It was once said that there is more joy over one sinner who repents than over 99 just men. So we must surely welcome David Miliband’s latest offering at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies yesterday that The West must “show greater respect” for Muslims if it is to rebuild relations with the Islamic world. Pity of course that that wasn’t said 6 years ago before the invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Gaza. Pity it wasn’t said 6 months ago before it became clear that Obama was likely to win the US Presidency. But the FCO knows its place – following in the wake of whatever twist or turn there might be in American policy, Bush one day and Obama the next, even though they’re advocating almost diametrically opposite policies. But this delayed opportunism really won’t wash if Britain is ever again to exert any real influence on the world scene, for four very good reasons.

First, mere words of repentance are nowhere near enough, especially since the word Sorry was not anyway anywhere actually used. Intellectualised hand-wringing is not going to dispel the “bitterness, distrust and resentment” (burning hostility wasn’t mentioned either) in the Middle East. It is action that is needed, action that spells out unmistakeably that Britain is no longer America’s poodle in protecting Israel’s interests at every turn, irrespective of the merits of the case. Indeed even when Obama is now insisting that Hamas must be part of the overall peace process, Miliband is still stuck in the entrenched position that Hamas must first recognise Israel as a pre-condition. Against that background, softer words cut no ice.
Second, it is inconceivable that a speech in Oxford can have any impact whatsoever unless the UK squarely confronts its execrable silence over the systematic destruction of Lebanon and Gaza. The refusal to condemn Israel for the deliberate butchery of residential populations and the breach of the Geneva conventions, or even to call for a ceasefire till very late in the day, makes a mockery of calls now to show ‘respect’ for Muslims. Nor did the FCO speech contain any condemnation of the overtly racist views of the new Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, which (including, as it did, that Gaza should be nuked) are about as far removed from respect for Muslims as it is possible to get.
Third, if the FCO has undergone even a quarter-hearted conversion towards an even-handed approach to States in the Middle East, it would now immediately demand at least an end to the continued building of illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank and to continued expropriations of land and access to water supplies from Palestinian farmers, and would immediately suspend delivery of any further aid or arms-related materials until the Israeli govermnet complied.
Fourth, the West cannot simply eliminate the hatred borne of a decade or more of waging a war on terror against the Muslim world by a speech admitting it did more harm than good. It requires no less than exemplary action to exculpate a systematic policy, wrought at a cost of hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslim lives, of enforcing domination of the Middle East very largely to gain control of the largest remaining repository of the world’s oil. David Miliband’s FCO conversion is a good start, but after the first inch there is still a mile to go.

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