Netanyahu: UK is rewarding Hamas, punishing terror victims

Blasting the UK’s threat to officially recognize Palestine, Netanyahu said that “a jihadist state on Israel’s border today will threaten Britain tomorrow.”

By World Israel News Staff

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer in a fiery tweet on Tuesday, after the British government announced that it would officially recognize a Palestinian state in the near future.

Starmer issued the statement about Palestinian statehood as a threat, explaining that the UK would join France in recognizing Palestine in September at the UN General Assembly — unless Israel agrees to a long-term ceasefire and allows additional aid into the Gaza Strip.

In a harsh statement, Netanyahu warned that creating an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel’s borders would endanger the security of both the Jewish state and the Western world, saying such an entity would become a haven for jihadism and Islamic extremism.

“Starmer rewards Hamas’s monstrous terrorism and punishes its victims,” Netanyahu said. “A jihadist state on Israel’s border today will threaten Britain tomorrow,” he added.

He added that “appeasement toward jihadist terrorists always fails. It will fail you too. It will not happen.”

Netanyahu and Starmer spoke by phone on Tuesday afternoon, just hours before the UK premier convened a cabinet meeting to gather support for his plan.

According to a summary of the call published by Starmer’s office, the UK leader told Netanyahu that “the situation in Gaza was intolerable and that the need for humanitarian access is now more pressing than ever before.”

The statement added that Starmer “urged the prime minister [Netanyahu] to take immediate action to lift all restrictions on aid access and get those suffering in Gaza the food they need.”

Speaking at a Downing Street press conference on Tuesday, Starmer said that “the UK will recognise the state of Palestine by the United Nations General Assembly in September, unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, agree to a ceasefire, and commit to a long-term sustainable peace, reviving the prospect of a two-state solution.”