement Administration serves only Israeli citizens. And not just any Israeli citizens: Israeli settlers. 

Smotrich, who himself lives in a settlement and has built his career standing up for violent settler interests, has used his powers to the full.

In the almost 60 years since its occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Israel constructed approximately 150 settlements.

Earlier this year the Israeli cabinet approved the construction of 34 new settlements, bringing the total approved by the Netanyahu coalition to 103. 

Meanwhile scores of irregular “outposts” are being approved, with ruinous consequences for Palestinians.

Money and guns

The settlers require guns, homes, agricultural machinery, drones, new roads and off-road vehicles as they drive Palestinian off their land. This programme of ethnic cleansing does not come cheap.

Crucially, Smotrich is not just controller of the West Bank. As finance minister he has approved a substantial funding uplift in support of the settlers’ campaign.

While Netanyahu’s straightened coalition government is cutting national budgets, it pours money into settlements.

“This is daylight robbery of public funds to benefit a small group within the government’s base,” says Peace Now.

When Middle East Eye visited Peace Now executive director Lior Amihai in his Tel Aviv office he told us that Smotrich had allocated seven billion shekels ($2.4bn) to a five-year plan for settlement roads, many of which are built on Palestinian-owned land. 

That’s 1.4bn shekels a year - or 30 percent of the national roads budget.

This means that nearly a third of Israel’s intercity roads budget is being spent on just 300,000 settlers making up about three percent of the Israeli population.

Experience shows that once roads are built the settler population increases exponentially, with local Palestinians driven out.

While Smotrich underwrites the settler project, his coalition partner (and political soulmate) Ben Gvir arms it.

In January he approved personal gun licences in 18 illegal settlements to “enhance self-defence and increase personal security”.

Settlers, all of whom are living illegally in the West Bank, have ready access to weapons ranging from M16 assault rifles to pistols and drones. 

It is no surprise that the United Nations recorded almost 2,000 settler attacks - approximately five a day - in 2025.

Over the last three years the West Bank has become a lawless and terrifying place where not even Israelis are safe.

Three weeks after MEE interviewed him in Tel Aviv, Peace Now’s Amihai was assaulted by settlers while leading a tour of the Jordan valley for Israeli left-wing activists.

Footage of the event shows settlers hitting him before shoving him against the side of a vehicle and asking “Why did you bring Arabs here?” 

Such attacks on Israelis have become normalised.

Human rights activist Aviv Tatarsky of the peace organisation Ir Amim told MEE how settlers attacked him last month in Deir Istiya, a small village 15km south of Nablus, after he intervened when farmers were assaulted.

Tatarsky, like Amihai an Israeli citizen, told MEE that his assailants came from the ultra-orthodox Emmanuel (translation: God is with us) settlement.

“They assaulted me, beat me with a plastic hose, hit me in the face,” he said.

Tatarsky played down the attack, stressing that Palestinians endured much worse assaults on a daily basis. Nevertheless, he was forced to take a week off work.

He told MEE: “We know their names. Where they live is known. We filed a complaint to the police, but have heard nothing back.”

Even foreign media are now fair game for settlers as last July’s assault on a German TV crew and the detention of CNN journalists in March proves.

Palestinians have no way of fighting back.

“Anyone who throws stones gets shot dead,” says Jamal Juma, coordinator of the Stop the Wall campaign.

The Palestinian Authority has 70,000 soldiers at its disposal, but they never come to the aid of threatened Palestinians. Instead they are deployed to help Israel police Palestinian resistance.

One senior PA officer admits: “We are collaborators. We are under the orders of Israel. Anyone who denies this is a liar.”

As the bus approached Nablus the tension finally eased. This ancient city, built in the first century CE by the Roman emperor Vespasian, comes under settler and Israeli army assault but on nothing like the same devastating scale as other major towns like Tulkarm in the east or Jenin in the north. 

It may not be safe for much longer.

Symbol of sumud

In February, Smotrich announced a shake-up of land registration law in the West Bank which will make it easier for Israelis to claim Palestinian land.

Smotrich boasted: “We will continue to kill off the idea of a Palestinian state.”

The main effect is expected be felt in the rural areas of the West Bank because it makes it far more difficult to prove ownership of the land.

Most rural areas fall within Area C, the 60 percent of the West Bank that has remained under full Israeli control since the Oslo Accords which established the Palestinian Authority in the 1990s.

Palestinians told MEE they feared the effect that the new mechanism demanding that Palestinians are compelled to prove ancient property rights could be applied to devastate cities like Nablus.

They point to the example of Hebron where settlers have seized property in the heart of the city.

Military forces were brought in to protect them and vast areas of the old city have been cleared of Palestinians.

But the spirit of resistance remains. I witnessed this defiant endurance after I left Nablus to catch a bus to visit friends in the nearby village of Burqa. 

Like so many Palestinian villages Burqa is an ancient community that feels as if it has merged with the land that surrounds it.

At its centre stand elegant Ottoman-era buildings, including an old church. The view to the south towards Nablus is magical, with rolling hills and olive trees.

But on top of the hill above Burqa now looms Homesh, a radical settlement with a complicated history.

Established on stolen Palestinian land in 1978, the settlers were evicted in 2005 as part of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s disengagement plan.

But they never fully left. Palestinians were not given back their stolen land and settlers maintained a presence by building a yeshiva (religious school) on the site. 

Shmuel Wendy, manager of the Homesh Yeshiva, makes no secret of his ambition.

In footage that can be viewed on YouTube he recently told supporters: "The nation of Israel demands to return to occupy, to take possession and to return to our holy land… it is just about going back to a place that belongs to us."

His ambition includes the destruction of the Oslo Accords and any hope of a Palestinian state.

Settlers from Homesh descend to Burqa several times a week to terrorise Palestinians. They steal cars, sheep and agricultural equipment. Two days before my visit they had swarmed through olive trees, setting them alight.

But villagers told me that the settlers were afraid to enter the village itself.

"We have placed a sign at the entrance of our village: ‘Stay away to be safe’. When they come into the village we send a message to all the men in Burqa to come out," one of them said.

"People carry sticks. We attack. Once a week they come in and we drive them out."

We walked up the hill through olive trees towards the Homesh settlement. We found an elderly farmer clearing land so that he could plant beans.

He told us he was working his plot of land because “today is a Saturday, the Jewish holy day, and on other days we are afraid the settlers will come and kill us”.

Mamoun, a retired social worker and teacher, invited MEE into his house for coffee. 

“Burqa has a long tradition of resistance,” he said.

“We are educated. We have schools in Burqa. We know what happens if we lose our land. In our DNA we have loyalty to this country.”

Mamoun, who fought in the first Intifada, proudly told MEE: “Shimon Peres came in his car to Burqa. He said that he hadn’t been attacked by any village except Burqa.”

After coffee Mamoun took me to the memorial wall near the entrance to the village where the names of those who gave their lives for resistance are inscribed. Almost all Palestinians remember their martyrs in this way.

“This wall is like a challenge,” said Mamoun. “We are continuing our resistance to Israeli attacks.”

More than 70 names are recorded on the wall, dating back to the Arab revolt against British rule in 1936.

The first 18 martyrs on the wall died fighting the British. Ten died during the Nakba. Others during the Black September uprising of 1970, and then during the first and second intifadas.

The most recent martyr is 16-year-old Nidal Shaqnoubi. There's a gap for his name to be inscribed on the wall.

Beside the wall of martyrs there used to stand a statue of Handala, a cartoon character who has become a symbol of steadfastness (sumud) for Palestinians.

With his hands clasped and back turned, Handala refuses to face the world until Palestine is free.

Mamoun recalls: “The soldiers came here and cut down Handala because they know that the symbol reminds our villagers to be awake.”

Then he points downwards. Handala’s feet are still there. The soldiers couldn’t remove them. They remain fixed, obstinate, unyielding, immovable, stubbornly planted in Palestinian soil.

This is a moment of maximum danger for the British PM - his actions have made him vastly unpopular not just with the electorate, but with his own cabinet and civil service too

Sir Oliver Robbins, former permanent secretary to the foreign office, gives evidence to a Westminster select committee, London, 21 April in this screengrab of parliamentary footage (Handout/PRU/AFP)

On

Sir Keir Starmer was elected prime minister just under two years ago amidst a surge of national goodwill.

This had little or nothing to do with his own robotic personality.

Britons were fed up with the sleaze, lies, incompetence and the endless chaos of the outgoing Tory government.

The nation judged that though Starmer lacked charm he was capable of running a government with integrity and efficiency.

That proved a false hope.

Since entering Downing Street, Starmer has made a series of stupid and avoidable errors, of which the most grotesque was the appointment of Peter Mandelson as British ambassador to the US.

People are asking whether Starmer can survive following the evidence given by Sir Oliver Robbins, former permanent secretary to the foreign office, to the House of Commons on Tuesday.

The answer is that he can. 

Robbins’ evidence was uncomfortable for the prime minister. But he was reassuring on the crucial point. 

When the prime minister told MPs last week that he did not know that the wretched Mandelson had failed security vetting, the prime minister was telling the truth. 

Had Robbins provided proof that Downing Street knew, Starmer would be making his resignation statement today.

Gravely diminished

So Starmer survives. For the time being and gravely diminished.

He has emerged from the Mandelson business as an unpleasant human being. Robbins, a loyal and decent official, was at worst guilty of trying to help the prime minister out of a tight spot.

Starmer’s response was to trash his reputation, then sack him. 

This means that the British prime minister is a bad egg, a stinker, a creep, a louse. Not a man to go tiger shooting with. A fatal companion in the trenches.

This matters. 

Starmer has damaged his relationship with the civil service, which will make it more difficult for the government to carry out its business.

If they were in any doubt before, cabinet colleagues now know for certain that, given the chance, Starmer will stab them in the back. They will eye him with even more caution and contempt than before.

The voters don’t like him, and nor do his MPs.

None of the above is fatal. It is exceptionally hard to dislodge an incumbent prime minister. Sixteen years ago senior cabinet ministers resigned in a plot to force out Gordon Brown. It made no difference.

More recently the majority of Labour MPs tried to drive Jeremy Corbyn out as party leader. He carried on regardless.

The issue is further complicated by lack of an obvious replacement, made yet worse by mutual suspicion among likely successors.

One further point: Labour MPs know how much damage the Tories regular churn of incompetent leaders inflicted not only on the party’s reputation, but also the British state. 

They fear that if Starmer’s successor also turns out to be a dud, they will make Labour a national joke and turn Britain into a global laughing stock. 

This has consequences beyond Westminster. 

The cost of the national debt is already too high. As the dismal example of Liz Truss shows, political chaos will drive it up further.

Days numbered

For all that I am convinced it is in the national interest that Starmer should go. To explain why involves an excursion into recent political history, and the formation 10 years ago of a group called Labour Together.

Starmer has damaged his relationship with the civil service, which will make it more difficult for the government to carry out its business

Labour Together - as its name suggests - projected itself as a unifying group embracing left and right wings of Labour. As Paul Holden has explained in his investigative study of the rise of Starmer, The Fraud, this was entirely misleading.

In reality Labour Together should be seen as a right-wing version of the hard left entryist Militant Tendency, dedicated to the destruction of Jeremy Corbyn, and unscrupulous about its methods. 

Its leader was Morgan McSweeney and Keir Starmer was McSweeney's chosen instrument. 

The project was stunningly successful. In October 2023 - nine months before the general election - the political website Politico noted that "nearly all the MPs credited with building Labour Together since 2017” - it named Rachel Reeves, Wes Streeting, Shabana Mahmood, Steve Reed, Bridget Phillipson, Lucy Powell and Lisa Nandy - “now sit in Starmer's top team". 

One key inspiration for Labour Together was Mandelson, who had played the role of political svengali to both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown 20 years earlier.

Mandelson was McSweeney’s mentor and friend.

The evidence suggests that with Starmer in Downing Street, McSweeney, in some respects honourably, felt determined to reward his patron.

This is the most obvious explanation for Starmer’s determination to send Mandelson to Washington, to ignore the obvious red flag of Epstein, and to drive through the appointment at all costs, resulting in the fiasco discussed in parliament yesterday.

Stolen Labour's soul

But Labour Together under McSweeney has had one yet more devastating  consequence. It has stolen Labour’s soul.

The Starmer government, with McSweeney as chief of staff, brutally targeted the Labour left over public ownership, living conditions, tax and Gaza.

Most despicably of all with a reversion to the racist politics of Enoch Powell, turning on minorities with talk of an "island of strangers".

McSweeney’s idea was to win back Labour’s "hero voters" in the "red wall" seats in the north of England.

This strategy catastrophically backfired.

In reality, by driving left-wing voters out of the party, Starmer and McSweeney created the conditions for the rise of Zack Polanski and the Greens.

Labour is braced for electoral humiliation as the Greens surge in next month’s local elections. 

Wait for the aftermath of 7 May. That is the moment of maximum danger for Starmer. The voters disdained by McSweeney may take their revenge. And so may Sir Keir Starmer's cabinet colleagues. 

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.