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David Lammy disgraces himself again over Israel’s genocide in Gaza

David Lammy has, once again, disgraced himself over Israel’s genocide in Palestine. In his characteristically tepid tone, Lammy said:

The E1 settlement plan, also known as East1 would, as Al Jazeera reported:

link thousands of illegal settlements in occupied East Jerusalem – which is already illegally annexed by Israel – to the expanding Maale Adumim settlement bloc in the occupied West Bank.

This would fully sever East Jerusalem – which Palestinians have long considered the capital of their own future state  – from the rest of the occupied West Bank.

The plan is undoubtedly one of forced displacement and ethnic cleansing. And, if the international community allows it to happen, it will finish any fantasy that they – and only they – have clung onto of a two state solution.

Lammy politely asks Israel to stop

However, it’s the manner in which Lammy words his request which is at odds with the reality of Israel’s policy:

The Israeli government must reverse this decision.

How can the Israeli government reverse something that is its entire reason for existing? The E1 plan itself was first conceived in 1994. Lammy’s tame requests are a far cry from the violent language of the settler colonial ministers that make up butcher Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. When discussing those same E1 plans, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said:

This reality finally buries the idea of a Palestinian state, because there is nothing to recognise and no one to recognise. Anyone in the world who tries today to recognise a Palestinian state will receive an answer from us on the ground.

Next to these obscene comments from Smotrich, Lammy’s response is even more outrageous in its timidity. In fact, a comparison of Netanyahu’s ministers shows just how reticent Lammy’s remarks are. Just days ago, Smotrich outlined his vision of Palestine’s future:

We conquer, cleanse, and stay until Hamas is annihilated. On the way, we annihilate everything that still remains of the Strip simply because everything there is just one big terror city.

Netanyahu’s government couldn’t be clearer: they want to keep going until they’ve eliminated Palestine and every Palestinian along with their campaign of terror. They haven’t hidden that since the beginning of this genocide. This is the context in which Lammy is making his comments. And, it’s a context with makes those comments obscene. Smotrich continued to say that it was a “good thing” that Israel are starving Palestinians:

For two and a half months we didn’t allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. This put huge pressure on Hamas, and that’s a good thing.

Lammy mentions a state of Palestine divided in two. That isn’t remotely what Israel are doing, as Smotrich himself said:

We’re breaking Gaza apart, leaving it as a pile of rubble, with total unprecedented destruction in the world.

According to the Israeli military itself, they estimate that 83% of the people they’ve killed in Gaza are civilians. That makes the following remark from Smotrich even more of an abject lie:

The aim is to achieve the one and only required outcome: the conquest of Gaza, the annihilation of Hamas, and the return of all the hostages. In one word: victory.

The Israeli consideration of victory is one where Palestine and Palestinians no longer exist. And, if they need to tout the excuse of hostages and Hamas as the scapegoats for the extermination they’re carrying out, then so be it. This is the climate in which Lammy believes he can apparently just ask Israel to “reverse” course.

Pattern of barbarism

Smotrich is no outlier amongst the Israeli government. Minister of national security, Ben Gvir, has spent his week touring Palestinian hostages and showing the detainees pictures of an obliterated Gaza. Prior to that, Gvir was filmed taunting Palestinian prisoner Marwan Barghouti in a clip that drew condemnation. Gvir has also stated that:

Since I assumed my role as Minister of National Security, one of the top goals I set for myself was to worsen the conditions of terrorists in prisons and reduce their privileges to the minimum required by law. This is what I promised my voters and the people of Israel during the elections when I announced I would demand this position.

The cruelty and depravity of these ministers is not an aberration in Israeli society. Instead, it is entirely normalised and expected.

Minister of defence, Israel Katz, has said Gaza City will be destroyed if Hamas does not release the remaining Israeli hostages:

Soon, the gates of hell will open upon the heads of Hamas’s murderers and rapists in Gaza – until they agree to Israel’s conditions for ending the war, primarily the release of all hostages and their disarmament.

If they do not agree, Gaza, the capital of Hamas, will become Rafah and Beit Hanoun.

Here, Katz is pushing the Israeli strategy of taking over more and more of Palestine. That’s to say nothing of the sheer number of hostages Israel has taken. Al Jazeera reported that:

For every Palestinian Israel freed in the ceasefire deal, it apprehended 15 more. The number of political prisoners in its jails has doubled since the war began.

As of April 2025, over 10,000 Palestinians are being held in Israeli prisons. Many are held without fair trial or charge, in squalid conditions with torture and rape rife.

Accountability: zero from Lammy, zero from Israel

Lammy’s statement condemning the E1 plan comes as part of a joint statement signed by 20 other foreign ministers from around the world. The statement reads:

The decision by the Israeli higher planning committee to approve plans for settlement construction in the E1 area, east of Jerusalem, is unacceptable and a violation of international law. We condemn this decision and call for its immediate reversal in the strongest terms.

A violation of international law? International law is in tatters after the West has sat back and watched Israel exterminate Palestinians and raze entire neighbourhoods to the ground. And, as Save the Children put it, these words are meaningless without action:

We are far past the point where condemnation or pleas to follow international law are remotely useful. A two state solution is as much a fantasy as it ever was. Israel’s commitment to the genocide it is committing and to the continued extermination of Palestinians is built on the complicity of ‘international law.’

Featured image via YouTube screenshot/DRM News

By Maryam Jameela

This post was originally published on Canary.