For the second time within a week, United Kingdom Prime Minister Theresa May has been forced to reshape and reshuffle her Cabinet — the first when defence secretary Michael Fallon resigned, saying that his previous behaviour towards women fell below acceptable standards, and on Wednesday night when she accepted the inevitable resignation of Priti Patel as international development secretary, and replaced her with Penny Mordaunt on Thursday afternoon. While Fallon’s fall was unexpected, Patel’s effective firing was the least May could do with a junior minister who single-handedly tried to set the UK too close and too cosy with the right-wing Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
For weeks, Patel had been in hot water for failing to fully disclose a series of meetings that she had had with the Netanyahu regime while she visited the country on a supposed family holiday, and neither reported the contacts to Downing Street nor followed proper protocol — policies absolutely essential for the British government in dealing with Israel in particular. When the meetings first came to light, Patel apologised to May and Downing Street said she would stay in her Cabinet position. It was then revealed, however, that Patel had attended additional meetings, one in the UK and one in the United States, with Israeli officials on her return from Israel.
Patel was not forthcoming about the nature and extent of her contacts, and it subsequently came to light in the Israeli media that she had visited a field hospital of the Israeli occupation forces in the occupied Golan Heights. Britain rightly does not recognise Israel’s continued illegal occupation of the strategic Syrian territory, and Patel was summoned back to Downing Street where her resignation was a foregone conclusion. Make no mistake, the Netanyahu regime bears as much responsibility for Patel’s downfall as does she for her naivety, irresponsibility and blatant two-facedness in trying to disguise the extent of her contacts.
More and more — and rightly so — the Israeli regime is being isolated politically and economically by enlightened governments. As it stands now, Netanyahu can count on the fingers of one hand the nations that still stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him. Whether it be at the United Nations General Assembly or at the UN Security Council table itself, the actions of the Netanyahu regime are being noted and its treatment of Palestinian people is being addressed. It is only too willing to talk to any naive or misguided junior minister to try and justify its criminal actions and policies.
