What was claimed
Keir Starmer said Hamas is entitled to apply for an embassy in London having been formally recognised by the UK as a state.
Our verdict
Mr Starmer did not say this. While the UK did recognise Palestinian statehood in September, and said it was in the process of establishing diplomatic ties with the Palestinian Authority, Hamas is still proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the UK. Mr Starmer said Hamas could have no future role in governing a Palestinian state.
After the UK formally recognised Palestine as a state in September, we spotted several social media posts claiming that Keir Starmer had said Hamas was entitled to apply for an embassy in London.
This isn’t true. While the UK has recognised Palestinian statehood, and started the process of establishing diplomatic relations with the Palestinian Authority (PA), this does not include Hamas, which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the UK. The military wing of Hamas has been proscribed since 2001, with the group proscribed in its entirety in 2021.
In his announcement recognising a Palestinian state on 21 September, Mr Starmer insisted that the move was “not a reward for Hamas”, which he described as a “brutal terror organisation”, and explicitly said that Hamas could have no future role in governing such a state.
The Foreign Office said the UK had formally recognised Palestine “to protect the viability of a two-state solution and create a path towards lasting peace for the Israeli and Palestinian people”.
It described the two-state solution as a “safe and secure Israel alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state led by a reformed Palestinian Authority”.
The UK government said the decision “does not remove the demands the government has made of the Palestinian Authority to conduct extensive reform” adding that PA President Mahmoud Abbas had “committed to this reform, including organising new elections within a year of a ceasefire”.
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In recent decades, the PA has controlled parts of the West Bank, while the militant group Hamas has ruled the Gaza Strip. Israel has also exercised power over both areas in different ways.
The Palestinian Authority is a governing body created in the early 1990s as part of the Oslo Accords, signed by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Israel. It was established to govern parts of the West Bank and Gaza, and is dominated by the Fatah faction which was co-founded by Yasser Arafat.
Hamas went to war with Fatah in 2007, and although Fatah retained control of the West Bank, Hamas forces took over the Gaza Strip.
Hamas has remained in control of Gaza, though it has been severely weakened by the war with Israel. The PA retains limited autonomy in the West Bank.
A ceasefire in Gaza took effect on 10 October after Israel and Hamas agreed to the first phase of the 20-point peace plan brokered by US President Donald Trump. The UN Security Council passed a resolution that endorsed President Trump's Gaza peace plan on 17 November. However, there have been escalations in violence in Gaza in recent weeks.
Husam Zomlot, the head of the PA-controlled Palestinian Mission to the UK, said on 22 September that a plaque recognising the mission’s Hammersmith residence as an embassy would be placed on the building “very soon”, pending some legal and bureaucratic work with the British government.
It’s important to consider whether information you see on social media comes from a trustworthy and verifiable source before sharing it. Our toolkit provides some advice about how to do this. We’ve written more about the conflict in the Middle East here.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because Keir Starmer did not say this. The UK did recognise Palestinian statehood in September, and said it was in the process of establishing diplomatic ties with the Palestinian Authority, but it did not say this in relation to Hamas, which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the UK.
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