Only boycotts will work

The Foreign Secretary's preference for further consultations with Britain's European Union and US allies is simply procrastination.

He can see clearly that Israel has paid lip service to a two-state solution for years but has proceeded with systematic colonisation of the territories it conquered in the 1967 war, not only West Bank but also Syria's Golan Heights.

Yet Britain has sided constantly with Israel against international opinion, altering British law to prevent Israeli war criminals being arrested here.

In common with other EU member states, it resists appeals from the Palestinian people and their supporters to stop encouraging Israel's illegal expansion of its territory by offering it beneficial trading arrangements.

----

It repeated the US lie of "Israel's right to defend itself" to justify the recent pitiless bombardment of Gaza, merely asking Israel to show "restraint."

Our government also failed to support the Palestinian Authority in its successful bid to win non-member observer status at the UN general assembly, abstaining in the vote.

So it will have to show something a little more tangible than "consultations" with its allies if its critical words are to add up to anything more substantial than a row of beans.

Israel's bully-boy leaders Binyamin Netayahu and Avigdor Lieberman have been throwing their weight around for months, threatening the Palestinians with dire consequences if they take their case for national independence to the world body.

They have been as good as their word, seizing about £75 million that belongs to the Palestinian Authority in the form of taxation that Israel collects on its behalf in line with the Oslo agreement, signed nearly 20 years ago.

Even more seriously, they have gone for the nuclear option of giving notice that Israel will build a new illegal settlement in the so-called E1 area.

This area between Israeli-occupied east Jerusalem and the illegal large development of Maaleh Adumim would mark the death knell for any two-state solution, since it would cut the West Bank in half, preventing a contiguous Palestinian state.

----

If carried through, this would confirm Israel's determination to control the whole of mandate Palestine from the Mediterranean to the Jordan river, leaving Palestinians no more than an apartheid South Africa-style archipelago of bantustans in which to exercise "self-rule."

Palestinians reject this cynical denial of their national rights and so should the government and people of Britain.

Britain bears a special responsibility for the Palestinians' plight, having disposed of their land, without discussion, through the Balfour declaration to British zionists that "a national home for the Jewish people" could be built there.

Tory foreign secretary Arthur Balfour attached the "principle" that this should affect the civil and religious rights of non-Jews already living there, but it was only words.

Little confidence can be placed in the words of the current Tory Foreign Secretary unless backed up by deeds.

Israel's ongoing arrogant refusal to abide by international law, secure in its deadly US embrace, will not be changed by expressions of concern.

Only a diplomatic, commercial, sporting and cultural boycott, as was successful against Tel Aviv's apartheid ally South Africa, can do the trick.

That is the least that should be demanded of Hague.