When UK prime minister Keir Starmer first rushed to recognise a Palestinian state, he talked of promoting ‘regional stability’. How surprised he must have been to discover that the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority’s (PA) new draft constitution is not, in fact, a blueprint for a liberal, pluralistic democracy. On the contrary, it is an entrenchment of the very features that have fuelled conflict for decades, making any future treaty with Israel a constitutional impossibility.
The document, published last month, makes several polite nods to ‘equality’. But it reveals its true face when it declares ‘the principles of Islamic Sharia the primary source for legislation’. So much for gender equality then. Under Sharia-based personal-status laws, women remain perpetual second-class citizens – handicapped in matters of marriage, divorce and inheritance. The draft constitution offers no meaningful firewall against such outcomes. Nor does it provide explicit protections for sexual orientation. In jurisdictions where Sharia heavily influences criminal or civil codes, same-sex relationships are forbidden, penalised or socially persecuted. You can have Sharia or you can have egalitarianism, but you cannot have both. The PA has chosen the former.
Equally unconscionable is the document’s complete airbrushing of Jews from the landscape it concerns. Article 3 declares the whole of Jerusalem as the ‘capital of the State of Palestine’. It asserts that any measures to change the city’s character are ‘null and void’, a direct challenge to history, and to the current reality of a Jewish West Jerusalem and a Palestinian East. The constitution effectively rejects any Jewish connection to the Holy City. Despite promising to preserve Jerusalem’s ‘religious character’ and protect ‘its Islamic and Christian sanctities’, the word ‘Jewish’ is not mentioned once in the entire document.
Then there is the constitutional entrenchment of the ‘pay for slay’ policy. Articles 24 and 44 commit the future state to ‘protection and care for the families of martyrs, wounded and prisoners’ – including those jailed for terrorism by Israel (referred to only as ‘the occupation’). This isn’t social welfare; it’s remunerating terrorists’ families for murdering Jews. The PA already spends hundreds of millions annually on this policy. Now it wants to write it into a Palestinian state’s founding document.
In a sane world, human-rights organisations would be incandescent. A constitution that makes Sharia a primary legislative source, sidelines women’s genuine equality, erases gay rights and rewards terrorism ought to trigger every alarm bell. But these NGOs have long ago abandoned moral principles in favour of a hierarchy of oppression. To them, Palestinians are sacred victims and Israel is the eternal villain. They are blind to the authoritarianism and festering anti-Semitism of Palestinian society, reserving their outrage instead for the Jewish State, which dares to defend itself against this. Peace and human dignity come secondary to the goal of seeing the Middle East’s only democracy dismantled.
Put simply, the PA’s constitution is a manifesto for permanent war. By codifying the total rejection of Israeli legitimacy, it has ensured that a peace deal based on mutual recognition is an impossibility. For any future Palestinian leader, recognising Israel would now be, quite literally, a violation of the state’s supreme law.
The silence from the British government following the release of this document is a tacit endorsement of its principles. If Starmer is so determined to recognise Palestine, he should at least have the courage to tell the public what kind of state he is backing. Why is he prepared to endorse a framework that prioritises Sharia over secular rights, canonises martyrdom, erases Jewish history and perpetuates the conflict by legal means? Is this really the ‘better future’ he was hoping for in the Middle East?
If Britain continues to recognise Palestinian statehood without demanding fundamental constitutional change, it can no longer do so under the pretence of advancing peace. The PA does not care about peace. For the UK to endorse it is not diplomacy, but a moral abdication.
Limor Simhony Philpott is a writer, policy adviser and researcher.
