While the formal vote on statehood would do little in itself to ease the war, it would deliver a diplomatic outcome that Israel has fiercely opposed for decades.
Starmer condemned Hamas, a listed terrorist group in the UK as it is in Australia, and said peace in Gaza required the Palestinian militants to disarm.
Pro-Palestine protesters in front of Downing Street as Starmer convened an emergency cabinet meeting on Tuesday.Credit: Getty Images
“They must immediately release all the hostages, sign up to a ceasefire, disarm and accept that they will play no part in the government of Gaza,” he said.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Starmer was appeasing the terrorist group.
“Starmer rewards Hamas’s monstrous terrorism & punishes its victims,” he posted on social media.
“A jihadist state on Israel’s border TODAY will threaten Britain TOMORROW. Appeasement towards jihadist terrorists always fails. It will fail you too. It will not happen.”
Aid is airdropped over Gaza by a Jordanian Air Force plane on Tuesday.Credit: AP
The UN said reports indicated on Tuesday that 60,000 Gazans had now been killed since Hamas-led terror attacks in Israel sparked the war in October 2023.
Netanyahu has been bluntly contradicted by other world leaders for claiming there was no starvation in Gaza, with US President Donald Trump saying children were starving.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Gaza was on the brink of famine.
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“The facts are in – and they are undeniable,” he said in a statement. “Palestinians in Gaza are enduring a humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions. This is not a warning. It is a reality unfolding before our eyes.”
The UN estimated that more than 20,000 children had been treated for acute malnutrition and 16 had died.
The World Food Program said more than 500,000 people – about a quarter of the population in Gaza – were enduring famine-like conditions, while others were facing emergency levels of hunger.
Another UN agency, the Food and Agriculture Organisation, said the primary obstacle was the distribution of food inside Gaza when trucks were available to deliver the aid.
Trump did not back the UK argument but made no criticism of Starmer, saying it was “OK” that the UK was following France.
US president Donald Trump did not criticise Starmer when asked about the prime minister’s policy shift.Credit: Getty Images
“It doesn’t mean I have to agree,” he told reporters on Air Force One. He repeated his concern, aired at a press conference with Starmer in Scotland the previous day, that children were starving.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz revealed foreign ministers from Germany, France and the UK were planning to travel to Israel to present the position of the three governments.
Merz also said two German military aircraft were expected to drop food aid to Palestinians in Gaza this week.
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“This work may only make a small contribution to humanitarian aid, but it sends an important signal: we are here, we are in the region,” Merz said, according to German news agency Deutsche Welle.
The UK dropped food into Gaza by air on Tuesday, local time, and Starmer said it was also delivering food overland.
“We need to see at least 500 trucks entering Gaza every day,” the UK prime minister said.
The Dutch government said it would summon Israel’s ambassador to the Netherlands to denounce the “unbearable and indefensible” situation in Gaza.
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The Netherlands has also imposed travel bans on two far-right Israeli cabinet ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who will no longer be allowed to enter the Netherlands, which accuses them of repeatedly inciting violence against Palestinians and calling for an “ethnic cleansing” of the Gaza strip. The Dutch decision follows similar moves last month by Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway.
About 144 of the 193 member states of the UN recognise Palestine as a state, including Russia, China and India. Only a handful of the 27 European Union members do so.
Last year, Ireland, Norway and Spain recognised a Palestinian state with its borders to be demarcated as they were prior to the 1967 Middle East war, when Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.
Netanyahu blamed Hamas for not releasing the last of the hostages taken in the October 7 attacks, when the terrorist group killed 1195 people and took more than 250 captive. Israel estimates that Hamas continues to hold at least 20 hostages.
“We have not stopped trying,” Netanyahu said of the negotiations over Gaza, speaking online without referring to the UK move.
“But there is one big obstacle and everyone knows what it is – Hamas. It is persisting in its refusal.
“We are not relenting. We will continue to do everything we can, one way or the other. We are committed to bringing them back.”
Starmer drew instant criticism from UK Opposition Leader Kemi Badenoch over his new policy, highlighting the partisan divide on the Middle East in British politics as in other western democracies.
