FOR A generation of Palestinians who have lived their lives under occupation, peace means liberation — not going back to what is regarded as the trap of Oslo.

Ostensibly a transitional route to statehood, in reality it led to decades of Israeli military containment, settler occupation, ethnic cleansing, starvation and genocide. For them, peace means decolonisation, not Oslo Mk II.

David Lammy and Keir Starmer need to understand Israel is not interested in a two-state solution; it wants the total elimination of any possibility of a Palestinian state. It is not just about land — as recent events have shown, it is “messianic.”

In the debate in Parliament on his statement on Gaza, Lammy made much of the upcoming UN Conference in June on “the two-state solution” — or, in UN speak, the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine.

On the positive side, it is good that the government has at last responded to the almost universal pressure, not least from the mass protests across Britain, to say or do something about Israel’s onslaught on and starvation of the people of Gaza. Not surprisingly, it falls massively short of what is required to make Israel change from its genocidal course.

Hopefully, it legitimates a genuine debate within the party and more widely, as the statement reveals the paucity of thinking, lack of historical understanding and absence of any comprehension of what a solution might look like and what is required to achieve one. It has taken 18 months of being led up Israel’s war pathway to a racist solution based on an ideology of apartheid, for Labour to even start raising what are, globally, mainstream criticisms.

Recent research by Mandy Turner for Security in Context reveals how the most powerful “think” tanks in the world, mostly US, have just absorbed and relayed the Israeli narrative — a hegemony to be repeated ad nauseam by Western politicians. Rather than listening to the mouth of Israel spouting endlessly the self-justifications of “self-defence, Hamas, terrorists, anti-semitism” to every point raised in criticism, they need to listen to what those running Israel are actually saying.

Israel doesn’t want, has never wanted a two-state solution — even less a one-state solution. It has never accepted that there should be a state of Palestine, unlike the Palestinian “historic compromise” — including Hamas recognising the existence of Israel.

The state of Israel is now run by neozionists who have a messianic belief that they have a “divine mandate” to settle and occupy what was Palestine. Backed up by a latter-day Stern Gang of fascistic settlers, they are not looking for a solution based on a division of land — they are determined to have control of it all.

More than this, they have moved beyond a strategy of military containment, building walls and checkpoints. The objective is now the elimination of the majority of — if not all — Palestinians, from what remains of their land. The strategy is now transparent for even the most blinkered to see; it is the mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians through forced population transfer. This is today’s Nakba, legitimised by Donald Trump, the forced exodus of those Gazans left alive to Egypt and beyond.

A recent commission report of leading Palestinian figures identified “differential rights” as an immovable obstacle to any just “peace.” For Israel, it is non-negotiable that any agreement covering, not just ’48 Israel, but all land from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea, must be based, as set out in its Nation State Law (2018), on the primacy of Israeli Jews — with Jews alone having the right to self-determination.

“Differential rights” sounds benign — almost just a technical description — but it is fundamental to understanding where Israel is coming from.

The West needs to comprehend, as Palestinians certainly do from 70 years of racial rule, that Israel is not interested in any form of peace that does not give them, not just security, but superiority over all other peoples in the land of historic Palestine or as it prefers to call it — greater Israel.

The consensus emerging from the discussion in Ramallah, organised by MAS, was that there can be no going back to the historic trap of Oslo and all it contained, based on the asymmetric containment of the Palestinians both within Israel and the parts of Palestine it occupies — East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. The only real role the supposedly transitional Palestinian Authority (PA) was allowed to play was one of covert security collaboration with the IDF. The zoning of the West Bank into Areas A, B and C were fictional facades behind which Israel built its walls of apartheid.

The problem with all the Western solutions to “the question of Palestine” is that they don’t start from the premise of equality of all the peoples living in historic Palestine. As a consequence, any solution will always be stillborn.

For a lasting and just solution, it will be necessary for the newly formed coalition for a two-state peace — Britain, France and Canada — to recognise that any alleged solution using previous assumptions about Israel’s “rights” and vetoes are not viable as a basis for a peace process.

Those assumptions have collapsed under the weight of Israel’s totalitarian regime. The Palestinian people have not gone through 75 years of ethnic cleansing, over 50 years of military occupation, starvation and over 50,000 deaths in a one-sided annihilation of its people to meekly accept Oslo Mk II.

There is a new younger generation of Palestinians who have known only war and occupation. For them, the call is for liberation, for the revitalisation of a democratised PLO representing the Palestinians as one people based on unity in action of all factions as set out in the Beijing agreement. They want decolonisation, not ongoing settler colonialism.

They see no role for an unrepresentative, unelected PA supervising their colonisation. They recognise this needs a transformation of the division that has beset those who seek to be the voice of Palestine. They recognise this cannot exclude any faction, including Hamas — just as the agreements reached in Ireland, Colombia and South Africa could not exclude the IRA, Farc and ANC, all previously tagged as terrorist.

They are looking to build a political strategy whose objective is the decolonisation of occupied Palestine, not just the end of the war. The West needs to realise this and listen to the full range of Palestinian voices.

The rules of Israel’s game plan have changed or, at least, become clearer and louder for those who care to watch and listen. If 50,000 deaths are not enough to make it clear, an analysis of the tactics and war objectives of Israel should remove all doubt.

A report by the aptly named group Forensic Architecture spells out how Israeli forces have gone about their task — the destruction of all and everything that could form part of the infrastructure of a Palestinian state.

Prior to the latest military offensive to occupy the whole of Gaza, Israel had systematically expanded their “spatial control” — blocked and divided Gaza into parts, expanded buffer and border zones, built military pathways and structures. Not content with this, they destroyed all agricultural land, attacked or contaminated water resources, destroyed most of the medical services — targeting, laying siege to and invading hospitals.

This was coupled with the destruction of civilian buildings — not just health facilities, but shelters, utilities, schools and universities, government and religious buildings and cultural sites. Finally, if that wasn’t enough, prior to the total blockade, they targeted food aid — bakeries, trucks, markets, aid personnel and warehouses.

At last, a British government minister — Jenny Chapman — has publicly recognised that starvation is being used as a weapon of war. But this massively understates its impact. A report circulated by Leila Sansour describes the “strategy of starvation” as a pivotal shift in managing people under occupation. By emptying the land of food, the objectives are using starvation to cause food chaos, followed by the disintegration of the social contract — of society, the killing of any collective spirit and societal fracture. This is not a collateral impact, it is the plan, it is the strategy.

Netanyahu’s use of the term Amalek — a biblical reference used by the even further right in Israel to call for total destruction of one’s enemies — was scarcely reported in this country, but it reveals the truth. This is not about the destruction of Hamas — this is genocide proven, not by rhetoric from Israel’s critics, but by its own actions. Starvation and genocide are not targeted at individuals; they are aimed at the whole population.

History has proved that military might is not enough to defeat a people. Sumud, the Palestinian term for resilience, is being transformed into resistance. Why hasn’t Gaza descended into the chaos Israel so desires? Ines Razek (Al Shabaka/PIPD) makes clear it is because of mutual aid — Palestinians helping each other. There are now over 20,000 newly orphaned children in Gaza. They are being looked after and cared for as best as can be by someone. This is resistance Israel can never defeat. Labour needs to listen and understand this. To do so, it needs to try to stand in Palestinian shoes, not just Israeli ones, and see the world through their eyes. They have a right to their land.

There is now an unprecedented mass movement in this country in support of Palestine. Israel’s actions are causing cracks in the dam of the pro-Israel establishment. It is no longer that Labour waited for so long to call for a ceasefire; this government had all the evidence, it knew what Israel was doing, and then collaborated with it. History will not absolve our government’s failure to act. That can never be put right, but to achieve a just peace, there is a mountain to climb.

Not just a permanent ceasefire, or the reconstruction of Gaza, but forcing Israel to accept the self-determination of the Palestinian people, which entails the decolonising of the apartheid regime it has built. The removal of the wall, settlements, giving back Palestinians their resources, water and their land. Accepting the right of refugees to return to their homeland.

There is only one way this can be achieved, as South Africa demonstrated, by government sanctions, by removing the lifeline of military aid and support, ending trade and the financial underwriting of Israel’s settler colonial crimes. Labour has made a tiny step, but it is not the leap for humankind as it is being presented.

When the next general election comes, Palestine and how Labour behaves over the coming months will be the litmus test for millions of voters, many of whose votes it has already lost. There is an opportunity now for Labour to win back some of the trust it has lost, but neither time nor Israel is on its side.

Hugh Lanning is co-founder of Labour and Palestine.