The ceasefire brokered by President Trump between Israel and Hamas, part of the peace plan unveiled on Sept. 29, has not been complete. There have been internecine killings within the Gaza Strip, and Israel and Hamas have engaged in violent clashes. Importantly, however, these have been sporadic and limited. Vice President JD Vance, visiting the region, has said that its implementation is “going better than expected.”
Even Trump’s enemies acknowledge that he was the prime mover in reaching a point at which Israel and Hamas agreed, however grudgingly and with however many qualifications, to suspend military activity.
It has been a strange experience for Britain’s government. The United Kingdom is deeply mired in the Middle East conflict — it was a British foreign secretary who issued the Balfour Declaration in 1917, pledging support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” The British oversaw the transformation of the former Ottoman Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem and the Sanjaks of Nablus and Acre into the League of Nations Mandate of Palestine, which the U.K. administered from 1920 until 1948. There has always been a feeling, whether of entitlement or regret, that Britain is an actor in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The U.K.’s role in Trump’s peace plan has been marginal. When the Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, argued that Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s presence at the signing ceremony in Egypt “demonstrates the key role that we [Britain] have played,” the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, dismissed her as “delusional.” Special Envoy Steve Witkoff diplomatically intervened to “acknowledge the vital role of the United Kingdom” and “the incredible input and tireless efforts of National Security Advisor Jonathan Powell,” but pinning down exactly what Britain had contributed has been challenging.
Starmer values his ability to deal with President Trump more effectively than some European leaders, and he has tried hard to carve out a distinct role for the U.K. There was an awkward moment at a press conference in Egypt, when Trump seemed to recognize Starmer and invite him to the microphone, only to cut him off abruptly, but the prime minister is used to embarrassment.
However, Starmer has proposed a specific place for the U.K. in implementing the settlement in disarming Hamas. The peace process stipulates “a process of demilitarization of Gaza under the supervision of independent monitors, which will include placing weapons permanently beyond use through an agreed process of decommissioning,” and Starmer told the House of Commons that the U.K. “stand[s] ready to play a full role in the decommissioning of Hamas weapons and capability.” He went on to argue that “there can be no viable future for Gaza… if Hamas can still threaten bloodshed and terror, so we will work to put that threat out of action for good.”
Starmer sees Britain as a player here because of the experience of Northern Ireland. The Belfast Agreement of 1998 enshrined a peace settlement, and one vital element was that “all participants… reaffirm[ed] their commitment to the total disarmament of all paramilitary organisations.” This was overseen by the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, chaired by Canadian General (ret) John de Chastelain. The process was slow and controversial, only being completed in 2010, and arguments remain over its effectiveness.
What the prime minister has not grasped, however, is that Northern Ireland’s paramilitary groups cannot be compared to Hamas. However horrific and brutal their campaigns of violence — the Provisional IRA’s especially, responsible for around 1,700 of the total 3,500 deaths — the paramilitaries were rational actors with defined goals. Republicans sought a united Ireland, whereas Loyalists wanted to preserve the status quo of Northern Ireland within the U.K.
Hamas is different. It seeks the creation of a Palestinian state, but that clear, limited ambition is only one element. Its first charter, issued in 1988, declared that “our struggle against the Jews is extremely wide-ranging and grave,” cited a scriptural passage often interpreted as describing the annihilation of the Jews and stated that its “Jihad… extends wherever on earth there are Muslims, who adopt Islam as their way of life; thus, it penetrates to the deepest reaches of the land and to the highest spheres of Heavens.”
Its 2017 revised charter muted some of the earlier language, but the antisemitism and millenarianism of the original document has never been repudiated. Only two years ago, Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, reiterated that “Israel is a country that has no place on our land. We must eliminate that country.”
Hamas is an Islamic fundamentalist organization whose origins are in the pan-Islamic Muslim Brotherhood. It pursues the elimination of Israel and, arguably, of international Jewry, and a widespread Islamic caliphate “wherever … there are Muslims.” These are neither rational nor achievable ambitions and can therefore never be satisfied. How, then could Hamas ever truly declare, as the IRA did 20 years ago, “an end to the armed campaign?”
This is Starmer’s problem. He wants to apply the methods of dealing with rational, if bloodthirsty, terrorists to the disarmament of a genocidal movement of religious zealotry. There is no comparison, and Britain’s experience does not apply.
Eliot Wilson is a freelance writer on politics and international affairs and the co-founder of Pivot Point Group. He was senior official in the U.K. House of Commons from 2005 to 2016, including serving as a clerk of the Defence Committee and secretary of the U.K. delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.
