UK Labour politician Rupa Asha Huq has suggested that Britain could apologize for helping to create Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories, a new report claims, further fueling an ongoing row over Israel that has seen senior Labour members suspended by the party.
Huq, a member of Parliament (MP) who represents the London borough of Ealing, made the remarks at a meeting with the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign last year, the Daily Mail reported Sunday.
In response to a question about whether London should make an apology, Huq said: “1948; that happened under a British government. To my mind, an apology – yes. You could do one. A Labour Government could probably get that through.”
However, she noted that an apology would be subject to criticism similar to those former Prime Minister Tony Blair faced for bringing up long-past historical events, including the Irish potato famine and slavery.
The revelation comes shortly after Huq was attacked for defending fellow Labour MP Naz Shah, who was forced to apologize for backing calls for Israel’s “relocation” to the United States.
The former mayor of London Ken Livingstone (pictured below) became the most prominent Labour figure to face the same fate as Shah after defending her and adding that Adolf Hitler was a Zionist.
“The creation of the state of Israel was fundamentally wrong, because there had been a Palestinian community there for 2,000 years,” Livingstone recently told Arabic TV station al-Ghad al-Arabi.
The illegal Israeli regime was established in 1948, when it occupied Palestinian land along with expanses of other Arab territories during full-fledged military operations. The occupied lands also include Lebanon’s Shebaa Farms and Syria’s Golan Heights.
In 1967, it occupied the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, including East al-Quds (Jerusalem), and the Gaza Strip. It later annexed the West Bank and East al-Quds in a move never recognized by the international community.
The Labour Party has suspended as many as 50 members over allegations of “anti-Semitism” and racism in the past two months.
Last month, Corbyn ordered an inquiry into the issue and said he would propose a new code of conduct banning any forms of racism in the party.