In September, Liberal Democrat Conference passed an emergency policy motion on Gaza and the wider Middle East conflict. We were proud to reaffirm our support for UNRWA, for international courts, and for our policies to suspend arms exports to Israel, cease trade with illegal settlements, and immediately recognise the state of Palestine.
There is, however, an unfortunate final clause in the emergency motion passed: “Conference further calls on Liberal Democrats to engage with all their ALDE and Liberal International sister parties to secure a two-state solution based on 1967 lines in the region, including Israel’s Yesh Atid party.”
Unfortunate, because Yesh Atid stands against almost everything the motion calls for.
Many Liberal Democrats will look to Gaza and think: ‘what difference can we make?’ But even in the absence of meaningful action by the government, and even from our position in opposition, there is something that we can do as an influential member of the family of liberal parties.
We can show that ‘business as usual’ cannot continue for and with those parties which completely disregard everything liberals believe in. We can and should begin moves to end Israel’s Yesh Atid party’s observer status within Liberal International.
In October 2024, the Israeli Knesset passed two Bills outlawing the operations in-Israel of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), responsible for the co-ordination of aid programmes for Palestinian refugees.
UNRWA’s over 30,000 employees oversee a vast programme of humanitarian aid, not least of all in Gaza, where UNRWA plays an indispensable role supporting the nearly 2 million Palestinians displaced and subjected to a preventable famine. The Knesset Bills are certain to force the cessation of UNRWA’s Gaza operations, upon which all UN humanitarian aid operations rely heavily. They have been described by UNICEF as a death sentence for Gaza’s children.
Every single one of Yesh Atid’s Knesset members (MKs) voted in favour of these bills. One went so far as to describe the Bill’s passage as an “important moment of national unity”!
In mid-October 2023, when over 1,000 children had already been killed, supposed ‘liberal centrist’ Yesh Atid MK Meirav Ben-Ari told the Knesset that “the children of Gaza have brought this upon themselves”.
Yesh Atid’s leader, Yair Lapid, made clear his full support for the ‘total siege’ of Gaza. When told in a November 2023 Sky News interview, that 12,000 people in Gaza had been killed, Lapid replied “good riddance”.
It is true that Yesh Atid now sit in opposition to Netanyahu, and have pushed for the Israeli government to accept a ‘hostage deal’ to end this war. But look at its record in government (from March 2021 to November 2022). Lapid’s administration is recorded as having an approach to the occupied Palestinian territories which “not only continue[d] the policies set by the previous Netanyahu governments, but deepen[ed] the settlement project” – overseeing a higher rate of settlement constructions than in the eight prior years under Netanyahu, on average.
In August 2022, Lapid ordered ‘Operation Breaking Dawn’, without seeking Cabinet approval. Airstrikes killed 17 children, but Lapid subsequently stated that Israel “will not apologise” for using force. His administration oversaw the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, with Lapid himself refusing calls for an independent investigation and offering the alleged shooter the “full backing of the government”.
Liberal Democrats who refer to Yesh Atid as a sister party should clearly stop doing so. And, while the Liberal Democrats cannot unilaterally move for the expulsion of Yesh Atid from Liberal International, to which it was admitted as an observer member in 2021, we should begin the process of ending this engagement, as was argued for in Lib Dem Voice almost three years ago. We should instead be looking to alternative Israeli partners, perhaps such as the Democrats, who, at the very least, abstained on last month’s UNRWA vote. On issues of life and death, liberals should know where we stand – and who we stand with.
* Anne-Marie Simpson is a member of Didcot & Wantage Liberal Democrats and Chair of Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine
Follow @LibDemVoice on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Michael's weekly ward surgeries today! #dundeewestend
DWP imposing misery on carers
At last! Proof that BBC East's Joint Account quiz existed
US outperformance isn't *all* about Tech
Mary Fulton
Jack Nicholls
Adam
Jonathan Brown
16 Comments
Anne-Marie Simpson rightly challenges the party to examine its own criteria and to be true to them. Yesh Atid supports internationally criminal acts. We should be absolutely clear that the party can only partner those which support the principles, non-derogable laws and conventions of the international order, and should not hesitate to condemn those that do not.
Thank you Anne-Marie for providing these pieces of information. They make a clear case that Yesh Atid does not belong with Liberal International.
Within the Bureau of Liberal International both John Alderdice and myself have championed the Palestinian cause and for a two state solution when our statements have been negotiated and we have been strongly critical of Yesh Atid’s positions whilst they were in government. Hence the broad positions we have taken are in line with your article.
At present Yesh Atid are our only point of contact in the Israeli political framework as the left of centre options are members of Socialist International and dual membership is not allowed.
Observer membership of Yesh Atid is controversial and we are not the only party to have expressed similar concerns. I sense that the movement overall would not yet be ready to expel them, as many still hope that this toehold can be used to influence matters for the good. We have the choice of an imperfect sister party or no sister party as things stand. Sympathy for Israel is still very strong in continental Europe and we have to employ diplomacy to press our view.
However, this debate is going on within Liberal International and we will have a number of MENA representatives at our Congress in Santiago in two weeks time, including Future Movement from Lebanon and the opposition to Assad in exile, as well as a strong contingent from Morocco. I will make contact with them and assess their position on Yesh Atid to see if they think it is wise to continue this relationship.
One key question for our motion is: Does Yesh Atid support the two-state solution ? Their actions suggest they do not, particularly that they stepped up settlements in the West Bank.
They supported the government’s act against UNWRA showing their inhumane attitude, so that is another fundamental reason to publicly criticise them and if that causes them to not wish to engage with us Liberals, then so be it. We certainly cannot call them a sister party; so can we amend that motion in our next conference ?
Please can we support A Land For All who say:
‘Instead of desperation, we offer hope. Instead of fighting each other, we offer a partnership of mutual interests and ambitions. We, Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs are the children of this land. Together, we can make a difference. Together, we can build a different future’.
https://www.alandforall.org/pain-and-opportunity/?d=ltr
At the ALDE Congress in Estoril last month – as instructed in the emergency motion at our Autumn Conference – the LibDems submitted the attached motion which after much debate was endorsed unanimously by all our sister parties from across Europe. This was quite an achievement as opinions with regards to the situation in Israel and Palestine range widely but we felt it was important that liberal parties should find common ground on this hugely important issue and we did.
I will post the motion separately.
Here is the link to the motion passed at ALDE Congress in Estoril at the beginning of October and submitted by the LibDems
https://assets.nationbuilder.com/aldeparty/pages/10106/attachments/original/1728219502/Israel-_Hamas_in_Gaza_and_Hezbollah_in_Lebanon.pdf?1728219502
@Phillip Bennion
Perhaps we should be pushing for Liberal international to allow for dual membership with other organisations. Many socialist international members are also members of progressive alliance, I see no reason Liberal international can’t do the same. It seems a ridiculously petty and unnecessary rule to have and it’s not like it’s effective as a gatekeeping measure as it would exclude many parties that are allot more liberal than the many conservative parties pretending to be liberals that have been allowed to join.
UNWRA has been supporting Palestinian resistance since 1948 with questionable outcomes for peace and security in the region. The main opponent of the two state solution is the Palestinian resistance, which wants a country “free from the river to the sea.” Netanyahu regards the Palestinians as untrustworthy and after 7 October 2023 one can hardly blame him. The Palestinians turned down a state of their own in 1948 and continue to do so.
Thanks for this suggestion David Grice. The Progressive Alliance is not a true international so does include parties from across the political divide, but we have resumed much closer relations with Socialist International after several years of very cool relations. We have to remember their loud support for Chaves, then Maduro in Venezuela as well as Mugabe and Mnangagwa in Zimbabwe. They have recently moderated their approach but their governing parties also rushed to praise China for its contribution to human rights in Xinjiang. In essence, they have represented the polar opposite to us in much of the world, even if we have been more conerned with the far right in the developed world.
Anne-Marie’s excellent article has raised a number of interesting points, among them the ALDE Congress motion in October, which was endorsed unanimously by “all our sister parties from across Europe”. The motion was heavily biased in favour of the Israeli narrative, and, for example, held Iran to blame for destabilising the region by sending weapons to Israel’s opponents, and yet made no mention of the massive supply of highly sophisticated weapons to Israel from its suppliers, without which it would have to end its attacks on Gaza and Lebanon and make peace with its neighbours.
Iran has conspicuously tried to avoid escalating the conflict, whereas Israel has taken the justified retaliation for October 7 into realms few of us thought we would ever see by a so-called ally, and which the ICJ’s interim ruling suggests might well be Genocide. It should be clear to our European friends and “sister parties” that it is Israel which is destabilising the region, with the help of its weapons suppliers – mainly the US, Germany, Italy and the UK.
The ALDE motion ought to have included condemnation of Israel’s use of October 7 to justify the needless killing of so many civilians, and the attempt to kill off hopes for the two-state solution.
While I share the disappointment in Lapid’s (& Yesh Atid) positions over Netanyahu’s Wars in Gaza & Lebanon, I can’t see how expelling them from Liberal International will help change those positions.
If we want to have influence in trying to resolve both those wars, we need to keep open channels to talk with Israelis, Palestinians & Lebonese, not close them down.
Also, Anne-Marie has not realised that the Israeli Government between March 2021 & November 2022 was a fragile Coalition of 8 parties, from extreme Jewish Nationst via Muslim Religious to left wing binational, united only by their opposition to Netanyahu. Lapid during his time as Deputy PM & then, for a few months as PM, was constrained in his actions by keeping the Coalition together (a position we as Lib Dems here in the UK should recognise) so please don’t draw too many conclusions as to his actions in that time.
What evidence is there that our alliance with Yesh Atid is “helping change the positions” of that party? Would Lib Dems, by the same logic, welcome an alliance with Reform UK?
Anne-Marie Simpson’s article is a very timely reminder that, faced with a. worldwide assault on liberalism – with lines now drawn in the USA, Middle East and Ukraine – it matters hugely who our allies are. The essential liberal values, standing for justice, human rights and the rule of law, need asserting more vociferously and unequivocally than ever. The unity of truly liberal parties across the world has never been more important.
I am wondering if Leon Duveen has picked up that Yesh Atid MK, Rob Katz’s bill is one of three that have been amalgamated into the ‘Law for Cessation of UNRWA Activities (2024)’?
This flies in the face of Liberal Democrat Party policy in support of UNRWA. The motion passed at Autumn Conference (link in my article above) included a call on the the UK Government to provide “all necessary assistance, including aid, to UNRWA to alleviate the humanitarian crisis and ensure that the recommendations of the independent Colonna report are implemented as quickly as possible, thereby assuring that all work to support Palestinians in Gaza is of the highest possible standards and integrity.”
@markfrankel, the main opponent of the two state solution is Benjamin Netanyahu. The Palestinian Ambassador to the UK has said repeatedly that the Palestinian Authority is absolutely committed to achieving that. The “river to the sea” rhetoric is still heard from fanatics, but now more commonly from Israelis than from Palestinians. As for things said in 1948 lin hugely different circumstances, having to rely on quoting the Palestinian position at the birth of the Israeli nation and the continuation of the project to remove Palestinians from Palestine simply highlights the moral and legal vacuum into which Israel and its supporters have been dragged by Netanyahu’s coalition today.
How Israel’s Yesh Atid Party views its membership of LI is a valid question to me in determining this issue. Does it see it as a lever to move itself towards the values that underpin LI? If so, it might be right to allow it to remain a member while condemning some of its actions. A dialogue is usually to be preferred to deciding without it. An alternative is going to be needed to the present Israeli government and we would want to support it, assuming it is more progressive.